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

[skinfitz]

what makes open MMORPG's interesting is the fact that emergent behaviour and gameplay will always be unpredictable.

I'm sure that many developers have designed an MMORPG only to discover after a while that players do things they never ever intended.

A successful developer will observe this behaviour and work with it rather than against it.

Ultimately it's the players that pay developer's wages - keeping them interested and happy is what it's all about. Preventing PvP play for example will cause many people who enjoy that sort of play to leave. From what I see many MMORPG developers try to keep people happy by having "no PvP" zones. The developers of Neocron have implemented this, however they received that many requests for no "safe" areas that they provide an entirely seperate server where there are no safe areas.

A potential solution.

[illuminata]

I would be interested in a method that either did away with or greatly reduced the role of experience points. Make the characters more mortal, and if the other players feel the need to handle the situation, they can. No single player could become omnipotent and little to no intervention from an outside party (game admin, etc) would be necessary.

With this solution, players would feel more in control of their destiny. They wouldn't have to cry to an admin to settle problems for them, as they would be able to handle things themselves. The focus of the game would then be the use of ingenuity and problem solving skills, rather than the usual contest to see who can play the longest and level up the most. Focus on the players and the adventures that they have created themselves, not their stats and predetermined storylines.

A player shouldn't be limited to what a game developer intended. I've played many games where I've had more fun inventing my own sub-game or objective than the one that a developer made for me.

Good Fictional Example

[malverian]

This was mentioned in one of the linked to articles, but I think it's a very valid example of how to deal with misdemeanor in a virtual world.

There is an anime called .hack that is a story about characters playing in a virtual world called... "The World". In this world, there are player killers, which really are able to do whatever they want- but there are also fellow game players which take on the role of the "authority" (Crimson Knights), so it becomes a self-balancing fight between good and evil.

Obviously this is just a show (about a game), but the concept is still a good one.

Except..

[Kwil]

..in the real world who wants to pay to pretend to be a cop all day?

One of the problems with trying to develop a good society in a game is that any good society depends a large amount on a lot of people doing work. Except people generally don't pay money to do work, people pay money for entertainment.

Aside from this, there's also the issues that being a griefer (as opposed to a simple player-killer) often has a much lower penalty in the virtual world than it does in the real world.

Say you've killed the griefer in the virtual world. What does he care? His only purpose was to get on there and get attention and piss people off. By having a force dedicated specifcally to getting him, his existance has been validated, and he'll likely just come back and do it again. After all, in the virtual world, if the cops hunt you down, you have an exciting battle, and if you lose, you lose a few stats or something, oh well.

In the real world, if the cops hunt you down, the battle probably isn't very exciting as cops generally come in with a superior force of numbers and weaponry, so that you submit rather than permanently die, and then the consequences likely involve you being placed in uncomfortable positions by large men who'll happily cause you severe injury. Not fun.