[MUD-Dev] The Best Guy on the Mud Thing

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adam Wiggins [mailto:adam at angel.com]
> Sent: Thursday, September 16, 1999 6:58 PM
> To: 'mud-dev at kanga.nu'
> Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] The Best Guy on the Mud Thing 
> 
> 
> On Thu, 16 Sep 1999, Koster, Raph wrote:
> > So Asheron's Call has this spell language, whereby you 
> combine gestures to
> > make spells. The combos are actually predesigned, it's not 
> literally a spell
> > language. And they made it so that the more spells are 
> cast, the weaker they
> > get.
> > 
> > The end result during beta testing appears to be that all 
> the spells suck,
> > because all the combos were disseminated and now everyone 
> has them. People
> > value the standing of delivering a complete spell FAQ more 
> than they value
> > the ability to actually cast the spell.
> 
> Hmmm - were people aware that if they shared this knowledge, 
> their spells
> would start to suck?  If so then their players were either a) way too
> generous for their own good, or b) not too bright.

Yes, it was a heavily advertised feature. I personally think it was because
of the psychology of it. Again--people value community standing more than
they value game prowess. They got more from running the first comprehensive
spell combo website than they did from casting the spells in-game. Also,
it's human nature to share discoveries and show off being clever... So
you're talking about a short-term reward vs long-term penalties. A group as
a whole will just about always choose the short-term thinking.

> Of course, I imagine that most of the folks playing a 
> big-name game like
> that are used to single-player games where there is no 
> comptetion between
> players for resources.  You either cooperate and share all 
> your knowledge,
> or you try to kill each other constantly.  There's no 
> inbetween of 'if I
> take this, no one else can have it' or vice versa.

At this point, I would guess that the vast majority of Asheron's Call beta
testers are actually moderately experienced online gamers, though a
significant fraction were probably attracted via the Zone's advertising and
are therefore not persistent world online gamers necessarily.

-Raph


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