On Building And Policing MMO Societies

Thanks to GameSpy for their feature on the history and continued shaping of MMO communities. The article discusses lessons learned from Ultima Online's "growing pains" over conflict resolution ("There was a group known as the Dread Lords who went around attacking other players, decimating the population of entire towns and forcing the developers to change the rules for PvP, which ultimately minimized its role in the game"), and points out that "...subverting developer intentions is a significant part of an MMO, whether for good or ill", referencing The Sims Online Mafia as an example. When should 'authorities' step in, if ever, in massively multiplayer games?

Comments

Re:gameplay

[DrEldarion]

Preventing PvP play for example will cause many people who enjoy that sort of play to leave

Yeah, but not preventing it will cause many people who DON'T enjoy being constantly killed to leave. Especially when there's a group of high-level people who dedicate their entire time in the game to killing people minding their own business.

The PVP / no PVP server idea is good.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

PvP and the reason I droped UO

[Metex]

I was and continue to enjoy PvP in MMORPG's however after UO made changes to make it almost impossible to PVP I droped the game.

Why? Well for me when I pvped it wasnt ooo I have the most spells. Or wow I can hit harder then you. Nope for me it was all tactics. I trained an anusual skill set and had some intresting ways to fight people. I was a Grand master hider/magician which allowed me to do some very intresting things.

One way I would pvp people is throw a bomb into a group of 5-6 people and open up a portal to my favrote dungen with a wyrm and 2 dragons by the gate. Walk through it the other people will follow, I hit hide and let the dragons do the work for me.

Also I was known for my unique use of spells. casting paralize and invisable on beasts and monsters. Nothing is worse then walking into a dungen and finding a demon just appear out of no where right next to you. Also I enjoyed doing a monty python motif by polymorphing myself into a creature and walking around aimlessly untill someone attacked me. Kinda scary when a bunny cast summon deamon and attacks you.

However for me I never pvped usually unless the odds were greater then 3 vs 1 against me, since I knew I could not beat them with brute strenght alone.