[MUD-Dev] Re: The Future of MMOGs... what's next?

[Amanda Walker]

On 6/11/02 2:48 PM, John Robert Arras <johna at wam.umd.edu> wrote:

> This is not to say that I am opposed to players creating
> things. It's just that you can't let people make their own little
> worlds to play in and then let them return to the main game.

Why not?  There are a number of hidden assumptions here that I think
are not at all given.  Examples:

  - Game play can affect player abilities ("levelling").  Easy to
  fix, toss out the ideas of levels and experience points.  I've had
  problems with the whole concept from the days of D&D onward, and
  even in paper RPGs the groups I played with never paid much
  attention to it.  I don't think there's anything that *requires*
  the whole xp/ability cycle to make a game fun.

  - Items/objects from a private world will unbalance the main one.
  Why?  Who says that ray guns have to work against dragons?  A user
  may create a piece of content where their assumptions do apply,
  but nothing says that they have to apply in the areas that you (or
  anyone else) control.  You could even make this a feature:
  consider a plot device similar to Zelazny's "Amber" books: "dang,
  I forgot that gunpowder doesn't work in this dimension."

If MUD admins can let other people be wizards who can create
content, thus making that MUD more fun and engaging, I see no reason
the same can't be true for MMO games.


Amanda Walker

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