Old news


“Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives, from day to day, by the small wages which he acquires? We may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean and perish, the moment he leaves her.” (“Of the Original Contract”)

Asked David Hume, and that old debate seems as fresh as ever – at least it’s a constant cause of disagreement among those interested in virtual worlds, e.g. this thread.

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So they thought they could mainstream gaming, study it and lay bare all its secrets? Thought they could clean it up and make room for newcomers who would be judged on their merits alone? Well, they thought wrong (‘they’ often do).
As always, the old-timers find ways of remaining exclusive. As is often the case this happens by inventing slang or even entire codes that only the initiated can negotiate safely. Leetspeek had to happen.
Here’s this blog in Leetspeek, courtesy of The l33t Surfer.

Risk-free societies

I’m quite bored with the Disneyworld approach to social interaction strived for by several MMORPGs. I think I’m ready for something more PvP soon – and a bit of permadeath wouldn’t hurt either. Also, it seems increasingly self-defeating to me to instate rules that roleplaying can never be an excuse to violate the be-nice rules of EULAs. I think my dream MMORPG would have PvP, permadeath (or at least something close) and an advancement system which made sure that even newbies could “physically” threaten experienced players. Oh, and now that I’m reading from the wish-list I would also like to see worlds in which choices actually had long-term consequences even if it meant upsetting carefully established gameplay balances. But I guess I’ve ranted on this before.