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UO's "Mage Tower" and socialization
Amaranthar
Member EpicPosts: 5,851
PART ONE
To me, the story of "The Mage Towers" in UO was perhaps the greatest story of Player interaction in all of MMORPG-dom.
Let me first explain what this was and how it came to be.
There was a site dedicated to UO that started during Alpha. It was very active. I don't remember the name of the site, but they had a forum dedicated to Magery called "The Mage Tower."
Spectre was the primary Mod on this forum.
In discussions, players realized the value of training together to raise skills faster, and to learn the intricacies of the Skills involved in Magery.
UO was good at intricate design.
So, it was decided that each shard would strive to build a "Mage Tower", a tower that players could build, and then use it like a Guild headquarters for training and learning the do's and don'ts.
Since UO had open world PvP, they set a rule that players at the Mage Towers would not kill each other or carry out vendettas while there. It was for mutual benefit through training. And this rule, lacking any game code for support, was followed very well for the first few years of the game.
Building these Mage Towers became a race between the shards. The shard of Great Lakes won this race. Towers were expensive and it wasn't an easy task at the start of the game, when players all needed gold for personal use.
Spectre himself was the organizer on Great Lakes, and led that shard to win the race to be first.
These Mage Towers eventually fell to abuse, PKing, and just what you'd expect, but after a long period of cooperation.
It was a sort of Camelot story, which I found fascinating.
Now, though, the question is, what can be learned from this?
It had great Player Interaction and cooperation, was a great benefit to the Mages that were involved (quite a number of them, too), and also served as a meeting place for Dungeon explorations and other joint Player efforts (fairs to sell and trade goods, etc.).
But as I said, it all fell apart like the story of Camelot, in the end.
To me, if UO had had the ability to add non-Player (active) defenses to Player buildings, those Mage Towers might still exist even today.
Such things as:
- Player owned NPC Guards
- Magical Ward Sigils set to attack any who assault others (including thieves)
- Pets dedicated to act as Guards
- Teleporters to cities with Guards
and whatever else.
Also a working Justice System, where Characters can lose Skills and Stats for going criminal, would be a help.
Socialness between Players is a great thing that's sorely underserved in MMORPGs. And the best socialization comes about when it's real, and not just a fixed code design for a short term Quest or other similar thing.
But this needs help if the game allows Players to interact in negative ways.
To me, the story of "The Mage Towers" in UO was perhaps the greatest story of Player interaction in all of MMORPG-dom.
Let me first explain what this was and how it came to be.
There was a site dedicated to UO that started during Alpha. It was very active. I don't remember the name of the site, but they had a forum dedicated to Magery called "The Mage Tower."
Spectre was the primary Mod on this forum.
In discussions, players realized the value of training together to raise skills faster, and to learn the intricacies of the Skills involved in Magery.
UO was good at intricate design.
So, it was decided that each shard would strive to build a "Mage Tower", a tower that players could build, and then use it like a Guild headquarters for training and learning the do's and don'ts.
Since UO had open world PvP, they set a rule that players at the Mage Towers would not kill each other or carry out vendettas while there. It was for mutual benefit through training. And this rule, lacking any game code for support, was followed very well for the first few years of the game.
Building these Mage Towers became a race between the shards. The shard of Great Lakes won this race. Towers were expensive and it wasn't an easy task at the start of the game, when players all needed gold for personal use.
Spectre himself was the organizer on Great Lakes, and led that shard to win the race to be first.
These Mage Towers eventually fell to abuse, PKing, and just what you'd expect, but after a long period of cooperation.
It was a sort of Camelot story, which I found fascinating.
Now, though, the question is, what can be learned from this?
It had great Player Interaction and cooperation, was a great benefit to the Mages that were involved (quite a number of them, too), and also served as a meeting place for Dungeon explorations and other joint Player efforts (fairs to sell and trade goods, etc.).
But as I said, it all fell apart like the story of Camelot, in the end.
To me, if UO had had the ability to add non-Player (active) defenses to Player buildings, those Mage Towers might still exist even today.
Such things as:
- Player owned NPC Guards
- Magical Ward Sigils set to attack any who assault others (including thieves)
- Pets dedicated to act as Guards
- Teleporters to cities with Guards
and whatever else.
Also a working Justice System, where Characters can lose Skills and Stats for going criminal, would be a help.
Socialness between Players is a great thing that's sorely underserved in MMORPGs. And the best socialization comes about when it's real, and not just a fixed code design for a short term Quest or other similar thing.
But this needs help if the game allows Players to interact in negative ways.
Once upon a time....
Comments
UO proved that socialization is desirable by Players on a grander scale than just Guilds.
There were other aspects to this besides this story of the Mage Towers, such as Players forming "Colleges", multi-shard guilds, running trade fairs, PvP contests, etc.
Giving Players tools to help facilitate this is important, IMO.
The purpose here is to come up with more things, ideas, to enhance Player interactions for a more social game.
So if you have any ideas, don't be shy (like that's a problem around here, lol).
Once upon a time....
There were a lot more decent players than PKers, but the PKers were like rabid dogs.
I went with a group to clean out the PKers around Brit once.
One of my favorite moment was busting up a gang near the Dungeon north of there. One "red" and 3 "blues" doing the looting, in an ambush. I had just gotten the Lightning Bolt spell and it was as good as advertised.
I joined a guild of "Anti-PKers" that had a tower in Orc (or Rat) Valley, and defended the area from PKers and looters around the Orc spawn line. That was a good guild to be in. They all knew what they were doing. Our adventures were legendary, to coin a phrase.
Once upon a time....
Someone who is registered as being a flex offender is a person who feels the need to flex about everything they say.
Always be the guy that paints the house in the dark.
Lucidity can be forged with enough liquidity and pharmed for decades with enough compound interest that a reachable profit would never end.
And have the OP tried new mmorpg and find any of them interesting.
No, I haven't played any new MMORPGs. I'm perfectly capable of reading about them and getting insight about the general take on things. I miss specifics sometimes, but it's the general direction of a game design that I'm looking at because there's the first point of interest.
These points of interest include Player interaction and socialization, first and foremost.
Not just within a guild setting, but overall in the wider gamer world.
It's easy to see when a game has too much division among players through the levelling power gains. Those big numbers. That division usually breaks the players base down into sub-categories that keeps them away from each other in almost all aspects of game play.
When computers were first coming into the picture, back when I played D&D, we used to talk about what computers could bring for gaming. Creating worlds, etc.
Even then we could see that D&D's system would divide players. I went to some game conventions where DMs were running their games, with multiple tables set up by ranges of class levels. Because 5th level characters couldn't play with 10th level characters, etc.
Thinking about a world to experience, and all those other players running the gamut of level ranges, it was pretty easy to see there was a problem there, as far a "world."
As in a single world running continuously as the backdrop, in a simulation of RL, if fantasy or science fiction were "real."
That's what I'm looking for. UO had it. EVE had it, but I want a character that can run around and explore, etc. Some others might have been close to it but not close enough.
The current state of most games just ignore it completely.
ESO added scaling to fix this problem, as some others have, and that allows for this "one world" feel but ruins the meaning of advancement.
Every game I've played had great things in them. But lacking that "one world" feel, or that meaningful place in said world (what scaling removes), isn't what I want.
That story I told about the Mage Towers,
and the similarity to Camelot,
cannot happen in any other type of game. Yet it's so typical of RL human experience. Because it was an actual human event, but played out in a simulation game. Not just any game, a game that was built for such things.
This is what "We Create Worlds" was about.
Once upon a time....
But in my experience with everything from MMOs to Gary's Mod RP servers,
The big benefit of player initiated content is also its biggest flaw,
It all depends on the right people having the right attitudes to keep it going.
I think the best thing devs can do to support players in this type of content is to formalize it with in game mechanics to make the "RP" enforceable.
What if a mage's guild or a college was an actual organization type you can make in the game with rules governing what it can do and how players interact with it?
Same for player ran competitions,
What if it was an actual competition was supported by enforceable mechanics?
Scoring, prizes, whatever.
This verges into the, actual player made content rather than just player interactions, side of things.
And it does require the devs to add more rules and options over time so it is more labor intensive than other sandbox designs.
But I tend to think making things as clear as possible to what players can do in game goes a long way in encouraging creativity.
You can't use a tool to be creative if you don't know it exists.
A perspective that comes mostly from non MMO sim games.
Plus a dev could add more building designations, guild types, etc over time to add variety to a game.
What I'd suggest is an expanded "guild" system that can be used by any "entity", be it guild, player build and run city, or organization such as a temple group, an "explorer's league", a Fishing council, or as the post talked about, any Mage Towers that groups of players want to be a part of.
This expanded system can include tools for rank, voting, section chiefs, etc.
Each tool can be turned on or off by one or more of the leadership (which can be changed via elections.
An important point would be the charter, things that can only be changed with a vote, otherwise set in stone.
A system like this could be used by any organized player effort. It should be stackable to allow for "sub-chapters", too.
Another important point, there is only so much you can do. Some things would have to be left up to leadership players to perform.
And if they don't, the membership can leave, or fight it through elections or any other tools designed for this.
I think there's a way, and I think it would open up MMORPGs into an entirely new social stratosphere.
Once upon a time....
At that rate it might be worthwhile to create supporting social mechanics to the game
Like a guild forum or a fishing club "wiki"
Built directly into the game, but also accessible outside of the game.
Maybe connect it to discord or something.
With guild membership acting as moderators
Or GMs being the super jannies of the in-game social platform
Make it so when you sign up for the game you sign up for the in game fantasy "reddit" as well, eg r/enchanting, r/rogueguides (hopefully with less toxicity)
Except all these communities would have physical representation in the game as guild halls, schools, towers etc.
So r/enchanting is owned by the Enchanter's College and it has an actual physical school in the game as well as an in-game subreddit and enchanting wiki.
This would shift things away from just being a game, but more a community and a hobby
UO had a "Bulletin Board" that acted basically like a forum without the thread separations. It was an item that you "used" (a gump popped up) and could be hung on any wall. For house owners, for their own house.
Add the thread capability for better organization and it's like a regular forum.
But make it a book instead of a bulletin board. A large tome. And place it anywhere in your house, tower, castle, temple, or guildhouse.
Give a few basic rules that can be toggled to restrict its use, or not, to (anyone/guild members/ranked members).
Keep the Bulletin Board item for outside walls, for outsiders to leave a message.
Heck, allow multiple books that each can be given a title, so they can be used for different topics. Messages, historical info, private quest info, membership info and ranks, you get the idea.
Players used those Bulletin Boards in UO a lot, mostly for economic business at player homes that had a lot of NPC vendors. They'd ask questions like "is there anything you need?" They'd take special orders from wandering players, fill the orders and drop them in a vendor by name and leave a message to that person for which vendor had the order. They'd leave messages about going away for a week on vacation. etc.
"This would shift things away from just being a game, but more a community and a hobby"
Yes. That's what I want to see. I don't want to jump around from one game to another and have them end. I want depth, and I want a simulation to a world, and all of that.
Once upon a time....
I think I recognize some of the posters and am pretty sure they haven't changed their profile pictures in over 10 years.
Whatever my opinions were back then but I probably don't stand by them.
I want to see:
- exciting dungeons,
- discoveries galore as one of the prime focuses of the game (including skills/abilities, crafting, lore, astrology, experimentation, etc.),
- better AI,
- etc., etc., etc.
Frankly, I think this is where MMORPGs have to go to advance.
Great games in Worldly simulations, to create more than "just a game."
Once upon a time....
I think I remember a Cactus, did you actually use a cactus picture before?
Fractured Online had a deal with Gamigo that fell through. So far as I know they are working on getting their own server running so that those that put money into it can at least play that already completed again.
My old avatar is basically the same as my current one, Zardoz.
Thinking about this and other things that happened in Eve led me to think about "guild" or "entity" structure and their properties and cash.
Someone in Eve stole Alliance funds and sold it in RMT to make a down payment for a RL house. I'm sure this is or was a somewhat common occurrence, and can happen in any socialized game of this kind of depth.
I think having multiple leadership sign off on moving ownership of anything, through the use of a checking system, recipient name included.
I wish these forums were as active as they used to be. There's room for a lot of discussion in MMORPGs. In years gone by, this thread would have had hundreds of replies, just like many others that I see on the front page.
This isn't a healthy sign, sadly.
Once upon a time....
To some degree behavior like that is kind of fun, obviously not at the expense of actually ruining the game for someone,
But it is the basis of why games like Among Us, Town of Salem and Decieve Inc. are fun, social deduction and villainy.
Of course you know what you are getting into and aren't actually getting robbed.
I wonder if there is a way to harness those troll like behaviors into actual fun gameplay for everyone?
Trying to find the mole in the guild could actually be some fun gameplay.
BUT, and this is a big "but", you need it to be complete, with the steps players can take to prevent the out-of-game betrayals and abuses.
Just like the "check writing" system in the post you replied to, there are answers to this issue. Protections from players who can easily ruin things "just because."
In the case of the Mage Tower (from the OP), as previously mentioned, there can be 24 hour defensive automations (magical or Sci-Fi) to help prevent attacks from within by a few who just want to ruin it.
Then you can also add a War System to allow the battles, like with Camelot, if there's a force strong enough to carry it out. This allows players, by their numbers, to decide how things go.
Rather than just hit and run ganking that you can't do anything about.
I don't know the details of Eve's systems involved in that Goonswarm thing, but there may be some answers from that experience.
Once upon a time....