Having played games with PK mechanics, this is pretty true to reality.
PKers want the joy of stomping on people and inflicting pain on strangers – I don’t know if it makes them feel powerful, or if it’s just a flagrant indulgence of sadism, but every PK group I’ve wandered into has been pretty open that their enjoyment is derived from the suffering of their targets (and any loot they get is a nice bonus at best).
Players who actually enjoy PvP for the challenge hang around the arena-type areas (such as where Crim and crew fought Silver Wing before).
Very much this.
Waaaay back in the day, some 20-ish years ago, I started playing Runescape with a friend at their recommendation. Back then, as I remember it (which could be flawed after so many years), Runescape had a dedicated PvP zone in the northern section of the map and it was the
only place PvP was allowed.
Well, it also had valuable resources that tempted a newbie like me int venturing into it despite wanting absolutely nothing to do with PvP. I wasn't there for more than 5 minutes when some dude like 20-30 levels above me decided he wanted to come fight me solely because I was a lower level.
And in Runescape at the time, again as I remember it, if you died, you dropped
everything where you were killed; I had a decent heap of resources I'd gathered on me, so I booked it to avoid getting killed and the dude kept on chasing me until he finally caught me and killed me anyway.
There was absolutely no reason for that other than the whim of someone wanting to fuck with a newbie.