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

[Travis Casey]

Wednesday, March 07, 2001, 6:44:18 AM, the_logos at www.achaea.com <the_logos at www.achaea.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, shren wrote:

>> 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.

> They wrote hint books online because that's what people do in
> life. It has nothing to do with computer games. Considering how into
> the general open-source movement many people on this list are, it's
> amazing to me how many people on this list want to fight in vain
> against the spread of information and think 1) it's a good idea and
> 2) it's possible.

I don't see it as a fight against the spread of information, but
rather as a fight against the *use* of that information in certain
ways.  In a roleplaying-focused game, it's disconcerting to have a
character suddenly show up who acts as if he/she knows everything that
a different character did, but is not that character.

Personally, I don't care what players *know* (well, actually, the
reverse is true.  IMHO, the more the players know about the game, the
better).  I just want them to roleplay well enough to *pretend* that
they don't know things if their character doesn't know them.

To use a real-world analogy: I have nothing against the spread of
information about security bugs in systems -- indeed, I'm a regular
reader of 2600 and subscribe to several security mailing lists.
"Security through obscurity" is simply silly.  However, if you *use*
that information to try to crack into one of my boxes and destroy
data, I'll do my best to track you down and have you prosecuted to the
full extent of the law.

It's not the spread of information that I think is bad -- it's the way
in which that information gets used.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_    Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)   


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