Will you play a game where another player can jump out of the virtual bushes and whack you and steal your underwear? Is it ok if the player does it because of some in-game reason, like he needs your underwear to complete a quest? Does context like that make it ok?

It's years later, so I will admit to one "incident" when I reviewed Ultima Online.

I took an extremely high level character, and went on a sociopathic rampage one nite. Forgive me if I don't remember the exact names of spells and details, but essentially, I'd teleport into town, kill about five people, then teleport to my hideout, change my appearance, and finally teleport to a different part of Britannia. This involved a shitload of runes or something scattered all around the land, and a ton of clothes and a spell that would change my skin color and stuff.

Unlike real serial killers, I took no trophies of my kills. I just went in, hit hard, and left. I could say that I did it to provide an example of abuse within the system and whatnot, but in reality, I was just bored and very sociopathic that nite.

Never did anything remotely like that again in an online game. And I only did it once.

So there's my confession.

-Thierry

I was told by a person at Origin once that some of their most obnoxious PKillers were, in real life, policement, lawyers, doctors... people who's lives involved brining order to chaos. That they would reverse that online isn't surprising.

I know one of the Verant designers was a rampant pkiller in Ultima Online for months.

I only did a little pkilling on the team PvP server in EverQuest. I got whacked by a troll so my blood was up as I respawned. I collected my stuff, went hunting, and found a dark elf necromancer that I killed. Boy, she was pissed, too. Apparently she was looking at one of her items and was holding it with her mouse cursor, and she couldn't find it again after she respawned. It was a prize awarded after a long quest. I felt kind of bad about it too. She couldn't see me but she was sending me angry messages.

Other than that I've done very little, just some group vs. group stuff that's prearranged and is more like a war.

I respect Mulligan to a degree, and I don't want to make a big deal about this... but I can't get past the whole "virtual rape" thing. I find the connection tasteless and a little insensitive. Non-"virtual" rape has touched my life a couple times and its a touch worse than anything that can happen (to a psychologically stable) person in UO or EQ.
That tiny, perhaps knee-jerk, reaction killed the column for me I'm afraid.

Maybe I'm taking it too seriously.

While I think the use of the term "rape" is a bit too strong, I think Mulligan hits the key issue squarely: consent. To me any game that allows non-consensual anti-player activity is forcing me to be a victim. I'm certainly not going to pay any money for that privilege.

I also think the market has clearly spoken on this issue: EQ is basically a non-PvP game and is having great success. UO has had success but as Mulligan discussed, its success was slowed by very poor player retention in the first year of release, which most players attribute to rampant PKing.

It makes me wonder why so many of the planned MMORPGs for this year have implemented non-consensual PvP(Anarchy Online, Shadowbane, Dark Age, etc). I have a feeling that these companies may be in for an unpleasant surprise with the volume of customer complaints and cancellations generated by players having unpleasant PvP experiences.

Sharpe

The new games with non-consensual PvP may be hoping they hit a niche. Funcom (Anarchy Online) is a small company, so they may be happy if they get 50,000 subscribers.

EQ does it right, sort of. They have one server where it's automatically PvP for everyone, and two team PvP servers. The game itself isn't all that great for PvP, but Verant has done a nice job giving players choices. From what I hear, the true PvP server is really very guild-oriented. That's how you survive. You get with a group and then the group protects its members and wages war against other guilds.

So much for Anarchy Online, Shadowbane & Dark Age then. I've been pondering signing up for an MMORPG, but never have for two reasons: cost and competition. I don't mind a monthly fee, but I won't pay $40 for the box on top of that (I know you get some free months with that, but what if I don't like it? Why pay for three months I won't use, except to pad the company's revenues?). More importantly, I know that I won't have the time to put into the game that many other people will have. Therefore, I will always be comparatively weak, and even weaker as time wears on and people dump their real lives to push their characters to demigod levels. Now that I am doomed to being less competitive, if I put myself into a non-consensual PvP environment, I am now at the mercy of every low self-esteem 14-year-old jackass on the server. Sorry, my ego is way too big for that!

I'd rather see a game that charges a nominal rate by the hour (.50 or so), as that would be much more suitable to my play style and available time. However, I don't expect that ever to be available, since it doesn't let the game company charge me for non-use. This is the old "health club/AOL" revenue model, where they oversell capacity on the idea that they won't have too many simultaneous users, and they will have a certain amount of slackers that pay and barely show up.

I'm glad to hear Verant is at lest experimenting with PvP. Personally, I think PvP would be a must in a Star Wars online game. What's the point of being a "scoundrel" otherwise?

--Andrew

PvP adds life to the MMORPG games after the joys of exploring and leveling have worn off. I've been playing Everquest for a little over 2 years now. If it wasn't for the Team PvP server, I would have retired from the game long ago. The thing about the Team PvP servers as compared to UO is that there are true roleplaying reasons for most of the PKing that happens. Sure, there are "grief players" who live just to ruin the fun of others, but that is much less of a problem in EQ then it was for UO (a game that I quit solely because of the PKing problems).

The new games are all going to handle the PvP aspect a little differently. Shadowbane is going to be based almost exclusivly on PvP. Anarchy Online is based more around a team aspect, but the PKing is limited based on your zone. If you're close to a city, there is no PvP. The further you range from the cities, the more liberally you can PK. At a certain range you can only hit people on the other team, while a little further out (in the pure wilderness areas) you can PK anyone that you see. From what I've read about Knights of Camelot, there are solid teams for PvP. You can not even use the interzone chatting options with members of other teams. All you can do is talk to them face to face and kill them.

UO's biggest mistakes, in my opinion, were that a PKer got to take every item that a person owned, and there was no safe area. Sure, now the cities are safe, but that isn't enough to get me back into the game.

I'm fine with PKs. Crime is an element of life, and I would expect it to be part of a game that emulates life.

I'm also fine with heavy-armed player-populated in-game police forces that track down PKs like rabid, drooling dogs.

The key is a carefully balanced design. Such behavior should be (potentially) immensely profitable and immensely dangerous. (i.e. How'd you like to spend your virtual life in prison? Should games have capital punishment?)

Years ago I played a MUD ("Ancient Anguish") on which the wizards (i.e., programmers) came up with two outlets for PKing, which seemed to be very effective at isolating it from the "mainstream" law-abiding players.

One outlet was the establishment of a bounty-hunting system: when someone broke a serious rule, their punishment included the posting of their name to a public "bounty board," which made it legal to PK them until someone collected the bounty (in game money) on their scalp. Thus, PKing was subverted to the service of public order.

The other outlet was the establishment of a voluntary "Society of Killers," whose members were allowed to PK each other and ONLY each other. Members were clearly marked as such, and the Society's hall had another board that kept stats on its their PKing performance and maintained rankings based on those stats. This was very popular and competitive.

Anyone who PKed outside these venues was banned from the game for a certain length of time. But the creation of legal outlets seemed to satisfy the more scoundrelly players; maybe similar measures could be applied to commercial MMORPGs.

I have heard that in Shadowbane you will be able to reach the soft experience cap in two months playing only 2 hours a day. This would then leave you free to be involved in raids, etc. on a fairly equal basis compared with other players. This is intriguing to me as it seems like it could be fun without having to spend 20+ hours a week constantly to keep up for months on end.

I think it is important to realize that PvP and "non-consensual PKing" are not exactly the same thing. PKing is a subset of PvP. Allowing VOLUNTARY PvP like on EQ's PvP or team PvP servers is perfectly OK with me. Likewise, allowing for dueling (by choice) or for designated "arena" zones is fine.

What I don't like is when a game FORCES me to be somebody's unwilling victim. There are times when I want to play an MMORPG but I simply don't feel competitive. I may want to just explore, socialize with my group, or maybe I just want the low level challenge of fighting the AI. If a game allows non-consensual PvP, then some jerk can attack me against my will when I don't want to fight and am not ready to fight. That is no fun for me whatsoever. I simply won't play a game that forces non-consensual PvP (aka PKing) on me. Voluntary PvP on the other hand is OK.

Sharpe (Daniel Ban)

Nobody likes getting assaulted against their will. I was the victim of several PKs when I was playing UO. It sucks.

At the same time -- the game is supposed to emulate life, to a point. Now on UO, there are safe zones and such to regulate PKing, and help you to feel like less of a victim. But to ban (even non-consensual) PvP from an MMORPG would be, bottom line, unrealistic. And I don't think I'd want to play that one, either.

Mr Anonymous,

Who were you on Ancient Anguish? I played that game religiously during my college years, and my wife kept playing until recently. Do the names Tithian, Kelemvor, Ranjiaar, Rach, or Rashka ring any bells?

You mean you were the wizard Ranjiaar, and your wife was Rach the Scyther? Nah, never heard of you. ;)

I usually don't take things too seriously when reading, especially when it comes to games. And while I respect any journalists opinion (most) who can present it in a normal manner... isn't Mulligan taking it a bit far?

Comparing PK's in games to street crime and successful PK's to virtual-rape?

You pay 10, maybe 20 bucks a month to play the game, you can start a character over however many times, blah blah blah. So really, getting stressed out over a PK is complete crap. I can understand where PK'ing or Teamkilling would matter, say in a CTF type game or something (Tribes, etc), but in an RPG where you're just walking along the street and you get killed, I got two words for ya: Tough shit. You may have lost items, or you may have lost something you did for a quest, but hey, I don't think trolls or elves or big dead demon-spawns from hell are gonna care if you don't wanna die, so it's all part of the game. It ain't virtual-rape and it sure as can't be compared to street crimes.

You got a problem with it? Do what they do to PK'ers on tons of servers, have a damn witch-hunt with about 10 other people. Simple as that. Makes the game a helluva lot more fun, too.

(I probably would post this to hpuppy's board if I could find a link, or if it even existed)

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Quote:

It ain't virtual-rape and it sure as can't be compared to street crimes.

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Virtually mugged.
Virtually raped.
Virtually robbed.
Virtually disinterested.

If I want to live a paranoid, hunted existence, I'll get a stalker, thanks. At least they are free. They also don't require me to give up a large chunk of my real life in order to be tortured and abused in a virtual life. that sounds about as entertaining as juggling cactus.

You guys make these games sound like The Sims, only worse.

If you mean me watching you juggle cactus, yes, that'd be highly entertaining. =)

But if you mean me juggling it, no, no thanks, I'd probably pull a gun out and shoot them mid-air, so no more juggling.

"If I want to live a paranoid, hunted existence, I'll get a stalker, thanks. At least they are free. They also don't require me to give up a large chunk of my real life in order to be tortured and abused in a virtual life. that sounds about as entertaining as juggling cactus."

Well, I think there are two issues here.

First, other people always make the most interesting opponents. No computer AI will ever satisfy like another expert human player does.

Second, many people are perfectly happy to play online cooperatively against the computer. They aren't looking for player vs. player combat.

I think where many people err is in letting item #1 override item #2. Your preferences do not give you the right to choose other people's preferences for them. Player combat should always be explicit-- I think EQ has the right idea here, with seperate servers for people who want that sort of environment.

"If I want to live a paranoid, hunted existence, I'll get a stalker, thanks. At least they are free."

Actually, I'm going to have to start taking banner ads. Stalking Tom "no handle" Chick is turning into a full time job!

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com