Based on past experiments and previous worlds, having a lootable setup leads to a really mean spirited PvP system. The main issue is that thanks to users teaming up and gaining high level weapons/armour, the only hope you have of competing is to amass an equally sized team with equally strong resources otherwise you'll simply get ganked in seconds.
This leads to an environment where a new user basically needs to get a build claim, tediously grind PvE world, gain all diamond gear, gain enough levels to enchant, grind for more diamond gear to account for numerous deaths, shill super hard in chat to get a team of at least 3 or 4 players, have them also grind out equally leveled gear all the while being mocked by the established PvPers for not "being good".
The saddest part is, once everyone does get sufficient gear, they're usually so afraid of losing it after all the effort that they just form an "alliance" with a group of established players anyway, the world then consists of people stalking the sidelines picking off the few players with nothing who drop in just to see what the arenas are like whilst boasting about all the loot they've gained. New users then get frustrated, and either leave or get removed due to spamming chat with their frustrations.
Eventually nobody is keen on going to the world and the established PvPers complain that the world is dead, PvP is removed because nobody plays it and then a few months down the line it gets requested again in this very forum, cycle, rinse and repeat ad infinitum.
Apologies if that came across as a harsh or unfair assessment, I've played enough FPS games to understand where these attitudes come from and I've been guilty of all of the above back in the TA days. It's basically nothing more than my opinion based on the previous PvP setups we've had where the above scenario played out every time (there have been more than you think
): Outlands PvP in Historic, Factions I, PvP "Village" (where items were super cheap anyway), Nether PvP, Factions II and Civ.
Oh, also combat logging becomes a huge deal and we get asked to start banning people for it whilst the reports section fills with accusations of delights such as godmode, flyhacks, aimbots, ESP, OP weapons, OP potions, spamming, invisibility, screen watching, glare from the sun and divine intervention from Native American ghost tribes, none of which is ever particularly fun
tl;dr: This PvP is setup to be a fun and slightly competitive alternative for people who favour PvP or want a break from their ongoing project, without all the community drama and tears that you'd find in your ultra competitive online games.
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