[MUD-Dev] D&D vs. MMORPG "complexity"

[Vincent Archer]

According to Matt Mihaly:

> I'm thinking you've never played a large-scale game with politics
> that matter then. (Do not think UO, EQ, DAoC, etc. They don't have
> politics that matter to any great degree.)

That depends. Maybe not for 80% of the population, but there are
politics in EQ, and large scale ones.

One of the main problems for raiding guild is resource
management. Each high-end target is a resource that regenerates
(respawn) at various intervals. There's a fixed amount of them, and
N guild who go at them.  As it stands, it makes sense to "farm"
these high-end bosses in the reverse order of competition: from the
most contested to the least contested. The goal being that, if your
guild is the only one or one of the few ones who can do a specific
encounter, it will remain safe until killed, whereas a good, juici
target that more guilds can attempt should be done ASAP, before the
other guilds come.

This is compounded by "keying" or "flagging". This means that
certains zones of the game cannot be accessed by characters until
they have acquired a - rather hard - key or flag that unlocks the
zone.

On the Venril Sathir (UK-based) server, there's currently a 3-way
infighting going on between the top 3 guilds. Guild #1, Mortalis,
has been helping guild #3, Curse of Eternity kill the Emperor of
Ssraeshza, who hold the final part for the key to one such zone (Vex
Thal). The guild #2, Tide, is pretty pissed off (they're globally
the one who have exclusive access to that zone, Mortalis not
bothering much with it any more), and has threatened to kill
immediately and asap the Emperor whenever it respawns to prevend
CofE from finishing their keys, to which Mortalis answered that in
that case, they could say goodbye to Rallos Zek (who holds access to
Elemental Planes, the zones Mortalis has currently exclusive access
to) and would never find it alive for the rest of the guild's
existence.

All this so that Tide gets more competition in Vex Thal, which will
prompt them to go there first, and slows them down in their
competition with Mortalis.

So, as you can see, political maneuvering is alive and well in
Everquest :)

--
	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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