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).
I think it's perfectly fine to indulge that to some degree. Rpgs also do it with morality systems and multiple playthrough ways.
The bloodthirsty aspect makes pk zones appropriately dangerous.
The real issue is when it is done without a single shred of decency or standards, especially in coordination with others.
This would've been completely different if it were some dude leading a monster train to take out a group of noobs for lolz, maybe some tiny loot.
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.
It's been too many years for me to remember old wilderness, but old school runescape is very similar.
There was absolutely no reason for that other than the whim of someone wanting to fuck with a newbie.
That is completely untrue by your own words:
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 had a decent heap of resources I'd gathered on me
That doesn't mean he was hunting you for the resources(it can be a nice bonus, a secondary reason). And there absolutely are people who love to fuck with newbies, especially by getting them to willingly cross into the wilderness. "hey, come over here with me and I will give you a free cape"(kills noob after luring him far enough)
The point of the PVP zone is to create a dangerous, chaotic place with valuable stuff.
It's not to have some super fair/competitive environment where people test their skills(though that aspect is at play).
He killed you, and in the process he risked getting killed by another person bigger than himself. He could've been attacked before finding someone like you.
A better analogy, is the modern issue the wilderness faces(bots and clan gangbangs). Using an example from a few years ago in Old School Runescape.
I was leveling a skill called slayer. To level it, you get tasked with killing a certain number of certain monsters in a region. I got the crappy task of killing 100 hellhounds in the wilderness. So I entered a cave, and started the long boring, unprofitable task at hand. Hellhounds are fairly tanks, deal decent damage, and drop complete crap. Literally just regular bones, you could get killing goblins outside of lumbridge. With a like 1/200 chance of dropping a item bag. Since using a bow and terrain to kite the hellhounds is most efficient, that's what I did.
While hunting hellhounds, I noticed a few people world hopping nearby, and didn't think nothing of it. Then some random guy returned, and immediately started attacking me. So I gtfo of there. I decide to return, this time with bare bones equipment, no armor, instead of the proper set I had before. To the point I offered no value to anyone who killed me. As an additional precaution, I also start running preemptively the second someone world hopping stays for more than a second. However once when fighting a hellhound, I hesitated and started getting instantly attacked. I ran as best I could, but was killed. Dude didn't get anything but bones.
I returned, swapped world's, and resumed my task. Sure enough same guy started attacking me for no reason. I tried to run, and also expressed my annoyance at being targeted as well as me offering nothing of value. Which was especially annoying, given that just a little farther away in the cave are actual people farming dragons and stuff that could be worth large amounts of money.
He didn't care and targeted me still.
That experience, was annoying to me. Because it wasted both of our time, particularly as I was doing a worthless task while intentionally having nothing of value. The guy killed me once and knew I had nothing of value. And I prepared enough to be able to get away most of the time.
I get wanting to kill people for fun and lolz. But like comeon, have a shred of superficial sympathy for someone doing a crappy task that is worth nothing, and not even giving any kind of reaction. I could understand if I begged or something, how it might entice continued action.
But that was just an annoyance. Not much different than your experience, other than I literally offered nothing by being killed, and I wasn't even a new/low level player.
What really gets annoying, is when you get pvp clans with a bunch of bots world hopping to find a victim, and then they all swap to that server and gangbang the person. When it can't even be a cat and mouse, or fight with one guy, but becomes an impossible situation where you have to fight dozens of people fully decked out.
Casting spells, that on each cast, cost dozens of what my inventory is worth. Burning through money to kill someone who doesn't give them anything of value.
I digress. Utlimately pvp zones need some people to act like turds to make them appropriately dangerous. But they suck when people abuse it to the highest level and have zero standards or limitations, and use exploits like bots to completely eliminate any reaction. I wouldn't care if people ran around worlds looking for people to kill. But when you have people using bots checking every single server to find victims, that sort of thing is dumb.