[MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[shren]

On Wed, 28 Feb 2001, Dan Shiovitz wrote:

> On Wed, 28 Feb 2001 Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com wrote:
> [..]
> 
> > I have to back you up on this. Asheron's Call has a magic system
> > based upon research where the more commonly used a spell in the
> > world, the less effective it is. This was intended to foster some
> > secrecy over the magic and to make spell reagent knowledge a valued
> > commodity. It didn't take more than 2 month for it all to appear on
> > the web.
> 
> A couple people have mentioned this, but nobody has explained why it
> happened.  Anybody know?  I can think of two possible hypotheses: one
> is that people told a few friends who told a few more and so on (ie,
> not purposely intending to spread the data), and the other that people
> purposely set out to work out and explain how all the spells work.
> These are fairly different situations and would need to be dealt with
> differently by the admins.

I have to guess game tunnel vision.  Most people sit down to play a
computer game and they think, "I am playing a computer game."  They
associate that with Doom, for instance, where you can get big hints
online and not hurt anyone else.  If they sit down to play a massive
online game, it's "a game" with "online people".  They deal with
"online people" in the normal ways that they normally do, talking,
chatting, coorperating, or fighting, as they choose.

Seeing the bigger picture, how the very nature of the game has the
potential to change just because it is online, isn't a leap that many
people can make.  It's not suprising.  It's not that people are dumb,
but people seldom predict all of the effects of putting two
indepentant concepts together.  Take the automobile for instance.  Who
guessed all of the effects that cars had on society?  Probably very
few.  Cars changed work, changed cities, changed dating.  None of
these things forseen.  You discover these things by observing them,
but you're rarely lucky enough to predict them.

So maybe 10% understood the ramifications of the AC spell system in
time to realize that sharing spells might not be a good idea.  The
other 90% wrote hint books online, because that's what you do with
computer games, after all.

--
  A *precautionary* *measure*?  I should disconnect your head from your
neck as a precautionary measure!
                                        - Warren, _Absurd_Notions_

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