CRPG Tavern
This interview was given to the CRPGTavern in August of 1998. I believe the website is now defunct, which is a shame, as it is easily one of the most specific and in-depth interviews I’ve ever had the pleasure of doing!
Ultima Online, the first MMORPG, the game we all know and love, has taken its lumps in the past, and some have been deserved, some have not. But, during a CrpgTavern staff meeting, a question was posed, what is the man behind the curtain like? What does he think? Not about UO, but about the budding MMORPG industry, about the gaming community, and about game designing theories? For you can sit and talk all day about the design of a game, and not get anywhere, but sit and talk ten minutes about what someone thinks, and learn,…well learn a bunch of stuff.
Besides, what can we ask that isn’t covered in a UOHoC chat? Not much, in our opinions.
Designer Dragon is, in fact, a person, he has a name, its Raph Koster, he has a family, and thoughts, and ideas, and frankly, we were interested in that more than colored plate. We should also point out that OSI didn’t request a UO-free interview (although it certainly didn’t hurt our chances), we here at CrpgTavern did. So don’t you masses out there go bashing those nice folks.
So, the interview you’re about to sink your teeth into is not about UO per se, but about a wide variety of interesting topics, which is jam-packed with great quotes for you ultimaphiles to pick apart in the UO newsgroup. So, I’ll just quit babbling on like a fool, and let you guys get on with the interview.
Oh, oh, one more thing, I’d like to thank Teresa Potts, OSI’s media person, for approving the interview, and of course, Designer Dragon, who took 5 hours out of two days to talk with us.
Malleus: DD, what MUDs did you participate in before becoming Lead Designer at OSI? And what were your early experiences with MMORPGs?
DesignerD: I first started mudding in 1992. I tried a lot of different MUDs of various types, but eventually settled down to playing regularly on Worlds of Carnage. After that I became a builder on eXileMUD, which never opened, and after that was one of the founders of LegendMUD, which is still active. I’d guess I had been playing MUDs for maybe four months when I moved over to the design side. LegendMUD (http://www.legendmud.org) was one of the first classless MUDs on the Internet, and it won a bunch of awards and attracted quite a lot of notice in the MUD community. It has a very literary feel to it, and is heavily quest-oriented. After a while, I basically took the role of chief creative force behind the MUD. And then around ’95, companies looking to get into graphical MUDs started checking the place out… One of the people who logged on was Richard Garriott. He had been pointed towards Legend by a programmer who worked on a fledgling project called Ultima Online. Said programmer also happened to be Legend’s head coder. So he recommended me for the job of designer on UO.
Malleus: Ahh, interesting. So your non-graphical MUD work led directly into your involvement with the first wave of truly massive, graphical internet RPGs.Having some experience with these beasts, you have written many papers about the future of MMORPGs; what would you say the largest difference between the old-style text-based MUDs and these new graphical, commercial undertakings is?
DesignerD: I think the biggest difference we’re facing now is actually scale. Games like UO, EverQuest, and Asheron’s Call are trying to deal with many more players in the environment than previous games did. This causes a lot of problems, because traditional administrative models tend to breakdown. The best tool a small free mud had in administrating the game was a quick tongue and a conciliating manner. You handled problems through persuasion and a little politics, and you handled real problems with arbitrary banning. Given the small playerbase, it was easy to identify repeat problems, and given the small admin hierarchy, people didn’t tend to slip through the cracks. Since the games were free,there was no real appeal process–and no real reason to appeal, really, since most of the MUDs were carbon copies of one another, so it was easy to find another game that was virtually the same, but with administrators who didnāt know you. The small group of people in the playerbase meant that players formed very tight social bonds very quickly. A savvy mud admin could actively shape the mud’s society through proselytization and participation. All of this changes when you get into the massively multiplayer games. And new solutions end up being required. So that’s scale. š
There are also other differences in terms of feature set, of course.Graphical games have, well, graphics, and that changes the dynamics a lot. For one thing, it introduces spatiality, which is a fairly novel thing for MUDs, which have traditionally been room-based like text adventure games. There was very little sense of space in a text mud because you could travel instantly from one side of the world to another by just typing “w” a bunch of times.
Malleus: Aye, so you believe the larger scale of these MMORPGs render the”Wizard” support architecture ineffective? Meaning a new paradigm is required to handle the users’ issues? What do you think of the vastly different approaches taken by two of the next games, 989’s EverQuest and Turbine’s Asheron’s Call? One hopes to make their worlds smaller, by limiting users per server, one intends to have one world for all players, that can grow with the playerbase.
DesignerD: Well, I can’t comment really on either game, since I haven’t seen either of them recently. I am looking forward to it though, always nice to see more games in the genre! They are taking different approaches to the problem of administration, and I don’t think there’s any one group that has all the answers at this point. The problems of administrating massively multiplayer worlds are pretty new–nobody has had to deal with things on this scale before. The chief philosophical differences are about whether the game should be doing the policing (via hardcoded mechanisms) or whether the administrators do it. And there’s a lot of gray area between those two points, of course. In practice, all three games fall into that gray area.
It’s a matter of how close to one end or the other you fall. š Personally, I want to help online societies evolve, and to that end, I want to see the game support player policing as much as possible.My feeling is that if the game imposes too much structure, then the players of the world will never be able to actually form a government/society that actually fits exactly what they want.
But to support player policing, you have to have code support for things that assist the players in doing the traditional policing that admins have done in the past on text MUDs. Like tracking of player histories with violations, etc.
So that’s the direction we took with UO; but that’s not to say that the solutions being tried by EQ or AC are invalid! Quite the contrary. They are not my personal design direction,but they are solutions of long standing in the mud world. We’ll have to see how they workout at this scale.
Malleus: As for hardcoded mechanisms, my Ben Franklin Multi-Disciplinary Studies project is on adaptive systems and the nature of intelligence. Hardcoded systems are necessary to take the load off the (paid) support GMs. What’s your view on player empowerment? Allowing players in a paid game to ascend to the same level of power as a free-MUD Wizard, in order to reduce the number of paid GMs required and yet still allow the players flexibility? The abuse problem has been brought up a lot, as in a pay-for-play game the consequences of abuse of power are more serious. Your thoughts? Will our MMORPG “Utopia” utilize empowered players in force or is that not feasible?
DesignerD: That’s a really good question!
Malleus: heh, thanks š Tough’un, that š
DesignerD: From a commercial side, liability is a very thorny issue, of course. So there’s sort of a ceiling on how much trust you can grant players. Wish it weren’t so, but after watching players do mean things to each other with the normal character abilities, you grow cynical about the things they might do to each other with godlike powers. š
But on the other hand, if you can provide tools within the game that are not godlike, that players can make use of to form administrative structures, then I think you are taking a really important step forward in the evolution of virtual environments. I think empowering players is vital; it’s a matter of how exactly you are empowering them. If you are doing in-game police forces, in-game governments, etc, then you are doing something really important for the overall admin of the game.
The scale problem is one common to all governments, you see (even back in Athens, people argued how big an effective democracy should be). The classic solution is to provide more tiers of government as the society grows. So you end up with local governments and overarching ones. That way the local government can try to apply the solutions that we know work for governing small groups, the same solutions that work on MUDs.
Will it be Utopia? Of course not. It will have the same problems that government does in any setting. One of the problems with player empowerment on the policing side is how few people want to police. But this isn’t that different from the few people who want to vote in local government in the real world…
Malleus: Ok
As for empowerment–
In a game as sizable as these evolving MMORPGs are, might not a small cadre of “Wizards” be sufficiently controlled as to prevent abuse? Detailed logs of their activities and a DETAILED, more invasive check of their qualifications could greatly reduce the chances of abuse — so long as the numbers of such people are kept to an acceptable ratio with their supervisors.
Being a veteran of many ORPGs (most nowhere near so massive as these latest games) I have seen a variety of approaches to the problem. It is possible for employees to abuse their powers, yet I see very little abuse among the ranks of Counselor-like game-question-answering apparati. Your take on that?
DesignerD: Well, there’s several issues there, of course.In terms of what I was just discussing, that IS of course a multilayered administrative structure, just like a local government versus a single overarching one, in a way.You could make it more effective by tying those people to specific areas of the game or the world.
However, the granting of special powers to specific people doesn’t get past one of the key issues with online administrative models: the difficulty of building trust between whoever is administering the space, and the players. The fact is that players as a rule greatly distrust anyone who has power over them. The person in question may be of the utmost probity, and it won’t matter; they are still going tobe suspect.
The thing that makes authority tolerable is that it has a human face; when it appears distanced and inhuman, it is very frightening. This is the same in the virtual space as in the real world. Creating a superior class of godlike beings who inhabit the same virtual space you do and have power over you is going to create resentment no matter what. And the more people there are in the space, the less personal contact this class of players can have with an average player. The result is a deep skepticism of their motives and their integrity. This is why I prefer models that empower players, rather than creating more tiers of wizards.
There’s also another factor, which is what I call the paternalism factor.Ā If you have godlike beings around to whom you take your problems, what incentive is there to solve them on your own?
Now, this is not to say there are not some problems which will always require that level of power; but many of the classic administrative problems in virtual spaces DON’T need that sort of power. If you don’t need a godlike being to form, say, a player government, then why have one for that purpose?Ā All you are accomplishing is making the administrators of the game impose a government,rather than letting the players form one. Governments and social structures form in order to impose order on chaos, in final analysis.
If we want to see the development of virtual societies that have meaning, that actually run governments that matter, then there has to be a certain degree of chaos present, and the government will need to struggle with it using the normal powers inherent to the average player. There’s no social development, no “virtual reality” developing, if “god” steps in and stomps the problem for you.
Malleus: Aye, I have seen this effect in multiple games, especially ones in which their exact powers are shrouded by a certain mystique. The balance between protecting player’s rights to enjoy themselves, to enforce punishments on the rude, and reducing support-player resentment (not to mention the administrative costs of a weighty support apparatus) is something that no company yet has successfully struck, though some have come close. It is a thorny issue, indeed,and one that must be addressed in the future.
After those wise words from DD, I’d like to shift the topic to something mentioned in one of the previous UOHoC chats… “Elder Games.” For those not familiar with the concept, “Elder Games” are what keep players interested in a game after achieving their maximum potential with their character. The issue at hand is this:
In normal, one-player CRPGs, your player starts as a lowly peon, just beginning some earth-shattering adventure. After solving numerous quests and slaying many fell beasts, the plot builds to a climax, which the player overcomes. Cue victory music, game over. When the genre moved online, this formula suddenly failed to work. The game never ends! Thus, a new formula had to be found. It appears that what gaming companies now strive to create is a world in which you may never “max out” a character, yet instead reach a kind of equilibrium.
This shifts the focus from character development to social interaction, roleplaying, and other “elder games”, while still rewarding more skilled players with greater powers and higher levels. The problem inherent in this is that there must be loss to offset gain–or else, everyone eventually will achieve a maximum state, completely killing the urge to better their character.
Unfortunately, players dislike loss. There cannot be equilibrium without it, though; meaning the genre must mature so that the players might understand what these games are truly about.
What is your take on the complex issue of “equilibrium,” DD? Your company has tried several things to impose equilibrium, but all have fallen before massive player outcries. Do you think it essential to promoting Roleplaying and other more sophisticated “elder games”, as the main thrust of MMORPGs?
DesignerD: It’s a thorny issue. As far as I know, UO was actually the first big stab at a”levelless” environment that was for a gaming environment. Most MUDs actually ignore the problem.
What they usually do is allow a player to continue accruing power as they advance. Then they keep extending the game on the “top end,” meaning adding tougher and tougher creatures, and deadlier magic items, and so on. Pretty soon, 9/10ths of the game is devoted to the top level.Then they playerwipe. š
Alternatively, a MUD administration that refuses to buckle to this arms race problem will hold fast and not extend the game in that way. Often they try artificial ways of concealing that they are doing basically the same thing.Ā You see a lot of “remorting” systems and the like in MUDs; that’s where you max out, so they find a way to basically start you over.
The idea behind UO’s design was to have a system where you maxxed out in what you chose to be, but you could CHANGE what you chose to be, thus opening up new areas to explore, without actually increasing the overall ability of your character. And as you point out, that involves losing abilities in an area in which you no longer wish to focus.
I think this method of extending character (and thus player) longevity is pretty successful,though there are always more things you can do to extend its viability.
In terms of elder games, those are things you have in the game that add a new way of seeing the game. This is where a game that was about killing monsters becomes instead a game about running a shop, or a game about owning and maintaining a house, or a game about warring with other guilds. These are crucial, but they are still basically “different scales” by which you can measure your success at the game. They too, will eventually “peak” either because they do not offer anything new, or because the player simply grows bored and seeks new challenges.
In the final analysis, what keeps people isn’t a constant supply of new gaming material, but really it’s each other. And it is worth noting that on most MUDs, even that only holds people for two years or so. Usually much less–average longevity of a player on a text MUD is maybe three months. Since social bonds (friendships, etc) tend to migrate out of the game as the bonds grow stronger, eventually the game becomes superfluous. The friendship remains, but you’re out a few players.
Malleus: Many believe the classless system is flawed inherently; I tend to think it simply makes games utilizing it harder to balance due to the vastly larger set of skill combinations. I agree that the main thrust of any MMORPG project should be to encourage Roleplaying, social interaction, and in-context conflict. These things cause players to develop relationships with one another, which indeed stretch over games. Balance is important only because it ensures the game does not stray from those ideals by making character development less important and less easy to min/max; When the player does not have hard numbers to work with, and loses some experience upon every death, it becomes harder to judge what the optimal character-development strategy is, turning the focus onto the desired goals of RP/social interaction.
I believe that games are capable of retaining players for much longer than the present wave of them do, but I feel the industry is still in its infancy, and many design issues have not been adequately explored. Have you any thoughts on balance, especially in this genre of games, competing with latency and supporting vastly different connections?
DesignerD: These are pretty heavy-duty questions. š
Postman77: Aye, well, we thought you’d enjoy them, mine are lighter.
Malleus is really into this stuff.
DesignerD: So I see š
Malleus: heh, aye, I love analyzing things. Especially emerging fields š
DesignerD: That question is sort of broad. I quite agree with your point on classless games as opposed to classed games. They are notoriously harder to balance, enough so that many feel that they are not worth it. However, I do think that they can extend the lifespan of a player a great deal. We feel that UO has been pretty successful in this regard.
Balance is of course critical, but it’s interesting to note that players often care as much if not more about the status quo as they do about balance. They get very upset when you change a system even if they know it is not optimally balanced. And of course, balance is an elusive goal, because as time goes by players discover new interactions of features and skills that you didn’t predict. This is often termed an “exploit”and it often has nothing to do with bugs specifically. Rather, the complexity of the system is such that unpredicted combinations of abilities start coming into play.
Lastly, balance sometimes goes out of whack because of “accepted wisdom.” It’s a common phenomenon on MUDs to see everyone saying that “X is the best skill/weapon/class” and seeing the entire playerbase shift to using it. And then some other player bucks the accepted wisdom and does phenomenally well using class/skill/weapon Y.
If the designers fail to see that this is merely accepted wisdom, and not a true imbalance, they can wreck the game which is actually well-balanced.
Malleus: Speaking about the desire of players to maintain the status quo..I realize that after players start paying for a product they can become resistant to change, however, this resistance may lead to their eventually leaving the game,harming all involved. It is a question of short-term player satisfaction versus the potential long-term effects of a course of action– “If we change x, will it madden players sufficiently to cause them to cease paying for our product? And down the road, will the difference in balance make a difference in player retention?”
These issues mostly are resolved in Beta, but in a system so complex as a MMORPG, under constant evolution, the tradeoffs I speak of are the more extreme ones–for instance, let’s say EQ, known to have some form of experience-loss-on-death, discovers after they ship that it is not sufficient to keep players from infinite advancement. Should they triple the loss on death, or leave it alone? Even after the game has shipped changes are often necessary.
DesignerD: Well, from a design perspective, you choose what is best for the game long-term, generally speaking. It may cost you players in the short-term, but you do it anyway.
That particular example is a bad one. Once in the mass market, I’d wager you would lose more people from making that change than you would keep.You’re talking about extending the longevity of the character purely through frustration, by continually taking away what they have achieved. If it exists from the beginning, it’s tolerable, but massively increasing the penalties is indeed one of those changes that will anger many players.
Basically, it’s always a judgement call, if I understand your questions correctly.
Postman77: What influenced you to first get into gaming in the first place, previous to your MUD experiences?
DesignerD: I’ve been gaming since I was a kid. My first video game was the Pong home console.Ā I moved on through the Atari 2600 and on to the 8-bit computers and CP/M based machines.Ā I had Atari 8-bits on which I wrote games and sold them in Ziploc baggies. We lost money. But hey, we were kids. š I also did programming on the Osborne 1. I also did a lot of paper gaming at the time, playing AD&D and designing various boardgames, mostly strategy types, and (oddly) board game versions of video games.
*Malleus senses a lot of design in DD’s past*
Postman77: A lot of players think UO exists within a vacuum, with no notice from official people whatsoever. How much do you and the rest of the dev team know about minute things within UO, such as in the last Ultima Online House of Commons chat, people were glad you were visiting the Bug House, etc., for bugs.
DesignerD: I spend quite a lot of time hanging out on the web, actually. Every day I read all the major fan sites, and I read the web boards usually two or three times a day. I also read the rec.games.computer.Ultima.Online newsgroup daily.
That doesn’t, however, mean that I can catch every issue that way. Some things, everyone assumes are known so they are not talked about. Other things get talked about but not in enough detail for me to actually tell what is going on. And other things, I just never see.
Even visiting the sites that often, I can’t read every post.
Postman77: Aye
DesignerD: I read the UO Vault, Scorched, Crossroads, and Stratics regularly, for example, plus I also visit random guild web boards, player-run city newspapers, auction sites, “commentary” pages, etc.
So I’d say we do keep close tabs on the community–but it’s a BIG community. š
Postman77: heh Are there any in-game player-driven projects that make you proud or surprise you?
DesignerD: Sure! All the player cities have been a phenomenally pleasant surprise. We knew that this sort of thing was feasible given the tools we had supplied, but it is very gratifying to see it happen. I think the extent to which player cities exist in UO is a first on the Internet in any kind of virtual space.
I also think that the player-driven economy has been a pleasant surprise. Over time hardcoded economy has gradually been dismantled as the player-driven economy flourished,and the fact that now there is actually monetary exchange between the UO economy and the real world economy is a sign that it is actually happening in a very real way. (Meaning, some players pay real money for UO gold; there are even exchange rate tables!)
The fact that in UO people can and do worry about things like marketing concerns, product placement, availability of goods, and location of their storefront is fascinating, and I think a real achievement…
Lastly, I think all the moves towards player governmental structures, be they as part of the cities or driven by guilds, have been great to see. Seeing players band together to serve as police forces in order to protect the roleplay institutions they value is very very cool.
Postman77: What’s the best way for the average player to be heard by those in control of UO?
DesignerD: The absolute best way is to make themselves an important part of the community. That usually means finding like-minded individuals, working together to build something cool within or outside the game, like a web site, a player city, etc.When you have critical mass, it’s very easy to hear you. š
Postman77: heh.Ā Do you think UO is a different beast then it was 6 months ago?
DesignerD: Absolutely. Its core hasn’t changed, but the culture of the game has changed a lot. There’s a lot more support there now among players for roleplay, for example, with many solid and well-established groups. There’s also a lot more players working to help players. There are still the playerkillers, of course, but they never go away. š
Postman77: Speaking of PKs, do you think that given the right atmosphere, a hard-core PK can change?
Malleus: (hehehe, PK reform school)
Postman77: heh
DesignerD: Yes, a hardcore PK can indeed change. Anyone can change. In the case of PKs, it’s a matter of a shift of emphasis in how they play the game. It happens all the time.
Some PKs are in PK because it is a way to exercise power over others. Seen in that light, it’s a little disturbing. But we need to remember that the reason they approach it in that way is because the virtual environment is presented as a game, and that’s just how they see it. If they learn that there are real people at the other end of the line, and it really sinks in,they tend to start playing differently. But it often takes something significant happening in their online life for that realization to sink in. It’s not that they are bad people; it’s that the medium makes it hard for them to come to that realization. Anonymity and psychological distancing make it easy to objectify people.
Postman77: What are the ramifications of the market for these games being younger or older than game designers might expect? And what effect does the playing demographic have in shaping MMORPGs?
DesignerD: Good question.
Well, the demographic of the audience has an effect, of course. Whether you design to a demographic, or design to your interests, and then see what demographic fits, is a matter of a commercial decision, really. There are certainly things within the environment that affect the demographic makeup of the playerbase you get. If you require a lot of puzzle-solving to get anywhere, you will probably end up with a more mature audience, for example. Whereas a heavily combat-oriented environment will garner younger males. There’s evidence that heavily roleplay-oriented environments will get more female players as well.
One thing, though, is that environments heavily oriented towards one specific targeted audience (just playerkilling, or just roleplaying) tend to fail over the long run. So ideally, you target a broad enough audience that they can cross-pollinate each other and keep the game interesting and alive.
We’ve noticed a trend of the demographic for online games getting younger largely alongside the trend making the Internet itself grow younger. I am not sure you can separate the two trends.
Postman77: Basically, your project was the first of the MMORPG genre, do you feel as the MMORPG genre gets more fleshed out over time, its userbase will become more mature and open to actually role-playing? Is the basic MMORPG community already there, or do you feel that the MMORPG genre is just too new to do any kind of accurate demographically, social, etc., reports on its community, so new ideas on how a MMORPG is created and run are just shots in the dark?
DesignerD: There’s too many questions in that. šĀ Let’s break it down. First, do I think that the userbase will gradually become more involved in roleplaying?
The answer is yes, I do. But I do NOT think that it will ever reach the extent that many roleplay supporters hope it will. The basic fact is that there’s really not many people who are good at acting out a fantasy role. So people who are seeking that sort of experience (a totally immersed fictional experience) are probably not going to find it in a large game.
As far as how the community will develop–well, there are so many projects getting ready to come out that I think we’ll see it developing in several different directions. I’d hesitate to predict which direction will win. š
Postman77: Do you think that given that die-hard role-players will never actually truly feel at home in a large game/world, do you think that the market is open for a type of MMORPG that you buy the server, run it your way, etc., so you basically have a long list of servers, a la Quake. The 4th Coming, a new MMORPG, is like that.
DesignerD: So is Mordor II.
Postman77: ah.
DesignerD: I don’t doubt that this will happen. And I also don’t doubt that 95% of the created games will probably be crap. š But there will be some gems, there always are. And the genre will continue to develop. I’m quite looking forward to that, actually.
Postman77: So, you do you think the MMORPG genre will be the next to get the clone problems, much like RTS games are now? Will this lead to a fall in the genre, or will it help to continue to bolster to coming back of classic single player RPGs as a result?
DesignerD: No, I don’t think we’ll see the clone problem. It takes too much investment to make a massively large online game. There’s a huge expenditure there. Once we get the players able to set up servers of their own, we will undoubtedly see MANY clones like that, though. Most of those will have one tiny feature difference from all the others, and leave it at that.
As far as single-player RPGs versus online ones–they are really very different beasts. Most single-player RPGs have nothing in them about playing a role. They are usually about statistics management. So I don’t really know how closely the two genres are linked, in the end.
Postman77: It seems there are a lot of new companies throwing their hat into the ring as far as MMORPGs go, where do you see the next logical step of evolution in this genre, is that logical step the same as the actual new step that will probably be taken? Where do you see the persistent-world type massively multiplayer area of gaming within the next 5 years? Can the formula work for anything but a RPG, like a strategy game?
Malleus: (A good example is Planetary Raiders, a persistent-world flight simulator with economics)
Postman77: With there being about 30 titles slated as MMORPGs.
DesignerD: We will probably see a bit of a shakeout in the marketplace, certainly. There probably isn’t room in the market for as many games as seem to be in development right now. There are many different possible directions in which they can develop, and not all of them are roleplaying games either. I expect we’ll see more kinds of persistent worlds beyond RPGs.
Ultimately, the persistent world online will probably evolve into “cyberspace” type things. It has applications in many arenas outside of games, and I imagine we’ll start to see it being used in more ways.
Postman77: Several single player computer games have suffered heavy PR and sales losses lately due to lack of player-driven input and companies not listening to players. Just how important is getting user-input to a MMORPG and at what point in the design phase do you start looking for such info, and does the sometimes finicky nature of the community make this difficult?
DesignerD: It is absolutely fundamental, because the game will be evolving over time, after it’s open, or it will stagnate. You have to juggle the desires of the playerbase with the desires of the designers, and you also have to consider that often the playerbase is going to be thinking short-term, and the design team needs to think long term.
As far as when you start looking: after you have the basic concept and such firm. No point in doing it sooner, because you’ll end up diluting the “vision” for the game. A strong vision for what the game should be is what will attract the playerbase anyway.
Once you are actually talking to the public, you just need a lot of patience, a flame-retardant suit, and a willingness to argue back.
In any given online environment it’s axiomatic that there will be a bunch of folks who think it is the worst run game in the world, that the admins cheat, that the designers don’t listen, and that everything sucks. These same people will, of course, play every day. š
Postman77: What is the breaking point for an online game community, could a totally PvP free environment or a totally rules-free environment ever function properly enough to make such a game or system viable? Or would a totally PK free environment be successful on the whole?
DesignerD: I don’t actually think a completely PK-free environment can develop very far. First off, it attracts a particular audience, of course. So there’s a certain level of homogeneity. Given that the thing keeping people there is basically only personal interaction with other people, the game is sort of superfluous; conflicts are minimal. Plus the entire population base is in the position of victim; everyone there is a target for harassers and the like.Ā A completely safe world isn’t actually something we can provide and aggressors quickly become aware of that.
A rules-free environment has the opposite problem, of course. It attracts a bunch of people who spend all their time doing nothing but killing each other. You’d hope that in such an environment players would band together, form governments, police the world, etc. Sadly, they don’t. I think the intermediate route is the route you have to follow.
Postman77: Years down the road, what do you hope that the gaming press, the individual user, the community as a whole and your colleagues in the gaming industry will associate with UO?
DesignerD: I hope that it is seen as a landmark game. I hope that it is seen as taking the first steps towards trying to create enough of a virtual world to actually support virtual societies, online governments, and the like. I also think it will be seen as a breakthrough product in terms of the marketplace.
Malleus: DD, years later, when you look back at your role in creating UO, do you think it is a high point of your career? You should be proud to make it work as well as it does.
DesignerD: I am pretty sure I will see it as a high point, yes. I am proud of the work done on it by everyone involved.
