[MUD-Dev] characters per account

[F. Randall Farmer]

>Lord British:

"Interesting!... I believe the internet and especially the [anonymity] it
provides people, has been a social negative. In fact in the new game "X"
I intend to give people 1 and only 1 character at a time, thus they will
not want their 1 real identity to get a bad [rap]. No running off and
switching to another character. I feel the internet at large has this
same social misconduct issue. Technology will ultimately catch up
however, and I feel in the long run it will be a positive force."

>


F. Randall Farmer: (going out on a limb...)

This "goal" of one account/person is not possible. This is the same
sort of hubris that went into the Original UO design decision
for "realism" at the expense of playabilty: No Instant Messaging
between players. I remember the first days of UO: "Oh! You're
new! You can't find me here unless you download ICQ at
www.miribilis.com, here's my UIN and the UINs of guild members..."

MM Games need to _embrace_ the nature of the net and incorporate
its features/warts into their game designs from the beginning. To
do anything else is to invite avoidable abuse/failure of a system.

No amount of optimistic thinking will make some perceived
"problem" of the net go away:

There is no way to know who is sitting at the keyboard. Period.

Give it up, LB... Again!

:: Sigh ::
Randy









F. Randall Farmer                "Home pages are passe', everybody's
Communities.com                  building a palace" - Time Magazine
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