[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN/OPERATION] A rant about NPC ops

[Peter Keeler]

Jeffrey Kesselman wrote:

> (III) I think it encourages "cult of personality" to develop around
> the ops.  Further feeding their egos at the expense of those more
> deserving and the RP environment.  Some segment of the players
> automatically responds by brown nosing.  The op, only being human,
> enjoys the attention and responds by bestowing social advantage on the
> brown nosers both through more attention and little op "favors" like
> the aforementioned special titles,  and the whole thing quickly snow
> balls into a clique centering on the op.  This is natural, human, and
> *highly* destructive to the game as a whole.  In the worst cases, the
> game becomes about social engineering the ops, not about playing the
> game.

Out of curiosity, how does an op showing up as a powerful villain in
thegood guy stronghold with a no attack flag compare to other games
where theops show up as "themselves", ie. text MUDs or Second Life where
anyonewith Linden as their last name works for the company?

I tend to agree that it's in poor taste for the op to show up at the
goodguy party as a villain NPC. It breaks the fiction really badly to
think ofall the powerful heroes brown nosing to the villain, even if the
"villain"is nothing more than a temporary avatar for the op. It seems to
me that itbreaks the fiction much less if "Phillip Linden" shows up at
the party...it's part of the fiction that the ops have a physical
presence in theworld. Most importantly, the "Phillip Linden" avatar was
never meant as anadversary for any players. There's no social
inconsistency to deal with.

   Pete