09-03-2014, 03:03 PM
Had a Facebook friend post this article who thought it was an eye opener. I think it is a pile of bunk, personally.
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Response to griefing to me, is a company's reaction to fixing a weakness in their code. By players exploiting the system that was created, a company has to do what is expected of them, and try and close the loopholes. One could even say the MMO product is so bogged down with its response to griefing, that we have a milquetoast, more vanilla product now that doesn't break any new boundaries and is why we are currently stuck in a cycle of the same MMOs with a different IP because no company wants to create a new version that will be open to new exploits . We have instanced dungeons now because of griefing, which I think is a cheap, lame band aid to the issue and has really hampered genuine fun in MMOs for years. Human behavior and the culture of MMOs has not changed, we just have a police force now. In Everquest, we had to respond to griefers as a vigilante force and respond back ourselves. I think in regards to the actual point of the article, yes, the culture had to shift for maximum profitability of the product, but as someone who played MMOs back when they were called MUDs, darn if it wasn't a fun, and camaraderie building exercise to have a guild drop everything it was doing to go and respond to a guildmate getting griefed. Guilds were the central focus of MMOs...finding and accumulating that group of likeminded players that "get it," poor game design be damned. You could take action as a group instead of waiting for Big Daddy to arrive and stick the guy in the corner.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.zenofdesign.com/how-uo-changed-the-culture-of-mmos/">http://www.zenofdesign.com/how-uo-chang ... e-of-mmos/</a><!-- m -->
Response to griefing to me, is a company's reaction to fixing a weakness in their code. By players exploiting the system that was created, a company has to do what is expected of them, and try and close the loopholes. One could even say the MMO product is so bogged down with its response to griefing, that we have a milquetoast, more vanilla product now that doesn't break any new boundaries and is why we are currently stuck in a cycle of the same MMOs with a different IP because no company wants to create a new version that will be open to new exploits . We have instanced dungeons now because of griefing, which I think is a cheap, lame band aid to the issue and has really hampered genuine fun in MMOs for years. Human behavior and the culture of MMOs has not changed, we just have a police force now. In Everquest, we had to respond to griefers as a vigilante force and respond back ourselves. I think in regards to the actual point of the article, yes, the culture had to shift for maximum profitability of the product, but as someone who played MMOs back when they were called MUDs, darn if it wasn't a fun, and camaraderie building exercise to have a guild drop everything it was doing to go and respond to a guildmate getting griefed. Guilds were the central focus of MMOs...finding and accumulating that group of likeminded players that "get it," poor game design be damned. You could take action as a group instead of waiting for Big Daddy to arrive and stick the guy in the corner.