[MUD-Dev] On socialization and convenience

[Travis Nixon]

From: "Koster, Raph" <rkoster at verant.com>
>> From: Caliban Tiresias Darklock
>> On Fri, 15 Jun 2001 22:33:34 -0700, "Sean Kelly" <sean at ffwd.cx> wrote:

>>> One thing that's kind of surprised me is that none of the
>>> MMORPGs I've played had any facility for sending messages to
>>> players who aren't currently online (mail).

>> I'm shocked. NONE of them have this? Why not? It's one of the
>> primary wish-list features for my own system. Has been for years.

> The logic against it goes like this:

>   * Yeesh! HOW much storage per player again? That's (takes out
>   * calculator) WAAAY too much money!

Ok, let me get this straight.  You find it objectionable to spend
storage for something useful, yet storage for somebody to have
thousands of identical tailored shirts is ok? :) (don't remember the
number from that story...hehe) Actually, though, this is the only
objection that holds any weight in my eyes.  Storage is cheap, to a
point.  Then it gets fairly expensive.  Of course, there are ways to
work around this, too.  For example, once a piece of mail is
recieved, don't store it on the server anymore.  Store it on the
recipient's machine.  Make them figure out where to put it all. :)

>   * Won't they use email anyway? We can't possibly make a nice
>   * enough email system to match Outlook!

Well, that depends.  Is your game full-screen?  Now that you're with
Verant, are you going to follow the "We will controll all that you
see and hear" stance that they've taken with EQ?  If so, then
Outlook really isn't an option.  Besides, I don't really want to be
giving out my email address to everybody I meet in a game, even
people that I hang out with in-game more than once or twice.  But
I'd be more than happy to give them an in-game address.  Of course,
I suppose I could create a yahoo mail or something along those
lines, but then we're not using outlook, are we.  And I despise
every web-based mail interface I've ever tried.

Besides, it's just cooler to have it be an actual part of the game,
something that isn't a stretch to keep in character.

>
>   * Yikes, think of the complications--email to account or to user?
>

Does it matter?  Is there a difference between account and user?  I
mean, I know realistically there is in some cases (two people
sharing an account) but is that something you really have to provide
for, considering it's probably against your TOS to be doing that
anyway? :)

Besides, it probably would be best to mail to the character, using
some sort of in-game mechanism that at least attempts to maintain
fiction.  In my mind, EQ's postal service is a place where something
like this would fit perfectly.  Of course, you might also want to
provide a way to mail the account, so friends can make sure messages
get seen, but really that's where they ought to be using email(as
long as you're not preventing them from switching to outlook...whose
evil idea was that anyway).  The in-game mechanism to me seems much
more interesting as a character-to-character thing, not a
player-to-player thing.


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