[MUD-Dev] Star Wars Galaxies: 1 character per server

[Michael Tresca]

Justin Stocks posted on Tuesday, December 17, 2002 2:29 AM:

This harkens back to an argument that I've leveled at the MMORPG
industry before.  Let me sum it up:

The quality of MMORPGs starts out high and slowly degrades due to
entropic factors.  One major aspect of those entropic factors is
that the community slowly falls apart, with players become less and
less interested in playing the game and more and more interested
their own goals.

To a certain extent, a MMORPG should accommodate a wide variety of
play styles.  It should allow you to achieve a wide range of goals
within the game's environment.  But the devil is in the details.

MMORPGs currently have vaguely outlined themes that are ultimately
non-intrusive.  Sure, there's only humans in Ultima -- but if you
run around calling yourself an elf, nobody will stop you.
Ultimately, it wasn't cost-effective to prohibit players from doing
anything.  Short of anything overtly and immediately harmful to
another player, most MMORPGs didn't lift a finger to shape and mold
their communities . They let the players do it.

When the players do it, the game is always molded by the same
people.  The Goal-Oriented Players (GOP) -- the achievers.  They
spend more time, fight better, kill the bigger monsters, take the
larger castles, etc.  They are not interested in playing the game as
the designers intended.  In some sense, they're out to BEAT the
game.  Because GOPs are aggressive by nature to achieve those goals,
they begin to crowd out other playstyles.

Of course, the designers didn't put forth a very strong theme, so
there's nothing to stop a GOP from doing this.

Now there is.  Star Wars has a theme.  It has a very strong, very
established setting and history.  It's like playing a game set in
biblical times -- the universe has a well-known mythology and
history.

Star Wars HAS to take a stand on this game's theme.  They must make
an effort to shape and mold it, or it will stop being Star Wars.
The branding cost the creators money, the universe is out there
representing the franchise.  It cannot simply degrade into the usual
idiotic chaos of guys running around screaming for heals.

On some level, Star Wars' draw is non-gamers.  The casual gamer who
logs in to see a bunch of guys speaking in an unintelligible
hacker-speak language is going to log off in five minutes.  If Star
Wars wants to be STAR WARS, it needs to take a stand on a variety of
issues that ultimately harm the "in-game" environment.

And no, I am not talking about role-playing.  I'm talking about
levels of immersion.  Role-playing is not an all or nothing
proposition.  There are gradations, and Star Wars will, by its very
existence, raise the bar on that level of immersion.

So now we get to muling.  Multiple characters are rarely played like
individual entities.  They typically do things a single-player
character would never do: they sacrifice their welfare for the
benefit of another (prime) character, they carry on conversations
where the other character left off, they expect to be treated as the
player behind the characters and not the characters themselves.

If muling happens because the game does not sufficiently provide
storage capacity, it's a game flaw that should be fixed.  If muling
happens because the game is not robust enough to support a variety
of choices, it's a character design flaw that should be resolved.
But if muling happens because a GOP wants to get ahead and can do it
more quickly and efficiently by using five pairs of hands instead of
one, that's harmful to the game.

Why?  Because it's a war of escalation.  If I am in a service
capacity (i.e., merchant), the muler has a distinct advantage as
other characters selflessly support the rival mule-merchant.  If I'm
a tank, the muler can crowd me out by bringing a tank on at any time
-- as opposed to me, when I'm only on at certain hours of the day.

Ironically, muling DESTROYS casual gaming.  It ensures that there's
always someone who can do the job, sure -- but it doesn't allow ME,
the non-muler, to interact fully with the rest of the gaming
community.  Because the muler has a dozen cast of characters, all
ready to log on and off at need, all capable of serving a function.

Muling is bad, either because it's a reaction to design flaws or the
extreme GOP.  They should be addressed rather than blithely ignored.

And that's what Star Wars is doing.  Will it stop it?  Absolutely
not.  Does it indicate that on some level, Star Wars expects you to
personally invest in the character and by doing so, the universe?
YES.

I'm in awe that someone would not want to play Star Wars because
there's a no-muling policy.  But I'm also glad.  Because to date,
the only filter to get a player onto a MMORPG was a credit card, and
that's no filter whatsoever.  It's been my experience that ownership
of a credit card (in the U.S.) anyway does not filter out children,
the immature, the rude, or the people who have no interest in Star
Wars.

In order to grow a cohesive, mature community, the sculpting must
happen NOW.  The formative stages of community development happen
just before the game opens and after it is released.  Rather than
leaving it up to the GOPs to run the show, Star Wars made a
baby-step in the right direction by indicating that it is not a
complete free-for-all.

And in the long term, that will ensure a more profitable game.
What's been happening for the past couple of years is entire MMORPG
groups move on to the next great thing.  Star Wars has to offer
something no other game can - not the fact that it's massive, not
the fact that it's multiplayer, but that it's STAR WARS.  To
preserve the most basic fundamentals of the setting, somebody has to
take a stand somewhere.

And I'm glad Star Wars took a stand against muling.

Mike "Talien" Tresca
RetroMUD Administrator
http://www.retromud.org/talien



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