[MUD-Dev] Mass customization in MM***s

[Vincent Archer]

According to John Buehler:

> big'.  Dark Age of Camelot's downfall with regard to keeps is that
> it didn't really doesn't matter to me if the derned things fell.
> So

Well it used to be. These days, it doesn't.

The introduction of Darkness Falls, which objectively measures your
progress, and produce an achievement reward for a killer activity
has revitalized the whole business of keep assault.

Yesterday, there was much maneuvering on the server I was playing on
between Hibernia, who was trying to get back into the running and a
roving force from Midgard who was attempting to secure their
advantage... and keeping access to Darkness Falls.

> The grand scheme here must be one that grabs the imagination of
> the players and they log in each week to find out how they can
> help, how they are affected, what happened, etc.  It's a big soap
> opera with thousands of moving parts and it stays interesting and
> entertaining because the publisher makes sure that it stays on
> track.  There are no abrupt changes where some sneaky player
> character slinks into the Emperor's chambers and whacks him,
> ending the entire story.

That sounds like Asheron's Call. It has problems too, namely that it
doesn't fit well an achiever model.

The two biggest player gripes on Asheron's Call are that:

  1) With one monthly episode, lovingly hand-crafted (one week of
  design and implementation, 1 week of additional engine tweaks, 2-3
  weeks of debug and delivery), most of the monthly episode is
  finished within 24h of the patch.

  2) You need to be pretty high level to participate (otherwise, you
  get the high level trivialising the efforts of the low levels)

--
	Vincent Archer			Email:	archer at frmug.org

All men are mortal.  Socrates was mortal.  Therefore, all men are Socrates.
							(Woody Allen)

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