[MUD-Dev] UO rants

[John Buehler]

> Dan Merillat
> Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 10:10 PM

> The OOC argument is moot, though.  Harassment is Harassment, and
> you'll never
> have enough staff-hours to investigate every case of it.  POSSIBLY
> when you're
> first starting out, but your own success will kill you if you
> depend on admin
> sanctions.

Whoa.  Where did I say anything about managing this stuff through manual
labor.  The only means of dealing with OOC issues is by eliminating the source
of the problem: player anonymity.  Until that's solved, I won't go near
management of one of these games.  I have no intention of playing cat and
mouse with children that cannot be disciplined.  The cat and mouse only
contributes to their juvenile delinquency.

> Great, so now Annoying Newbie not only kills your most loyal
> player, he locks
> him out of the game for X number of hours.  I'll be sure to put that game
> at the top of my list to play...

More grief playing.  An individual who chooses to cause problems will do
regardless of any game system that anyone can develop.  In a multiplayer
world, it is implicit that players will interact.  Therefore, players can
negatively interact.  My pursuits of justice system are to keep players
uninterested in criminal acts - not to dissuade grief players.

> > As to whether a war is fun or not, that's the very focus of this
> discussion.
> > Who's to say that a war is what the players want?
>
> A war is obviously what the players want.  The focus of this conversation is
> if the players want the war against each other, or against only the game.

There is no such thing as a war only between players that want to war.  War
requires infrastructure, support and so on.  That involves other people.  Then
there's the question of where the war is staged.  In a vacuum or near a town
where uninterested parties are being hassled by the 'war guys going at it
again'.

Or are we talking about gang activities online?

The remainder of your post has to do with grief players, so I won't repeat
that I'm not addressing them.

> No, we all understood what you meant.  I've been trying to correct your
> mistaken assumption.   There is no "Virtual Community" because in the
> virtual world there is no community.  There's no RL concequences to virtual
> actions, therefore everything is permitted.   Communities are imported in
> by friends who know eachother RL, and thus if Boffo kills Bubba
> underhandedly,
> next time Bubba sees him RL he can punch him in the nose.   RL
> concequences are
> the only thing that make a community.

So just as a virtual game establishes no community and there are no real life
consequences, this mailing list has no real life consequences such as getting
you insensed at my apparent naievete.

> Again, you really don't understand.  Read my definition of feudal lords:
> Free to do whatever they wanted without any worldly concequences.
>
> In online games, especially these stock dikus(with graphics) everyone is a
> feudal lord.  They can do whatever they want, and nothing has any impact on
> them.  So their character gets perma-killed?  Roll another one,
> grab your stuff
> off a mule and powergame back to where you were.  With no
> concequences to their
> actions, they are free to harass other players and bring their style of PvP
> to the world.   And I can't think of a single game where this hasn't been
> tried.

Well, if I have to reread your posts, you have to reread mine.  My players
wouldn't be feudal lords.  As a matter of fact, I favor a fairly mundane
world.  Low power levels, less combat, less magic, and so on.  I'm sure THAT
has been done as well.  But it's definitely not the kind of world that you're
thinking of.

JB





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