[MUD-Dev] [News] Virtual goods--Oh, the controversy!

[John MacQueen]

At 10:46 AM 4/10/04 -0400, Jeff Fuller wrote:
> Amanda Walker said:

>> "Win?"  How does one win an MMO game?

> For many the "Win" is the top level, playing the top
> content. Every MMO has an End Game, yes the bar gets raised
> occationally with expansions, but for most players this is the
> "Win". There is another aspect of "Win" when your involved in
> PvP. Some weapons/armor are so powerful that they give players and
> unprescedented advantage. These items are once again intended to
> be rare in the game world. Rewards for only the most diligent
> players. Selling players the very best armor/weapons/spells with
> real life cash is basically buying the "Win".

The system restricts the rate at which a player can consume new
content by progressively raising his power to match the power of
progressively higher level content, be it dungeons or level
restricted items, etc.

That system also produces a lot of PVP issues, as players will only
really accept fair PVP and level based differences prevent that from
being the case.

What are players "buying"? A key to higher level content? Access to
what should take tons of extremely repetitive mind numbing tasks to
gain access to?

There should be other systems that work and are popular, but it
would mean a fundamental rethink in a lot of areas if not all.

Would the same "race" apply if all payers were equal (no levels or
inherent power differences) and content was spread through a huge
world, I mean really huge. This comparison of world sizes gives an
idea what I have in mind....
http://www5.playnet.com/downloads/worldsize.pdf

Then the big issue becomes content creation, which seems to me to
really be the foremost reason for a level progression throttle for
content, to throttle most players consumption to a rate developers
might reasonably keep pace with to add new content.

Basically no grind, no reason to throttle content, instead supply an
overwhelming amount of content and other challenges over an
overwhelming area so it's not necessary.

People would still race to eat up all the content there was, but it
wouldn't necessarily be something you can "buy" would it?

The time rich power gamers could eat all they wanted, without
penalizing the majority of time poor players by subjecting them to
the same throttle built for folks who play 8 hrs a day.

I know I was most disappointed that UO actually brought the game up
on what seemed to be the exact same sized world as the previous
single player game. I haven't been content with any offerings so
far, other than EQ which has added enough area and content after all
the expansions to have grown fairly large area wise.

I consider a world that I can run across in a few hours is really
just a large park, not a place that exploration and long adventures
can happen in really. It almost seems like a shopping mall usually.

A world size that large would require a lot of other changes from
traditional games to keep it fun and appealing, but we do need to
move forward from where we are at eventually. A progression from
"shards" to simply a large enough world that play areas in a single
world would be spread far enough apart to act as shards do currently
would seem a natural progression of technology and content creation
tools to the next level.

The tools would have to allow vast creation of quality content
quickly and efficiently, and allow for dynamic content creation in
the same way. Basically systems that would allow fast creation and
publishing without a lot of QA in a live environment would have to
be top priority.
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