Nomenclature (was: RE: [MUD-Dev] MUD Coding Staff Structure)

[Steven Kaskinen]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Rickey [mailto:daver at mythicgames.com]
> Sent: Friday, September 15, 2000 9:21 AM
>
>     Two big things *do* change, sheerly because of scale.  One is the
> "million monkeys" problem, 100,000 players banging on your 
> system are going
> to expose flaws (for example, ridiculously complex dupe bugs) 
> far more often
> than 100.  The second is that the number of layers between 
> the players and
> the people who make decisions about the game is going to 
> increase, with all
> the associated problems.
> 
>     It's harder to define how this works in practice, basicly 
> it's a matter
> of *pacing*.  A small MUD may have 1 "crisis" a month, where a large
> percentage of players are upset about something for a few days.  With
> 100,000+, at any given time there are several groupings of 
> thousands of
> players demanding something (and even a few hundred can make 
> a *lot* of
> noise).  Some are justified, some aren't, but the people with
> decision-making authority don't even have time to evaluate 
> the situations,
> much less debate them.

I would add at least a third to your list...possibly more but at least this
additional one.

People's behavior change.  Happens when you add more people.  Happens in a
city...heck...it even happens at small social gatherings.  A person who
might be more outgoing in a gathering of 4 or 5 people may become more
introverted in a gathering of 15 or 20 people.  On a large scale, in a city
people don't care to find out who their neighbor is if they have 100
neighbors...but your more likely to find out who they are when you have 3 of
them instead.

- Steve



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