Best Open-World Games For Both PvP And Co-Op

Key Takeaways

• The best open world games engage players with vibrant worlds and achievable goals.
• New World: Aeternum enhances the MMO experience with solo and multiplayer features.
• Open world games like Rust and ARK provide great PvP and co-op experiences.

The open world genre is home to an incredibly versatile collection of games. Everything from expansive, epic RPGs to unsettling survival horrors have taken a chance at basing their settings in a huge, open environment, where the player is able to let their own wanderlust dictate where to go next. It doesn’t always work out, with some open world games being considered sparse or empty or – perhaps the worst condemnation – boring.

But when done right, the best open world games will draw players into a vibrant and detailed world, letting them make their own fun with the tools at hand and also, when appropriate, guiding them to continually reach a new objective or achievement that broadens their sense of scope. Many open world titles that nail this philosophy of goals and freedom combined let players experience their world with friends and strangers. These open world titles, in particular, let players fight or cooperate together as they see fit.

8 New World Aeternum

A Fresh Revival Of A Popular MMO

New World: Aeternum is a newly updated spin on Amazon’s monolithic MMO, featuring a slew of new features like improved cutscenes, better combat, and a renewed focus on both solo and multiplayer components to push this game into the pantheon of those timeless MMOs that have endured for years.

Part of the new Aeternum wave of improvements is ensuring that players have more ways than ever to explore the world together, with the game increasing the opportunities to take on co-op dungeons or engage in faction-based PvP.

7 7 Days To Die

A Zombie Survival Wonder That Hits All The Right Notes

7 Days to Die is an immensely rewarding open world survival game, letting players slowly progress from simple stone tools to pre-apocalypse technology alone or with friends. Like many zombie survival games, this open world title doesn’t just let humans get along, either.

Players can expect to engage in PvP if playing on a larger server, as resources are often scarce. It’s up to the collective to decide if it’s every survivor for themselves or if teamwork is the more appropriate option.

6 Arma 3

A Military Sim Where Friends And Foes Clash

Arma 3 has been providing a tactical, uniquely engaging open world military experience for years now, giving players the opportunity to form squads together and take down their rivals on incredibly intricate maps.

Part of this game’s charm is how the PvP and co-op come together; gamers need to work together in order to defeat other players. It’s an open world battle for supremacy that has been loved for years.

5 Rust

A Brutal Open World That Offers A Tough Survival Experience

Rust is by no means an easy game, especially for players who want to progress beyond being naked and afraid. It can be a difficult trek to getting a base, but having other players to share the map with is part of this game’s experience – for better or worse.

Some players will very happily attack others for their sharpened sticks, while others, over time, can forge strong bonds with one another and build bases, where they then can keep a look-out for other players to attack and claim their sharpened sticks.

4 Minecraft

An Open World Classic For Cooperation Or PvP

The open world classic Minecraft lets players join together to explore a slew of expansive biomes, building bases and harvesting resources to forge the settlement of their dreams, and they are limited only by their imagination.

However, in both open world and more guided contexts, PvP is an ever present threat, and many survival games have devolved, with rival bands trying to secure territory from one another with raids and traps.

3 DayZ

Strangers Are The Biggest Unknown In This Title

With the new Frostline DLC released, more gamers than ever are flocking to DayZ to give this incredible, highly tactical child of Arma 3 a go. The game is brutal, but in this brutality is some of the most fun an open world experience can offer.

Every other player on the map is an unknown factor. Will they be happy just to pass by and mind their own business? Will they want to forge an alliance? Or will they try to kill others for the cold can of beans in their pack?

A Variety Of Avenues For PvP And Co-Op In Tamriel

Going on ten years strong now, it’s not controversial to say that The Elder Scrolls Online is one of the strongest MMOs available today, especially thanks to the incredible open world design of its many zones that let players explore the map alone or with friends.

Players in almost every class can find a PvP niche in Cyrodil or in the battleground modes, meaning that when they’re not working together in group dungeons, they can be fighting each other in duels.

1 ARK: Survival Evolved

A Classic Open World Title

Few games can claim to have the mix of PvP and co-op elements that ARK can. Holding together in tribes, players have been working and fighting with each other for years to be the strongest group in a variety of hostile open worlds.

For gamers looking to engage in open world PvP and co-op, they would be hard-pressed to find an experience that can match ARK: Survival Evolved presuming they can find a tribe to accept them, of course, for it’s a very dangerous world to roam alone.