My experience of PvP is really through Lineage 2 and I had a few characters there that were all very powerful in their own way.
A Shillien Knight (Tank), a Spellhowler (Nuke/Sleep) and a Phantom Ranger (Archer).
Now the Shillien Knight could tank Race v Race probably best, but a Spellhowler could kill him (not too easily mind you).
A Spellhowler can kill most stuff, but is Owned by an archer.
In Lineage there is a different type of archer per race, the fastest was a Silver Ranger (elf), fired fast, ran away, fired again, as long as he kept out of range, he would wear you down pretty quickly.
The Phantom Ranger's (Dark Elf) lack of speed was compensated by more power, if they could sneak up on you, you were a gonner, but they wern't great at kiting (run and gun).
The Human Archer had high HP, so consequently took some time even for an archer to kill.
The reason I mention all this is, just using the Archers as an example, not only were the finley balanced for mass PvP and they were very powerful (as long as they didn't get hit much), the amount of balancing in their stats meant that they were even a serious threat to each other.
All the other classes had similar racial counterparts that were just as finely balanced in a Rock/Paper/Scissors kind of way.
I'm not sure if Ryzom character creation has yet achieved that sort of balance finesse yet, but I have played alot of PvP games and IMO I preffered Lineage 2, to all the others.
Successful PvP is sort of like a Holy Grail for Devs and just as elusive to attain, you can have something like Lineage that is well balanced, but I've never met so many thugs, Scammers / farmers in one place. If you get killed, you can drop very expensive gear which sux bigtime!.
WoW has the Horde vs Alliance, but as there aren't many Horde (everybody wants to be pretty alliance), they get the short end of the stick in PvP.
City of Heroes/Villans has its PvP areas that can be entered by people over level 20 and all players stats are adjusted down to a common level, but you still have level 50 players able to use their level 50 enhancements on lower level players, which sort of negates the "level playing field" that the devs aspired to when creating the PvP zone level "doctoring".
I hope they get PvP right in Ryzom, but I wont hold my breath, I remember when it was first mooted, people were very much against it, I dont know how people feel now though.
I reckon Ryzom should play to it's strengths (community/graphics/eco-system etc), rather than a half-assed attempt at PvP, which as i mentioned before, it's a darn hard thing to get right.
Here's hoping
Sorry if I hijacked the thread Rushin, in what probably appears as a mindless rant/tirade, the point I'm probably trying to make is, PvP is a tough balancing act of making happy, some people all the time/all the people some of the time and I reckon the devs are doing their best
Cheers
. If they were to add better protections/resists to jewels it would work great, no one would die as quickly, fights would drag on longer. It would make it harder for an AoD to hit, while it would be just as easy for a meleer to hit. The problems here are, melee is many different trees, ele is one. One tree and you have a ton of 250 spells to find a hole with, with melee you're hard pressed to make sure you're using the type of melee people are weak to or won't dodge. All around resist boosts would be very nice, it would make the elementalists work just a bit harder.