[MUD-Dev] SOC: Will company sanctioned cheating hurttheMMOcommunity?

[cruise]

ghovs spake thusly...
> Sean Marshall wrote:

>> Whenever this topic comes up I usually point out that the same
>> situation exists in RL. Take golf, the very rich can afford the
>> best equiptment, the best green fees, the best caddies, and
>> trainers. They can attend camps. They are edges, huge ones, but
>> those edges can be overcome and often are.

> To put your metaphor in a bit of perspective, how would you feel
> about golf if some dude who hasn't the foggiest idea of how to
> play golf, couldn't even tell you what a birdie is and doesn't
> wear regulation shoes just walks in, takes the tour trophy and the
> officials declare him the winner?

If it /did/ happen, it would pretty much demonstrate that the
primary measure of success in the game was the quality of your
equipment. The fact it doesn't happen suggests that skill is the
dominating control factor.

> Compare this to an MMO where some guild goes and raids the top-end
> zones repeatedly after working for years to attain the minimum
> required gear level across the guild, and then again months to
> unravel the winning strategy to gain access to the top level zone
> and then a few weeks to figure out how to beat the boss mob. Now,
> if someone could just plain buy all the stuff they earned with
> years of cooperative play and then proceed to display their
> monumental ignorance of the skills required to attain what they
> have, wouldn't that entirely invalidate what was achieved by the
> rest?

Depends on whether the results were the same as with golf. I could
have the best golfing equipment known to man, but if I played Tiger
Woods I'd get laughed off the course. In MMO's the equipment maketh
the man, for the most part, and the competition between the two
would be much closer.

If that ever changes, and a poorly equipped good player can beat a
new player with uberloot, then you might find a lot less complaints
about people ebaying high-end stuff.

--
[ cruise / casual-tempest.net / transference.org ]
   "quantam sufficit"
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