[MUD-Dev2] Meaningful Conseqences

[Christopher Lloyd]

> -----Original Message-----
> On Behalf Of Caliban Darklock
> >
> > In EVE, the 'gateways' to 'end game content' are controlled by the
> > current people (players) in charge of them.  There's a lot of
> > politics and change surrounding that, but the upshot is, if you want 
> > to play in 0.0 (where the 'good' rewards are) you need to be in an
> > alliance that's already in 0.0.  If not, you will be mercilessly PKed
> > (and there's non-consensual PvP in all the 0.0 space) until you stop
> > going there.
> <snip>
> If the world of Eve were real, this is precisely how it would work,
> isn't it?
> 
> WoW may be a stellar example of catering to the newbie, allowing any
> player to succeed simply by not screwing up, and also making it rather
> hard to screw up... but when you look at what really happened in such
> a society (albeit without magic and fantastic creatures), it looked a
> lot more like Eve.

Yes... And no. The real world isn't as static. If Eve -should- be like the
Wild West, the expansionist phrase of American's history. It started in a
few core locations and spread out from there. There were areas of high
security in the east, gradually getting less and less lawless to the west
until finally only "frontier law" prevailed and a person could be easily
gunned down mercilessly by the local PK alliance (bandits).

In the real world, the area of lawfulness expanded over time. You can only
mine the same resources for so long, and it was natural to expand outwards.
As the government became more powerful and towns more and more settled and
wealthy, the area of security expanded, pushing the less lawful areas west
until eventually there was no where left to go and the frontier was declared
over.

Eve doesn't expand. Oh sure, extra systems and planets are added every so
often, but there's no socio-economic expansion like the real world. 

> There was an overwhelming dominance of abject poverty, and a tiny few
> massively powerful groups who controlled poor people's lives. If you
> wanted success, you made an alliance with one of those groups. You
> sold your children to someone affiliated with a powerful group, and
> the child gave distinguished service, and with both luck and skill
> (and effective awareness and avoidance of treachery) - that child
> could enjoy the drips and drabs of "the good life" that fell off the
> plates of the massively powerful.

Sounds like Europe pre-18th century, and I completely agree. But
historically, that was a period where the European countries involved had
reached their natural boundaries and weren't expanding.

Moving back to the nomadic model, there would always be room to expand, and
the rate of expansion would be at the control of the game developers
(variable width). One consequence of this is that the PKers are forced to
keep moving ahead of everyone else, or else their way of life (killing and
looting) is threatened by the security forces of the mothership/wagontrain.
Sure, the PK alliances will be right on the edge and be the first people to
find the horse village and buy horses - But they'll eventually have to
abandon it and move ahead as the range of the NPC security forces encroaches
on it.

Christopher.