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

[Matt Mihaly]

On Sun, 18 Mar 2001, J. Coleman wrote:

> The difference of opinion comes in when we attempt to define where
> the game world ends and the "real" world begins. Are player message
> boards, web sites, and hint books part of the game world? I don't
> believe so. So when the player looks outside of the game world to
> solve a problem inside the game world, then we have the metagame
> phenomenon.

The game world is part of the real world. It cannot be otherwise. The
thought of a unicorn is still a part of the real world. Everything
conceivable is.

> Powergaming may not be a concern to some of the people on this list,
> indeed, some people relish it. But even on a RP-light mud,
> powergaming has no place. Casual gamers may well be a little behind,
> in terms of character ability, the people thay can afford to play 12
> hours or more every day, but there is no reason whatsoever to allow
> knowledge crossover.

Shrug. I could make an equally silly statement: Even in a Power-gaming
light MUD, roleplaying has no place. Both are statements I think are
silly, because both illustrate a mindset that says "I want to make my
players play like I want them to, not like they want to."

 
> If powergaming can occur, if cheating can occur, if player knowledge
> can influence character knowledge, then the world is broken. A game
> world cannot truly be self-consistent and still allow manipulation
> of the game system.

A virtual world cannot be self-consistent in terms of how you use the
word. How do you explain the fact that people speak English (or
whatever language) for instance? How do you explain that everything
people say through their characters screams out "I WAS RAISED IN A
20TH CENTURY ENVIRONMENT."?

 
>   2. It was well-publicised. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of
>   high-quality MUDs online now. Aside from the fact that they're not
>   graphical, their most common shortcoming is that they generally
>   don't advertise [enough/well enough/often enough] to get the
>   player numbers that EQ has. There were hundreds or thousands of
>   people online at any time, and therefore it was fairly easy to
>   have some sort of interaction between players, making it
>   worthwhile to play even if you didn't necessarily like the game
>   itself.

There are only a few MUDs that are capable of supporting Everquest's
population. Most of them already have a significant (or greater inthe
case of Lineage) population.


> It's just a matter if time before these wonderful text muds and
> these (relatively) awful graphical muds get together and have little
> multiplayer online babies. It's up to us, on this list and
> elsewhere, to ensure that what comes out has the best features of
> both, and not the worst.

You do realize, that UO, for instance, was designed by a text MUDer? 
It's not as if the people doing graphical MUDs have never played a
text MUD.

--matt

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