Something about the incoming PvP that really disturbs me. The names. Fresh meat.

[Alhanelem]

As much as you would like to think Vanity (Or even powerfull) PVP gear is some kind of carrot on a stick to PVP players I just can't get behind that.

reward drives PvP in any game. Without incentive to participate, any game that isnt 100% full PvP won't see people participating in it. With incentive, it will work just fine. People only played PvP in WoW because it had rewards (I'm more specifically speaking about the non-pvp servers).

Ballista in FFXI failed because there was nothing to attract people to it- there was pretty much no reward of any kind, not even vanity. Ballista was fun and (in my opinion) well desgined- it's a shame that lack of incentive killed it. It was actually very popular when it first came out- but when people saw there was no point to it, they stopped playing it. Brenner was dead on arrival because, again, they didn't offer any incentive to participate.

The higher tier guilds will want to know who they are fighting to the point where I bet if they don't let us see the names chances are people will announce them before a match even begins, it's just a really silly way to try and deter toxic interaction with a type of community where that behavior is commonplace. Instead of punishing players who can't play nice (Outright harassment dealing with those reports) SE looks to be taking the easy way out to make it so they get less reports about harassment.

One thing to note here: Yoshida did say that premade parties will only face other premade parties, which facilitiates competitive behavior a bit. Beyond that, player names and worlds ARE revealed, at the end of the match on the scoreboard (God, I wish I took more screenshots during beta 4), but you still can't chat to them.

All that said, I do hope that the name masking is limited to the Wolve's Den Colosseum. The more objective based content, such as the later-coming "Frontlines" probably shouldn't have this.

[Meimei]

Ballista in FFXI failed because there was nothing to attract people to it- there was pretty much no reward of any kind, not even vanity.

I thought it was because SE completely abandoned it after 2007 or so. It didn't get any kind of update for many years as it withered and died. I even remember the Brenner cutscene that hinted at something else in the works - but nothing ever came of it.

'Course PVP continued to thrive on maybe two servers. I know Fenrir 60 caps were still booming for a long while to come, last I checked...

And about the "name masking" to "prevent harassment"...can't you see everyone's names on the scoreboard at the end of the match anyway? Or is that going to change?