[MUD-Dev] MMORPGs & MUDs

[Dave Rickey]

From: "Michael Tresca" <talien at toast.net>
> Dave Rickey posted on Thursday, January 03, 2002 6:32 PM

>>  1) We just opened our 3rd "Roleplay Server", the essential
>>  difference is a prohibition on OOC names and public chat
>>  enforced by CSR's.  Over 30k of our players play on "RP"
>>  designated servers as their primary characters, and we opened
>>  the third because the other two were consistently #1 and #2 on
>>  the server count.  This does beg the question of how you define
>>  RP.

> Yes it does.  So how do you define RP?

I don't.  If two or more people are communicating, and *they*
consider what they are doing RP, I accept their standard.  Our RP
servers are an experiment, the people who like to RP said they could
in an MMOG if we'd just keep the OOC elements out of their face.
*Something* is happening on those servers, and most of those
involved seem to feel it is RP, whyshould anyone else get a vote?

>>  2) The (tens of?) thousands of 3+ year veterans on UO would seem
>>  to refute that.  In fact, once you've held them for 3 months,
>>  you usually keep them for 18 months or longer.

> Is that UO?  Or is that a social group in place separate from UO
> that merely is "staying" on that game.  How many UO players,
> Everquest players, AC players left en masse to DAoC?  And if they
> did leave, does that mean you should take credit for attracting
> that social group?

Surprisingly few.  Oh, some do move en-masse, but that's the
interesting thing, they either move en masse, or they don't move at
all.  In general, the whole social group gets together and reached a
consensus on what to do next, leave or stay.

> Because if the next, "best thing" comes around, that social group
> may move on.  In which case you weren't retaining them in the
> first place.

I've still got the money they spent while they were there.  What
would you count as "long term"?  Cradle to grave?

>>  3) The hundreds of guilds in the various games, not to mention
>>  such oddities as the Reagent Cartels, would seem to be at odds.
>>  Not to mention the many, *many* fan sites.

> In the game?  Or outside of it?  In my experience, it's very easy
> to assume that the incredibly diverse social groups that arise out
> of MMORPGs are actually because the MMORPG generated it.  But when
> you realize that many of said games don't actually have a support
> structure to cultivate or even express that social group, it's
> basic human dynamics.  People get together to identify themselves.
> I could put a million people in a chat room and get the same thing
> after a couple of weeks.  That's not a cultivated social group.

I get the impression you come from the MOO side of things, where the
whole construct *is* the social grouping, and all communication and
community is inside the structure because that's the point.  I came
into this from the fan community (I was a fansite operator), to me
community is a much more flexible thing.  The fact that many of the
community-forming occurs outside the game structure is irrelevant,
the game is the focus and without it that particular community
wouldn't exist, at least not in that form.

SWG, as I understand, is going to move a lot of the current
web-based community tools inside the game structure, but they have
two advantages we lacked: A bigger budget, and a theme into which
web-based tools can be integrated almost as-is.  We looked at it,
and decided that there wasn't any point in doing badly what the
players could do well.

>>  4) Griefers are actually a rarity in DAoC.  Of all the things
>>  people might complain about, very few would even put grief play
>>  on their list.

> Good.  I wouldn't give DAoC all the credit though.  It's entirely
> possible the MMORPG population is maturing.  Of course, I'm not
> sure what your measures of griefers are.

The community as a whole maturing has little to do with it, there's
always a new batch.  Griefers are a bad apple problem, you always
have some, the question is which side of the entropy curve grief
behaviour is on.

>>  5) This presumes that you can only discourage griefing by
>>  rewarding the opposite.  In fact, limiting their options and
>>  kicking them out promptly works very well.  If you don't have a
>>  significant population of griefers, and atavistic impulses are
>>  put to constructive ends, grief play is a non-starter.

> To elaborate, griefing has a few proponents that encourage it:

>   1) anonymity

>   2) a reward system not tied to social structure (i.e., killing
>   something independent of any other character)

>   3) a means of expressing a contrary behavior (violence to other
>   players, cursing on channels, etc.)

>   4) lack of accountability to a particular body (multiple
>   accounts)

> So how does DAoC discourage any of the above points?  It sounds
> like by "limiting their options" your discouraging #3.  How?  Do
> you have code that scans for inappropriate names and kicks them
> out?

We do not allow you to fight with members of your own Realm, or talk
to members of other Realms inside the game.  Talking to members of
your own Realm is supported, and fighting members of other Realms is
not only supported, it's encouraged.

> I do agree that less griefers discourages less griefers.  That is,
> a population that is not being dominated by griefers is hopefully
> less likely to have them going forward.  But here's the caveat:
> there must be another strong social group in place.

> Did DAoC just start with great players, or did you cultivate them
> in some way?

We did try to cultivate the community, but around beta 3 it got
completely beyond our capability to manage (which was expected).
When you have over 160K players, your influence on what the
community does is limited.  We have occasional problems with
harassment and exploits, but in general grief activities never
impinge on the majority of the players.

--Dave Rickey


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