[MUD-Dev] believable NPCs (was Natural Language Generation)

[Amanda Walker]

On May 28, 2004, at 8:16 PM, Eli Stevens ((WG.c)) wrote:

> I would be hard-pressed to find a player that would be willing to
> perform the duties of the average Diku shopkeep - stand there, and
> give any player who gives you 10 silver a new sword.

I don't think you'd be as hard-pressed as you think, judging by the
amount of trade chat spam in most popular MMOs, the ongoing success
of offline trading/vending/baking services, etc.  There are plenty
of players in most MMOs who *already* spend serious amounts of time
being, in effect, vending machines (insert your favorite chat spam
examples here--no need to even satirize them).  In games where they
can buy/build shops for this (such as SWG), they do so.
Enthusiastically.  SWG has no NPC vendors (OK, they have NPC-shaped
vending machines, but they have the same UI as the vending machine
shaped ones, and are run/stocked/etc. by humans, not by game code).

But even volunteer vending aside, if by putting in a couple hours a
day selling swords, you got paid (even a small amount), I suspect
you'd have plenty of takers.

Amanda Walker
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