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ATITD2 Early Impressions
Darniaq writes "While a relatively small game as defined by player count, A Tale in the Desert was a rather robust experiment into just how much crafting a massive online gamer would like to do. The game is also more evocative of a massive online real-time strategy game than a roleplaying one ala Everquest or City of Heroes. And now there's a sequel. The staff at Grimwell.com has temporarily relocated to Egypt, and provides a live report."
"Besides arguing, there is another way to resolve bigger conflicts: the law. Unlike any other game, players are allowed, within certain limits, to change the rules of the game. For this they first need to write a petition outlining the law they want to introduce, for example not allowing players to place their house closer than 100 feet to another player's house. They then need to collect a certain number of signatures from other players that support this petition."
"For example the first test of Art requires that you build a statue, and get 20 players to look at it and judge it interesting."
"ATITD is a very social game, supporting both individual and collective achievement. It is possible for everyone to just playing for himself, but not very effective. To advance your personal path through the tech tree, you often need tools that are quite expensive to build but infrequently used. So forming a guild which shares its tools makes a lot of sense. Public-spirited individuals or guilds can even make their tools available for use to everybody else.
So while there is no combat, there is most certainly the possibility of conflict. Sharing property in a group is not always easy. And everything you do, affects the other players. Build a house in which to place your tools, and at the very least you prevent somebody else from placing a house at the same spot, or block somebody else's view. Build and operate a mine, and you will cause pollution, making somebody else's sheep sick and flax wither. You are changing the world all the time, and that can have positive or negative consequences."
My prediction: This game is absolutely ripe for the picking by people who are good at backstabbing and sycophantry. People who are highly skilled and socially unskilled will be reduced to workerbees, while the PHB types will wind up cliquing their way to the top and lording it over the rest. I can't wait to see this...
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Indeed. And the key to keeping the workerbees from all turning against you in such a situation is to pit them against each other by defining arbitrary lines between them.
In real life the upper class pits the Union worker against the migrant farm worker.
In a MUSH Joanne pits her flirtees against Lisa's.
In ATITD2, I am assuming that the workerbees will be led to vote for and against things by the designated popular person (maybe even a former workerbee, but also likely to be a vapid uberflirter). They'll naturally form cliques as a result (I think it's called a "cult or personality"?), and opposing cliques will duke it out with words and votes. Of course, the people at the bottom who support the survival of the ones on top will be fighting amongst themselves and will not see the big picture.
I'm not saying the upper class will be running a conspiracy; this is just how they get when they're elevated to that position. The danger is in that no one really realizes the box that they're in, and that they're being played.
The danger is that pollution will run rampant in this virtual world, and other tangibly, measurably bad things will happen, as cliques use their popularity muscle to get their way on things.
Depending on how well ATITD2 is implemented, you could be looking at an accurate representation of Earth in a digital petri dish...
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Gamespot reviewed "Real Life" once. It got a 9.6, but that's a really subjective opinion....