The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games - Michael J. Tresca [84]
Game developers work hard to make the game challenging for all levels, but part of high-level status is that players feel they shouldn’t have to work as hard. Although the sliding scale may appeal to designers as a means of sustaining the Sisyphean grind, high-level players can become frustrated that the game doesn’t get easier.
In tabletop role-playing games, this notion of status didn’t exist beyond small groups. A player who played for a long time or had a high-level character was accorded status, perhaps due to metagame advantages like hosting the game or owning all the rulebooks. But his status only extended to other gamers he played with. Encountering another player and showing him a high-level character sheet might engender suspicion—certainly, the player could simply have created a high-level character and claimed he had actually played through all the required hurdles to achieve such power.
MMORPGs and MUDs, however, have an agreed-upon rules set, the “nature” referenced by Castronova. Therefore, there is a basic agreed-upon understanding that high-level characters have “earned” their keep. They might be accused of cheating, but the cheating took place within the framework of the game’s advancement structure. Thus, their status is considerably more widespread because multiplayer online games tend to be massive, often numbering players in the thousands.
RetroMUD eschewed the massive multiplayer “endless levels” system and committed to 100 levels, with the ability to “remort.” Remorting allows players who have reached 100th level to begin again with exclusive races available only to 100th-level characters. RetroMUD modulates levels through experience point modifiers by race; the more powerful races receive experience points at a slower rate.
Conclusion
There is much to learn from the territory where MUDs have tread. Many of the innovations later introduced to MMORPGs and tabletop RPGs were play-tested and refined on MUDs. MUDs had prestige classes, expanded playable races beyond traditional Middle-earth tropes, and cemented standardized rules for eating, sleeping, age, and size long before they were formally introduced into tabletop play. EverQuest’s parser was surprisingly similar to DIKU. Sworn affidavits confirmed that EverQuest was not explicitly built using DIKU code, but the MMORPG was clearly inspired by it (Taylor 2006:144).
MMORPGs are even adopting the financial models that make MUDs successful. Unlike MMORPGs, commercial MUDs moved away from a monthly fee, instead allowing players to play for free but requiring them to purchase in-game benefits. This low barrier to entry has the added advantage of attracting new players. It also takes advantage of the status competition of leveling systems. Those playing for free might be tempted to buy their way to power by spending funds on in-game advantages. Dungeons & Dragons Online recently adopted this model when it became Dungeons & Dragons Online Unlimited. We’ll discuss Dungeons & Dragons Online in more detail in the MMORPG chapter.
SEVEN
COMPUTER ROLE-PLAYING GAMES
We were one of those fortunate groups to gain the use of a 4K (4,000 bit) memory, BASIC speaking microcomputer. We mentioned to several fellow DMs and gamers of our plans to program it to handle role playing games (D&D, Boot Hill), and to my surprise there was a lot of concern about letting a machine become a part of role playing games. Well, either I did a lousy job of explaining the planned programming (possible as I am by no stretch of the imagination a computer scientist, merely a gamer looking for new ways to use technology in gaming) or the concern was unwarranted. As any of our group of gamers can testify,