[MUD-Dev2] Specialization

[Michael Hartman]

Sean Howard wrote:
> Second, why bother with separate characters anyway? You decide that, yeah,
> shooting fireballs out of your fingertips is great, but you want to see
> what it is like to wear heavy armor and carry a sword... so, you need to
> create an entirely separate persona? To engage in gameplay, one has to
> purposely severe one's ties to his online self and literally create
> multiply personalities? Does that strike anyone else as absolutely insane?

Actually, it strikes me as insane that you could just randomly decide to 
be an absolute expert or master in a totally different highly skilled 
profession.

Look at Michael Jordan. He was one of the greatest athletes on the 
planet. He had mastered basketball. He decided to try baseball. Now, 
baseball was not even something totally new to him, and yet he still 
didn't have the time to master the skills enough to become a pro.

There are many careers that take DECADES to even become competent at a 
professional level, and more decades to master. A 50 year old lawyer 
can't just decide to be a doctor and start practicing medicine the next 
day. He probably cannot even start medical school. He would need years 
of science and schooling before he could even begin. The reality is that 
by the time he mastered being a lawyer, he was too old to begin trying 
to be a doctor.

So if some guy dedicated his entire life to the mastery of magic, he is 
in absolutely no position to just pick up a sword and report to Knight 
School. An actual knight would have had decades of practice with toy 
swords and such as a child growing up. Once you go down a certain life 
career path, you cannot simply switch to another one after you have 
already reached the age of mastery in the first. This is especially true 
for the types of career paths in your typical MMO type game. Those are 
uber-careers that involve more than just a job. They are significant 
life choices that affect your social status, your physical makeup, 
everything. You can't change that on the fly. It is certainly not 
"insane" that this situation exists.



-- 
Michael Hartman, J.D. (http://www.frogdice.com)
President & CEO, Frogdice, Inc.
University of Georgia School of Law, 1995-1998
Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, 1990-1994