[MUD-Dev] UI scripting gone too far?

[Damion Schubert]

Derek Licciardi wrote:

> Recently a friend of mine showed me a site that was cataloging the
> item and monster database of WoW.  My first thought was that this
> is not a big deal because we see it in every MMO release.  It's
> not long after a release that warcry.com and other sites begin
> housing large databases of information.  The thing about the WoW
> database (www.thottbot.com <http://www.thottbot.com/> ) is that it
> is populated through a custom Lua scripted UI interface; Cosmos, I
> think is its name.  I'm not sure this is a good thing to have what
> is in effect a distributed computing system cataloging everything
> the game knows.  The error rate and speed through which humans did
> it on other sites has grown to be a comfort level for me as a
> designer.  This, however, seems a bit too efficient me.  On the
> other hand, there's the argument that the users will do it anyway.
> What are your thoughts?  Is a popular scripting engine a good way
> to release player tool functionality or are you inviting trouble
> because the language isn't specialized enough for your developers
> to control?

Having played WoW and used Thottbot, I would have to say that if
Blizzard were to make a deal where they got the metrics about which
pages were accessed most often, they'd have a pretty good list of
which quests were too vague to complete.  Thank god for Thottbot,
life's too short to pixelhunt in a building you're not even sure is
the right place.

--d
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