Originally posted by Maquiame This is only for the rpers, so please if you do not rp then you should not be here.
Ah, no room for people who used to RP then gave up a decade ago because of the futility of attempting it in then-current (and present-day) MMORPG games? No place for people who are curious about RP and who might want to try it out, especially if the game encouraged or (it'll never happen) actually rewarded RP?
OK then. Keep preaching to the converted if you wish.
As for the topic, as someone who roleplayed in tabletop games 30 years ago, and who ran two RPG stores and who was a member of several RPG clubs over the years, and who was in an RP guild in EQ1 until RP fell by the wayside in newer MMORPG games because their primary goal was levels and gear and 'screw everyone else'....
...oh, sorry! I don't RP at this time so I shouldn't be here.
When at any time did I say "at this time?" I said the rpers, and I even mentioned EQ, so I do not see why you are not welcome here, if anything something like this might bring you back, so my question is, would you do it? I titled the thread this way because I want to hear from only rpers, yesterday, today, tommorrow.
I think this is a nice thread, lets not ruin it with instances of selective reading ok?
Let me reask the questiion., if you have EVER rped in an mmo would you pay an extra five dollars for an enforced rule rp server with gm events?
And to those that are curious about rp I say this, I am only thinking about one rp server being like this, with the other rp servers being normal, if somone is curious about rp then they may want to try one of the normal rp servers.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
This would depend completely on the way it was implemented.
The thing that most RP'ers love to forget is that much of the greifing that occurs in games is done in the name of RP.
Tho I am not a RPer, the best RP game I have ever played was old UO(pre tram). A game famous for its extensive griefing community was also the game most known for RP.
In AoC, they released with roleplay PVP servers. However, they quickly gave up enforcement because players would claim " i am just roleplaying an evil player." To deny a player this option would also betray the core writing and world that Robert E Howard created. All the RP PVP servers quickly became the most heated battlegrounds amoung the players.
When people think of RPers, they tend to think of the guys who talk funny and pretend to be heroes. There is a close knit community of people that like to play this way. But, they always denied the counterpart, the players who like to be evil to play evil and to kill the heroes. Granted, it was often because some players hid behind the mask of "evildoers" only to grief. However, not all. The RP heroes never consider giving the evil RPers same rights to pursue their ends as they themselves ask for. So developers have given up trying to please them. Hate to say it, but Rpers exclusionary practices have led developers to believe they cannot possibly please this community. So they stopped trying.
I would not expect much help from developers in your efforts to RP. They have given up on Rpers and it is largely the fault of the RPers themselves.
I think anyone that says yes does so because it will never happen. If they played a game where the other servers were 5 dollars less they'd complain that thru should all be the same price since it's something the company should be doing anyway.
First, i do not believe that GM run events are really possible in MMOs. There is simply too many people, and either only "few" get to expeirence the stuff or the event has to be massive and thus shallow because Your action are meaningless. Story based events work so much better in smaller, more controlled environment, when every single character can actually participate without it turning into one big chaotic mess.
I'd rather see tools that allow players to create "events" for their friends/guildies.
It is definately possible for GM events to run well. As an EQ player from the old days (2001) I witnessed such GM events all over the world of Norath. Skeleton attacks in South Karanas, not just spawned giant skelletons but controlled by GMs that would give chase. Dragons controlled by GMs that did some really neat stuff in the Dreadlands. There are simply too many to list lol. Of course it is my opinion that they ran well, but everyone at the events thought them to be outstanding.
Second thing... Why should i pay additional money for a company to care about ruleset they set up themselves? It should be by default, and while i understand it's troublesome to police several servers, each with few thousand of players with the limited staff, i still believe They could do much better jobw ith it if only they would put some effort. Currently there is almost no consequence for having idiotic name or being jack ass that disturbs RP of other's because it takes forever for the GMs to really start doing something about it. If you need 30-50 or more peopel to report a name that obviously does not belong in the setting something isin't working right.
Unfortunately, i feel it is the quality of GMs that make a difference to the game more so than the money. It just felt like issues were adressed much quicker and the GMs were so much more involved back in those days. I really dont know what is involved in controlling GM characters in game or what it takes to do an event as a GM but what i do know is that they did it right before, and they should be able to do it again.
The GM events now are more like taking a zone, spawning a bunch of different mobs (commonlands warewolf event) turning the sky red, despawning at a specific time. No GM controlled mob or GM interaction. It just seems... I dunno ... Lazy ? lol.
Throwing money at someone does not make them good at thier job. Passion and Pride in your work, that makes you good at your job.
I have not played in a year or so, so if things have changed please by all means let me know and I will gladly part with some of my hard earned cash to be back in the EQ world once more.
Back in 2001 the playerbase of MMOs was at about what? 10% of what it is these days? Plus, personally, as events i understand something more than spawn mobs and make them attack place. I expect some story involvement, some reason for my character to care about it instead of throwing themselves blindly into hacking and slashing. Something along the lines of what was possible back on NwN servers focused on RP. But those servers had limit of what..64 players? It was pretty easy to have 4-5 GMs that could actually do constant storyline-events for small groups and no one was left un attended.
Nowadays, when You have several thousands of players per servers, spread over few servers in some cases how do see it working for everyone? When Rift ddid their event thingy with the whole Death Plane people were complaining that over x days they didn't have time to play but they are paying subscribers so they are entitled to benefit from the event. If You can't really cater to whole crowd You open Yourself for tons of complaints for nameless masses that feel they have right to everything even if They, themselves, don't put any effort in it.
What i want to say is, is that the more massive the MMO becomes, the harder it is to make meaningfull events, and with GM staff that pretty much is reduced to cusotmer support these days, it's hard to hope for companies to invest into staff that would be "into" that kind of stuff.
I whould pay more for event based tactical combat like in original EQ, where you have to press buttons when something happens, not to do "dps". More complex, non twitch based, PVE game mechanics might worth paying. But paying just for better GM service and some kind of chat filtering - I see no point in that.
Your idea sounds to me like "hire more police-kind GMs to make server 100% roleplaying". I afraid that won't work. Ether too many GM's needed or too few ppl will be on server, since majority will get banned from it for occasional ooc words.
Don't know about RP but I would pay $20+ a month for a "true" sanbox game with deep crafting, true player run economy, limited-loot-open-world-PvP, player built cities, vast exploration and skill based-non level based progression with live events.
But that's just me...
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
Don't know about RP but I would pay $20+ a month for a "true" sanbox game with deep crafting, true player run economy, limited-loot-open-world-PvP, player built cities, vast exploration and skill based-non level based progression with live events.
But that's just me...
Me too.
I'd never pay additional money for moderators or GMs to do their job, though. That's nonsense.
Don't know about RP but I would pay $20+ a month for a "true" sanbox game with deep crafting, true player run economy, limited-loot-open-world-PvP, player built cities, vast exploration and skill based-non level based progression with live events.
But that's just me...
Me too.
I'd never pay additional money for moderators or GMs to do their job, though. That's nonsense.
Or F2P-P2W cash-grab games...
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
First, i do not believe that GM run events are really possible in MMOs. There is simply too many people, and either only "few" get to expeirence the stuff or the event has to be massive and thus shallow because Your action are meaningless. Story based events work so much better in smaller, more controlled environment, when every single character can actually participate without it turning into one big chaotic mess.
I'd rather see tools that allow players to create "events" for their friends/guildies.
It is definately possible for GM events to run well. As an EQ player from the old days (2001) I witnessed such GM events all over the world of Norath. Skeleton attacks in South Karanas, not just spawned giant skelletons but controlled by GMs that would give chase. Dragons controlled by GMs that did some really neat stuff in the Dreadlands. There are simply too many to list lol. Of course it is my opinion that they ran well, but everyone at the events thought them to be outstanding.
Second thing... Why should i pay additional money for a company to care about ruleset they set up themselves? It should be by default, and while i understand it's troublesome to police several servers, each with few thousand of players with the limited staff, i still believe They could do much better jobw ith it if only they would put some effort. Currently there is almost no consequence for having idiotic name or being jack ass that disturbs RP of other's because it takes forever for the GMs to really start doing something about it. If you need 30-50 or more peopel to report a name that obviously does not belong in the setting something isin't working right.
Unfortunately, i feel it is the quality of GMs that make a difference to the game more so than the money. It just felt like issues were adressed much quicker and the GMs were so much more involved back in those days. I really dont know what is involved in controlling GM characters in game or what it takes to do an event as a GM but what i do know is that they did it right before, and they should be able to do it again.
The GM events now are more like taking a zone, spawning a bunch of different mobs (commonlands warewolf event) turning the sky red, despawning at a specific time. No GM controlled mob or GM interaction. It just seems... I dunno ... Lazy ? lol.
Throwing money at someone does not make them good at thier job. Passion and Pride in your work, that makes you good at your job.
I have not played in a year or so, so if things have changed please by all means let me know and I will gladly part with some of my hard earned cash to be back in the EQ world once more.
Back in 2001 the playerbase of MMOs was at about what? 10% of what it is these days? Plus, personally, as events i understand something more than spawn mobs and make them attack place. I expect some story involvement, some reason for my character to care about it instead of throwing themselves blindly into hacking and slashing. Something along the lines of what was possible back on NwN servers focused on RP. But those servers had limit of what..64 players? It was pretty easy to have 4-5 GMs that could actually do constant storyline-events for small groups and no one was left un attended.
Nowadays, when You have several thousands of players per servers, spread over few servers in some cases how do see it working for everyone? When Rift ddid their event thingy with the whole Death Plane people were complaining that over x days they didn't have time to play but they are paying subscribers so they are entitled to benefit from the event. If You can't really cater to whole crowd You open Yourself for tons of complaints for nameless masses that feel they have right to everything even if They, themselves, don't put any effort in it.
What i want to say is, is that the more massive the MMO becomes, the harder it is to make meaningfull events, and with GM staff that pretty much is reduced to cusotmer support these days, it's hard to hope for companies to invest into staff that would be "into" that kind of stuff.
You do realize that I am specifically refering to EQ1 right? Back in 2001 there was not alot of MMO's to choose from. I dare to say the population of EQ1 in 2001 was probably equal if not greater than what it is currently. I was not putting EQ1 up against the newer style MMO's that suck in 40k + people and spread them out over several servers.
The mobs that were involved in those events were controlled by GMs and they had themes and rewards for completing the event. They were not just spawned mobs. Thought and planning had to take place to pull them off.
I see no reason why EQ1 GM events cant be just as good if not better than the ones that occured back in the old days (with dedicated GMs that care). They dont need to re-invent the wheel, they just need to get back to basics and listen to what the players want. That was all I was trying to say.
heck i would pay it if they stop thes odd ball people talking smack about the game they are playing in gen chat i mean why get on a game just so you can bash it and trying to stop the people that's have fun.
But could you *provide* that level of human intervention for only $5 per month?
What exactly is being offered? Even if you could staff your game with minimum wage moderator/writers, you're looking at a budget of around 30 minutes per month of human intervention - that invcludes all prep work, coding, constructing scenarios, deconstructing scenarios, all investigations of complaints, appeals, communications, background reading, log monitoring ... everything, good and bad.
Manual human intervention is extremely expensive. I am very skeptical you could actually provide the service being asked for in this post for $5 a month. Even at $100 per month, I'm doubtful if it would be a satisfactory experience.
But could you *provide* that level of human intervention for only $5 per month?
What exactly is being offered? Even if you could staff your game with minimum wage moderator/writers, you're looking at a budget of around 30 minutes per month of human intervention - that invcludes all prep work, coding, constructing scenarios, deconstructing scenarios, all investigations of complaints, appeals, communications, background reading, log monitoring ... everything, good and bad.
Manual human intervention is extremely expensive. I am very skeptical you could actually provide the service being asked for in this post for $5 a month. Even at $100 per month, I'm doubtful if it would be a satisfactory experience.
Well, lets do the math.
Lets say you want to pay each of these extra guys $60K a year. That would be $5K a month.
$5K divided by $5 = 1000. So for every 1,000 players, you could afford one extra employess devoted to strictly this. Many games build their shards to handle about 10,000 players, with around 3,000 simultatious players at peak times. I'm going to assume that the activity here would be more active because you're talking about a shard full of people who are paying extra for something they really want. Lets go with 5K players per shard, with 3,000 playing at one time.
So that would be 5 extra GMs, dedicated to this alone, per shard (or per 5,000 players in the game). So, yes, it depends on what exactly the game is offering. I think there's some room here though, for something significant.
Edit to add: Oops, forgot the compnaies expenses for taxes and benefits. Have to cut that down to at least half as many extra GMs. I still think that can work for something though. But maybe not enough. A lot would depend on what someone posted earlier in this thread, that they'd need tools to help the GMs do their jobs.
Also, for the record, I'd pay $10 or $15 a month extra ($24.95 a month or $29.95 a month, reduced by $4 or $5 for multi-month subs) if they give me a huge sandbox world with great everything, including MOB AI and Wandering MOB tribes.
I too am a UO fanatic and want GM events in my other games. Your idea is moving toward the right direction but losing a critical step.
SIZE!!! (Most MMO worlds these days are way too big)
1) Shards should be much smaller to forge a community. (not more than a few thousand players)
2) Shards should be player run with many simple tools built into place for the voted(or random) leader of the shard(one a month)
3) Being the leader of a large guild or town qualifies you to be considered for leader of the shard.
4) Shards should cost differently based on what they offer(GMs willing to hold events and such or enforced RP)
5) You can get kicked out of a shard by a long term ban vote or instantly by a GM(you can always play on the generic servers)
There are so many other ideas that could be implemented for casuals and obsessed players. Charging more for specific servers is a huge step toward the future of custom run games. Even themepark games like WoW, Rift, what ever with a few tools to let GMs spawn custom mobs in repetitive numbers, customize loot tables(usually gonna be just lots of money in games where there is no item decay) could run very far with this concept.
The money is a moot point. Gamers buy $60 Monocoles. There is plenty of nuts like me that would pay at least 30+ for a server targeted to us. It is still the cheapest form of entertainment you can buy. Only kids would rage and for the most part that it is a plus with them missing anyway.
I still wait for the first game which allows players to buy or rent timeshares of a client/shard and either allows players to take turns being the GM or the price of the server comes with a technition that grants 40 hours a week and sets up gm events and manages the server for the players via forms.
I too am a UO fanatic and want GM events in my other games. Your idea is moving toward the right direction but losing a critical step.
SIZE!!! (Most MMO worlds these days are way too big)
1) Shards should be much smaller to forge a community. (not more than a few thousand players)
2) Shards should be player run with many simple tools built into place for the voted(or random) leader of the shard(one a month)
3) Being the leader of a large guild or town qualifies you to be considered for leader of the shard.
4) Shards should cost differently based on what they offer(GMs willing to hold events and such or enforced RP)
5) You can get kicked out of a shard by a long term ban vote or instantly by a GM(you can always play on the generic servers)
There are so many other ideas that could be implemented for casuals and obsessed players. Charging more for specific servers is a huge step toward the future of custom run games. Even themepark games like WoW, Rift, what ever with a few tools to let GMs spawn custom mobs in repetitive numbers, customize loot tables(usually gonna be just lots of money in games where there is no item decay) could run very far with this concept.
The money is a moot point. Gamers buy $60 Monocoles. There is plenty of nuts like me that would pay at least 30+ for a server targeted to us. It is still the cheapest form of entertainment you can buy. Only kids would rage and for the most part that it is a plus with them missing anyway.
I still wait for the first game which allows players to buy or rent timeshares of a client/shard and either allows players to take turns being the GM or the price of the server comes with a technition that grants 40 hours a week and sets up gm events and manages the server for the players via forms.
Totally agree with you, personally I would also pay an additional fifteen a month myself for what you mentioned, and I do like the smaller communities set up like the NWN persistent worlds
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
If I am already paying a monthly subscription for a game on an offered RP server, and the game company posts a rules list that is expected to be followed, as a player I expect them to enforce the rules as part of my fee. Paying an additional sum for them to do their jobs is not something I'd be happy with.
Blizzard failed to do this with their offered RP and RPPvP servers in my opinion from personal experience. That's why I walked away from ever buying one of their products again.
Turbine most certainly does enforce their own rules set in Lord of the Rings Online. While I no longer play that game, I would trust Turbine to make good on what they state as offered to a player in return for their money.
In terms of an MMO offering live GM hosted events on a premium style server, sure, go for it. I wouldn't pay for it, but it's a nice step of commitment towards players to have it offered.
Nope. If a game company is going to offer an RP server, they should be willing to make the effort to enforce the RP rules. I shouldn't have to spend an additional $5 a month for it.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Nope. If a game company is going to offer an RP server, they should be willing to make the effort to enforce the RP rules. I shouldn't have to spend an additional $5 a month for it.
You wouldn't have to. You could choose not to.
I would pay, and anyone who actually takes mmo's seriously and wants a mature environment and service that is a step up from current offerings would too. A really good mmo, if it ever exists, is worth twice what is charged now per month.
Outright disrespect for roleplayers is what really bugs me; I'm fine with names that aren't strictly RP-legitimate ("Greyshadow" the warrior, for example, is alright with me). What I am getting at that the crux of this "extra $5" would hinge on the GM run events.
"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
Comments
When at any time did I say "at this time?" I said the rpers, and I even mentioned EQ, so I do not see why you are not welcome here, if anything something like this might bring you back, so my question is, would you do it? I titled the thread this way because I want to hear from only rpers, yesterday, today, tommorrow.
I think this is a nice thread, lets not ruin it with instances of selective reading ok?
Let me reask the questiion., if you have EVER rped in an mmo would you pay an extra five dollars for an enforced rule rp server with gm events?
And to those that are curious about rp I say this, I am only thinking about one rp server being like this, with the other rp servers being normal, if somone is curious about rp then they may want to try one of the normal rp servers.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Why should I pay for the box and a monthly sub AND 5 bucks for something GM are suppose to do anyway?
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
This would depend completely on the way it was implemented.
The thing that most RP'ers love to forget is that much of the greifing that occurs in games is done in the name of RP.
Tho I am not a RPer, the best RP game I have ever played was old UO(pre tram). A game famous for its extensive griefing community was also the game most known for RP.
In AoC, they released with roleplay PVP servers. However, they quickly gave up enforcement because players would claim " i am just roleplaying an evil player." To deny a player this option would also betray the core writing and world that Robert E Howard created. All the RP PVP servers quickly became the most heated battlegrounds amoung the players.
When people think of RPers, they tend to think of the guys who talk funny and pretend to be heroes. There is a close knit community of people that like to play this way. But, they always denied the counterpart, the players who like to be evil to play evil and to kill the heroes. Granted, it was often because some players hid behind the mask of "evildoers" only to grief. However, not all. The RP heroes never consider giving the evil RPers same rights to pursue their ends as they themselves ask for. So developers have given up trying to please them. Hate to say it, but Rpers exclusionary practices have led developers to believe they cannot possibly please this community. So they stopped trying.
I would not expect much help from developers in your efforts to RP. They have given up on Rpers and it is largely the fault of the RPers themselves.
Back in 2001 the playerbase of MMOs was at about what? 10% of what it is these days? Plus, personally, as events i understand something more than spawn mobs and make them attack place. I expect some story involvement, some reason for my character to care about it instead of throwing themselves blindly into hacking and slashing. Something along the lines of what was possible back on NwN servers focused on RP. But those servers had limit of what..64 players? It was pretty easy to have 4-5 GMs that could actually do constant storyline-events for small groups and no one was left un attended.
Nowadays, when You have several thousands of players per servers, spread over few servers in some cases how do see it working for everyone? When Rift ddid their event thingy with the whole Death Plane people were complaining that over x days they didn't have time to play but they are paying subscribers so they are entitled to benefit from the event. If You can't really cater to whole crowd You open Yourself for tons of complaints for nameless masses that feel they have right to everything even if They, themselves, don't put any effort in it.
What i want to say is, is that the more massive the MMO becomes, the harder it is to make meaningfull events, and with GM staff that pretty much is reduced to cusotmer support these days, it's hard to hope for companies to invest into staff that would be "into" that kind of stuff.
yes
No, $15 a month is pushing it.
www.90and9.net
www.prophecymma.com
I whould pay more for event based tactical combat like in original EQ, where you have to press buttons when something happens, not to do "dps". More complex, non twitch based, PVE game mechanics might worth paying. But paying just for better GM service and some kind of chat filtering - I see no point in that.
Your idea sounds to me like "hire more police-kind GMs to make server 100% roleplaying". I afraid that won't work. Ether too many GM's needed or too few ppl will be on server, since majority will get banned from it for occasional ooc words.
Don't know about RP but I would pay $20+ a month for a "true" sanbox game with deep crafting, true player run economy, limited-loot-open-world-PvP, player built cities, vast exploration and skill based-non level based progression with live events.
But that's just me...
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
Me too.
I'd never pay additional money for moderators or GMs to do their job, though. That's nonsense.
Or F2P-P2W cash-grab games...
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
As much as I would like to say "Yes" the problem as I see it is that, no 2 people ever agree on what exactly "RP" is.
You would most likely find the kind of role players that give all role players a bad name, the "RP nazi"
You know the type, the ones that constantly report everyones name that doesnt fit "thier" interpritaion of an in character name
and, typically speak in monty python references.
And one of my favorite RP pastimes, using emotes to have epic duels that not even a god could pull off at universal studios.
You do realize that I am specifically refering to EQ1 right? Back in 2001 there was not alot of MMO's to choose from. I dare to say the population of EQ1 in 2001 was probably equal if not greater than what it is currently. I was not putting EQ1 up against the newer style MMO's that suck in 40k + people and spread them out over several servers.
The mobs that were involved in those events were controlled by GMs and they had themes and rewards for completing the event. They were not just spawned mobs. Thought and planning had to take place to pull them off.
I see no reason why EQ1 GM events cant be just as good if not better than the ones that occured back in the old days (with dedicated GMs that care). They dont need to re-invent the wheel, they just need to get back to basics and listen to what the players want. That was all I was trying to say.
Work hard Play Harder
It would really depend on how well they do this.
But sure, if well moderated and with enough events I would pay.
heck i would pay it if they stop thes odd ball people talking smack about the game they are playing in gen chat i mean why get on a game just so you can bash it and trying to stop the people that's have fun.
But could you *provide* that level of human intervention for only $5 per month?
What exactly is being offered? Even if you could staff your game with minimum wage moderator/writers, you're looking at a budget of around 30 minutes per month of human intervention - that invcludes all prep work, coding, constructing scenarios, deconstructing scenarios, all investigations of complaints, appeals, communications, background reading, log monitoring ... everything, good and bad.
Manual human intervention is extremely expensive. I am very skeptical you could actually provide the service being asked for in this post for $5 a month. Even at $100 per month, I'm doubtful if it would be a satisfactory experience.
Well, lets do the math.
Lets say you want to pay each of these extra guys $60K a year. That would be $5K a month.
$5K divided by $5 = 1000. So for every 1,000 players, you could afford one extra employess devoted to strictly this. Many games build their shards to handle about 10,000 players, with around 3,000 simultatious players at peak times. I'm going to assume that the activity here would be more active because you're talking about a shard full of people who are paying extra for something they really want. Lets go with 5K players per shard, with 3,000 playing at one time.
So that would be 5 extra GMs, dedicated to this alone, per shard (or per 5,000 players in the game). So, yes, it depends on what exactly the game is offering. I think there's some room here though, for something significant.
Edit to add: Oops, forgot the compnaies expenses for taxes and benefits. Have to cut that down to at least half as many extra GMs. I still think that can work for something though. But maybe not enough. A lot would depend on what someone posted earlier in this thread, that they'd need tools to help the GMs do their jobs.
Also, for the record, I'd pay $10 or $15 a month extra ($24.95 a month or $29.95 a month, reduced by $4 or $5 for multi-month subs) if they give me a huge sandbox world with great everything, including MOB AI and Wandering MOB tribes.
Once upon a time....
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cloudsol/
I lurk, but rarely post. I couldn't pass this up.
I too am a UO fanatic and want GM events in my other games. Your idea is moving toward the right direction but losing a critical step.
SIZE!!! (Most MMO worlds these days are way too big)
1) Shards should be much smaller to forge a community. (not more than a few thousand players)
2) Shards should be player run with many simple tools built into place for the voted(or random) leader of the shard(one a month)
3) Being the leader of a large guild or town qualifies you to be considered for leader of the shard.
4) Shards should cost differently based on what they offer(GMs willing to hold events and such or enforced RP)
5) You can get kicked out of a shard by a long term ban vote or instantly by a GM(you can always play on the generic servers)
There are so many other ideas that could be implemented for casuals and obsessed players. Charging more for specific servers is a huge step toward the future of custom run games. Even themepark games like WoW, Rift, what ever with a few tools to let GMs spawn custom mobs in repetitive numbers, customize loot tables(usually gonna be just lots of money in games where there is no item decay) could run very far with this concept.
The money is a moot point. Gamers buy $60 Monocoles. There is plenty of nuts like me that would pay at least 30+ for a server targeted to us. It is still the cheapest form of entertainment you can buy. Only kids would rage and for the most part that it is a plus with them missing anyway.
I still wait for the first game which allows players to buy or rent timeshares of a client/shard and either allows players to take turns being the GM or the price of the server comes with a technition that grants 40 hours a week and sets up gm events and manages the server for the players via forms.
Totally agree with you, personally I would also pay an additional fifteen a month myself for what you mentioned, and I do like the smaller communities set up like the NWN persistent worlds
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
No.
If I am already paying a monthly subscription for a game on an offered RP server, and the game company posts a rules list that is expected to be followed, as a player I expect them to enforce the rules as part of my fee. Paying an additional sum for them to do their jobs is not something I'd be happy with.
Blizzard failed to do this with their offered RP and RPPvP servers in my opinion from personal experience. That's why I walked away from ever buying one of their products again.
Turbine most certainly does enforce their own rules set in Lord of the Rings Online. While I no longer play that game, I would trust Turbine to make good on what they state as offered to a player in return for their money.
In terms of an MMO offering live GM hosted events on a premium style server, sure, go for it. I wouldn't pay for it, but it's a nice step of commitment towards players to have it offered.
Nope. If a game company is going to offer an RP server, they should be willing to make the effort to enforce the RP rules. I shouldn't have to spend an additional $5 a month for it.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
You wouldn't have to. You could choose not to.
I would pay, and anyone who actually takes mmo's seriously and wants a mature environment and service that is a step up from current offerings would too. A really good mmo, if it ever exists, is worth twice what is charged now per month.
Perhaps.
Outright disrespect for roleplayers is what really bugs me; I'm fine with names that aren't strictly RP-legitimate ("Greyshadow" the warrior, for example, is alright with me). What I am getting at that the crux of this "extra $5" would hinge on the GM run events.
"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
I need to take this advice more.
No.