A worthy read for all MMO players

Always been a fan of Raph Koster since UO, so decided to dig this out of his website and share, as even tho it's an old writing it is still fully relevant now in regards online multiplayer games.

Enjoy.

http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/laws.shtml

My 2 favorite lines are

Never trust the client.
Never put anything on the client. The client is in the hands of the enemy. Never ever ever forget this.

Pleasing your Players
Despite your best intentions, any change will be looked upon as a bad change to a large percentage of your players. Even those who forgot they asked for it to begin with.

If anything, version 1.0 was a little too untrusting of the client and caused severe processing overhead as the server checked every single thing every time you opened your inventory, etc. That said, there was a Market Board transaction spoof exploit a few months back in 2.0 that was caused by too much client trust. It's a balancing act.

#2 is always spot on.

I remember the lagfest of launch because of everything processing server side. It's much improved now - but yes I get that sometimes things get exploited. *shrugs I hope they don't go back to the level of mistrust there used to be. I'd still rather have a 100% usable interface and deal with them back-patching some exploits and rolling characters back than go back to what it was. The former may be "Easier" for them, but it would cause players to once again shelve the game as they did before.

Man Koster and Bartle are like the grandfathers of Multi-User Dimensions/MUDs (Text based MMOs...before they started becoming graphical). Anyhow good read.

Baron's Theorem
Hate is good. This is because conflict drives the formation of social bonds and thus of communities. It is an engine that brings players closer together.

We need more of this.

If any developer tries to follow all those "laws" will just lose all the money invested in the project, as the own writer QUOTE "Any general law about virtual worlds should be read as a challenge rather than as a guideline."

Can't say it's not a good article because it's not an article at all, just a lot of quotes, most are subjective and others contradictory.

If i have to quote one of my liking this is the one:

Quote:

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Is it a game?
It's a SERVICE. Not a game. It's a WORLD. Not a game. It's a COMMUNITY. Not a game. Anyone who says, "it's just a game" is missing the point.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by TheUltimate3

Baron's Theorem
Hate is good. This is because conflict drives the formation of social bonds and thus of communities. It is an engine that brings players closer together.

We need more of this.

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Pretty amusing that this is relevant to my FFXI experience. I started as an Elvaan in San d'Oria, and upon my first trip to Bastok, I had a good time throwing out some general racial slurs about the Hume populace there. :)