Try playing a SHR where they have removed items that heals people and made the classes somewhat balanced. That is where the strategy of PvP/WoE comes in. In a server I used to play, Backslide, High Jump and skills like those were removed from WoE and the emp HP was increased. Sure, people sometimes managed to get past the defenses by cloaking, but it didn't happen often. Usually, there were proper attacks with alot of people against very organized defenses.
As for PvP, SinX usually didn't have shields, so they died fast. Only the ones that used the Sonic Blow/Backslide/Cloak combo usually managed to kill someone. An item that gave people level 1 EDP was also implemented, so SinX'es wouldn't have such a huge advantage from it.
From what I could see, the PvP was pretty balanced, and people learned to develop strategies instead of merely getting high damage.
People always had to improve their builds and strategies to keep up with the other people doing just that.
For the record, 2 good players having a 1on1 could have at it for 10-15 minutes sometimes. It's only the people that had high def or no shield that were killed fast, but the high vit people soon learnt that Thana card or Ice Pick would kill them.
All of this with the fact that reaching 999 trans class took about 10-15 min in the gold room gave people lots of time to socialize and talk, cause drama, backstab eachother and cause conflictions among the guilds. As you say, there are alot of as***les on SHR servers, but there are quite a few cool people too. But, that doesn't apply only to SHR servers, it applies to all servers and even real life.
Also, it's alot of fun to watch the drama as it happens on the high rates, because they usually drag entire guilds into the problems
This is why I enjoy SHR so much. And I hate levelling with a passion (was ganked by Rogues on WoW too much).
