In games like UO you play to compete. Life and death is part of the game. Being killed by a PKer is something you might expect, I don't think you can compare it to your computer.
We expect to be killed by NPCs in games, you don't expect your computer to be broken by an equally inorganic action such as an earthquake.
So, being killed by a PKer in a game just add another level to the uncertainty, it's a level passed NPC combat. In both instances you lose your loot/items. It's just it's a human doing the action rather than a computer.
The grief of losing an item on which you used many hours of your Very Real time to obtain can be big.
Isn't that the point? If it was not possible to lose items, if we never felt the grief of games, then the pleasure of gaining the item would be far less.
I'm not saying we need people to ruin your game by exploits and the like, but PKing, taking items and the like, it's part of the game; without it, posession of the items would feel shallow, living in a static world.
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In games like UO you play to compete. Life and death is part of the game. Being killed by a PKer is something you might expect, I don't think you can compare it to your computer. We expect to be killed by NPCs in games, you don't expect your computer to be broken by an equally inorganic action such as an earthquake. So, being killed by a PKer in a game just add another level to the uncertainty, it's a level passed NPC combat. In both instances you lose your loot/items. It's just it's a human doing the action rather than a computer.
The grief of losing an item on which you used many hours of your Very Real time to obtain can be big.
Isn't that the point? If it was not possible to lose items, if we never felt the grief of games, then the pleasure of gaining the item would be far less. I'm not saying we need people to ruin your game by exploits and the like, but PKing, taking items and the like, it's part of the game; without it, posession of the items would feel shallow, living in a static world.
What if these 'bits of freedom' build up in their millions and DDoS you off the net? My ICMP_ECHO_REQUEST demands to be heard.