[MUD-Dev] Richard A. Bartle talks MUD Design

[Kirinyaga]

Dana V. Baldwin [mailto:dbaldwin at playnet.com] wrote:

> When I go to the pit of Mount Doom with said fellows, however, I'd
> prefer not to see leetBob standing there chatting with his group,
> camping the spawn or forming a line for the next drop. There is
> nothing remotely epic or immersive about that, to me. There are
> places, even in a vast populated realm, where my fellows and I
> should feel that we are alone on our quest to save ... Well
> whatever it is we are questing for.

In all the virtual worlds I've seen, there are always places where
you are alone. I remember in EQ gaining 4 levels in a dungeon while
seeing only 3 different peoples other than my guildmates during all
this time ...

This is exactly like the real world : the players are gathering at a
given location where they know they'll find other players and you
find places where nobody want to go. In the real world, nobody would
want to go to Mount Doom ...

The Mounts doom of virtual worlds are not the places named "Mount
Doom" where everyone knows they can easily find a group and bash the
mobs there almost without any risk while getting a ton of good loots
(in the real world, this would be called Gold Mine, not Mount Doom),
they are those almost deserted places where nobody want to go
(that's why you call such a place Mount Doom). And you can find them
in almost every games, you don't need instances. If, by chance, you
meet some peoples on your way through those places, there is no loss
of immersion, it looks more like meeting Dr Livingstone. I always
found these places very fun to explore and, indeed, this is because
they are far out of the regular ways. Crowded places looks better
after that, you've got a feeling of going back to civilization :D

Instancing in general looks more like multiplying the gold mines,
and I think there are better solutions to the gold access problem
than instances.  Instancing to solve the crowd-caused lag is another
thing, more on the technical side.

--
Kirinyaga
excuse my bad english ;)
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