As T'rath has pierced the veil, so will I, and so will my life become complete in a good death. Jin VOTE FOR STARMOURN
Tecton-Today at 6:17 PM
teehee b.u.t.t. pirates
GrootToday at 2:16 PM if there's no kittens in space I'm going on a rampage TectonToday at 2:17 PM They're called w'hoorn, Groot sets out a saucer of milk
Exp penalties for dying are so 90s/early oughties. If you ask me, we should get rid of that.
Lorewise though, the used method brings an interesting question - are you still you after you die and get cloned? Or just a different being with your old memories and personality?
Hardly a new existential question, I know. Most media with cloning-based immortality try to tackle it with various degrees of success. Still, it's something more complex than other IRE games where it's clearly shown that it's your soul coming back to life, so you are still yourself.
Lorewise though, the used method brings an interesting question - are you still you after you die and get cloned? Or just a different being with your old memories and personality?
Hardly a new existential question, I know. Most media with cloning-based immortality try to tackle it with various degrees of success. Still, it's something more complex than other IRE games where it's clearly shown that it's your soul coming back to life, so you are still yourself.
It'll be something everyone's likely to have different views on in game, and a fun idea to play around with for those whose answer isn't "I try not to think about it".
I agree that experience penalties for death are unnecessary and should be done away with. Death is its own punishment and I don't think that XP loss leads to anything other than butthurt and worsened consequences for griefing.
"They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty." — Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before." — Margaret Atwood
Playing a Jin, I am trying to ICly rationalize the reasoning for wanting to bring the self back. Then again, knowing me and how I tend to die in games, falling off a cliff is hardly a worthy or good death...
Death without a penalty is boring and trivial. I prefer experience penalties for death and I hope they keep them. I also love that they're doing corpse runs. I miss this functionality from back when all games had it. Make death matter. Make death hurt.
Death without a penalty is boring and trivial. I prefer experience penalties for death and I hope they keep them. I also love that they're doing corpse runs. I miss this functionality from back when all games had it. Make death matter. Make death hurt.
Death in IRE games is already boring and trivial, penalty or not. Dunno how your experience looked like, but when I used to play death was never meaningful. In PvE it was "woopsie I did a bad", and in PvP penalties for dying never stopped anyone (as opposed to the obligatory time out while you pray for salvation - which is good, because if combatants could pop back up instantly, raids would never end). If there's a fight going on, you don't stop because you lost too much exp so it's too painful to continue. You fight and fight and die, until your side either wins or loses, and let the future you recoup the losses later. Exp penalties do not change anything because losing exp is neither an objective nor a fail state.
In short, all penalties change is that you have to grind more exp later. It's not exciting or meaningful, just frustrating and adds more busywork. If you want a game with meaningful character death, you should play tabletop or something.
Short of imposing stiffer death penalties such as a % decrease in skills, stats, loss of gear, loss of gear durability, or other such penalties, experience is the closest thing to being a penalty without being too stiff. I fully believe that death should come with mechanical downsides. Experience is just what IRE happens to default to.
What's better is 'downtime.' Like having to pray for salvation, or wait for your ship to be built, or just not be able to PVP for a bit that increases each time you die consecutively.
Death without a penalty is boring and trivial. I prefer experience penalties for death and I hope they keep them. I also love that they're doing corpse runs. I miss this functionality from back when all games had it. Make death matter. Make death hurt.
Death in IRE games is already boring and trivial, penalty or not. Dunno how your experience looked like, but when I used to play death was never meaningful. In PvE it was "woopsie I did a bad", and in PvP penalties for dying never stopped anyone (as opposed to the obligatory time out while you pray for salvation - which is good, because if combatants could pop back up instantly, raids would never end). If there's a fight going on, you don't stop because you lost too much exp so it's too painful to continue. You fight and fight and die, until your side either wins or loses, and let the future you recoup the losses later. Exp penalties do not change anything because losing exp is neither an objective nor a fail state.
In short, all penalties change is that you have to grind more exp later. It's not exciting or meaningful, just frustrating and adds more busywork. If you want a game with meaningful character death, you should play tabletop or something.
I admit... this is one of the things that attracts me about Sindome but I get that most people do not find the idea of permadeath much fun.
Edit: I do agree that EXP penalties on death are boring and I have always ignored them completely. On the other hand I do not have a genius idea about how to solve the problem of how to deal with the mechanics of in game death that would appeal to the majority of people and style of IRE games. Sad face.
If we're going to throw ideas around here then I'll agree with Pollivar's - if you have to punish players for dying, make it downtime. Loss of experience is counter intuitive: in PvE it means you are punished for grinding by more grinding, and in PvP as I said, neither win nor lose states of a fight have anything to do with character experience. On the other hand, anything more serious would be too much. Permadeath included. It's a bad idea in online video game RP in general, if you add in real currency elements then it becomes a nightmare.
If we're going to throw ideas around here then I'll agree with Pollivar's - if you have to punish players for dying, make it downtime. Loss of experience is counter intuitive: in PvE it means you are punished for grinding by more grinding, and in PvP as I said, neither win nor lose states of a fight have anything to do with character experience. On the other hand, anything more serious would be too much. Permadeath included. It's a bad idea in online video game RP in general, if you add in real currency elements then it becomes a nightmare.
I meant that I like permadeath, nothing more. I do not think it would work in IRE games or should even considered worthy of discussion in relation to their games. I just in general like it as a method of dealing with in game death.
@Errant — I'm a fan of permadeath but I also recognise that IRE game aren't games that suit it. These aren't RPIs with a focus on gritty immersion and cooperative storytelling. These are competitive, wish-fulfilment vehicles with a focus on living vicariously through your character and 'winning' by stomping over and being better than everyone else. They're different animals. One encourages you to create a flawed character distinct from yourself; the other encourages you to create the best and baddest version of yourself.
You see evidence of this even in the way that targeted emotes are handled. RPIs refer to your character in the third-person, no matter whose perspective it's from; IRE/balance MUDs serve up the story to each audience of one in second-person. You attack X, X attacks you. Dying in IRE games is being a loser. It's being dunked on. Nobody wants to be that guy. It isn't just your character who loses a fight, it's you. Can you imagine the butthurt if you were to add completely losing your character to that?
Speaking of butthurt though, I think people really underestimate the humiliation of defeat. Nobody likes losing/dying. Saying you want an XP penalty because you want death to hurt is nonsense. Death already upsets people. What an XP penalty does is discourage people.
MKO had its fair share of butthurt but what it also had was a higher level of player-engagement in PvP compared to any other IRE MUD I've played. If you were a non-com on MKO, you were the weirdo. In other IREs, that's the norm; you're either the baddest of asses, or you let those few true badasses fight your battles for you. PvPers *cough* Killers *cough* love to cry 'omggg no one engages in PvP any more this game suuuucks u r all a bunch of pussies!' yet ironically they also seem to be the most vocal advocates of making death/loss as humiliating and painful as possible. It's counterproductive. The reason MKO had such a healthy PvP atmosphere compared to other IRE games is you honestly had very little to lose. If you suck and die a lot, well it's not like you lost more than 5 minutes of your time waiting for rez; you wouldn't have had any warpoints to lose in the first place (different, parallel system) but you did help the better combatants in your city by serving as good cannon-fodder. But if you win? You stand a chance of gaining a bunch of warpoints for a lucky kill-shot, and glory from your city for those little David vs. Goliath moment. Speaking as someone who always sucked at combat on MKO, no one ever hated or criticised me for it, because I was always game to roll the dice anyway. Opponents were happy for an easy target and allies were happy that at least I'm trying.
We should have that in Starmourn. A healthy spirit of competition that lets you engage at any level — because what have you got to lose? — rather than making you feel like if you can't be the best, there's no point in trying at all, because you'll only be hurting and embarrassing yourself. Negative incentives (like permadeath and XP loss) shouldn't be seen as cornerstones of a competitive environment. They are antithetical to it. Death hurts on RPIs and carries consequence because death is supposed to be rare. Do we want death and consequently combat to be rare on Starmourn?
"They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty." — Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before." — Margaret Atwood
@Errant — I'm a fan of permadeath but I also recognise that IRE game aren't games that suit it. These aren't RPIs with a focus on gritty immersion and cooperative storytelling. These are competitive, wish-fulfilment vehicles with a focus on living vicariously through your character and 'winning' by stomping over and being better than everyone else. They're different animals. One encourages you to create a flawed character distinct from yourself; the other encourages you to create the best and baddest version of yourself.
You see evidence of this even in the way that targeted emotes are handled. RPIs refer to your character in the third-person, no matter whose perspective it's from; IRE/balance MUDs serve up the story to each audience of one in second-person. You attack X, X attacks you. Dying in IRE games is being a loser. It's being dunked on. Nobody wants to be that guy. It isn't just your character who loses a fight, it's you. Can you imagine the butthurt if you were to add completely losing your character to that?
Speaking of butthurt though, I think people really underestimate the humiliation of defeat. Nobody likes losing/dying. Saying you want an XP penalty because you want death to hurt is nonsense. Death already upsets people. What an XP penalty does is discourage people.
MKO had its fair share of butthurt but what it also had was a higher level of player-engagement in PvP compared to any other IRE MUD I've played. If you were a non-com on MKO, you were the weirdo. In other IREs, that's the norm; you're either the baddest of asses, or you let those few true badasses fight your battles for you. PvPers *cough* Killers *cough* love to cry 'omggg no one engages in PvP any more this game suuuucks u r all a bunch of pussies!' yet ironically they also seem to be the most vocal advocates of making death/loss as humiliating and painful as possible. It's counterproductive. The reason MKO had such a healthy PvP atmosphere compared to other IRE games is you honestly had very little to lose. If you suck and die a lot, well it's not like you lost more than 5 minutes of your time waiting for rez; you wouldn't have had any warpoints to lose in the first place (different, parallel system) but you did help the better combatants in your city by serving as good cannon-fodder. But if you win? You stand a chance of gaining a bunch of warpoints for a lucky kill-shot, and glory from your city for those little David vs. Goliath moment. Speaking as someone who always sucked at combat on MKO, no one ever hated or criticised me for it, because I was always game to roll the dice anyway. Opponents were happy for an easy target and allies were happy that at least I'm trying.
We should have that in Starmourn. A healthy spirit of competition that lets you engage at any level — because what have you got to lose? — rather than making you feel like if you can't be the best, there's no point in trying at all, because you'll only be hurting and embarrassing yourself. Negative incentives (like permadeath and XP loss) shouldn't be seen as cornerstones of a competitive environment. They are antithetical to it. Death hurts on RPIs and carries consequence because death is supposed to be rare. Do we want death and consequently combat to be rare on Starmourn?
I absolutely agree. I do think we as players should also do what can to encouraged promotion of a health competitive spirit in the game, though. The mechanics will be what they will be, and maybe we can influence that as well. But the best we can do, I think, and probably the best way we can influence others is to encourage people to treat others in that way. Be reasonable and appreciative of our allies, and not overly belittle our enemies. (I'm sure we'll have some trash talk and there's nothing wrong with that either.) Hopefully we can make that happen.
I think people really underestimate the humiliation of defeat. Nobody likes losing/dying. Saying you want an XP penalty because you want death to hurt is nonsense. Death already upsets people. What an XP penalty does is discourage people.
The use of "people" three times in this snippet is misleading. It really means "some people" or "people like me".
I, personally, do not get humiliated by defeat. The very, very rare times I pvp, I expect to lose, so there is no humiliation. Losing in PvE is usually a solo thing, so what's to get humiliated about? But, as I pointed out, that's a personal opinion, and not one I would attempt to paint all "people" with.
I, for one, want a mechanical penalty. I don't care if it is XP, but it seems to work, and has for almost 2 decades across various games I've played. Again, I said "for one", admitting that my stance is not universally accepted.
The "some people" or "people like me" comes in again with the statement of "death already upsets people". That is entirely subjective and far from universal. The same applies to "what an XP penalty does is discourage people". For some, it is energizing, possibly even more so if given a chance to get it back, like with these corpse runs that the devs spelled out to get back your "INR". https://www.starmourn.com/2017/10/12/death-in-starmourn/
Assuming that certain points of view apply to all is a good way to alienate sections of a playerbase. A better way to go about it, is for the devs to decide what kind of game they want to make, be open and upfront about it, and then not change horses midstream. That way no one feels blindsided or mistreated, and the folks that want that style are happy and the ones that can deal with are content. The ones that don't, well, they don't have anyone but themselves to blame because it was never a secret or surprise as to how it was going to work.
Some people really care about the numbers. They hate to lose that little bit of experience and so won't participate in pvp. My reality is that experience is there to be spent. It comes and goes and isn't that important, but not everyone feels the same way and caring about the numbers for the numbers' sake is still a valid way to play.
In my experience though, most people that are timid about pvp seem more scared of losing not because of the exp, but some other reasons - I suspect a common one is that they feel shame when they lose.
Breaking free of the mindset that pvp death is something to avoid at all cost isn't easy, but is a liberating experience that I recommend. It will open the game up for you.
If you're someone that has been too attached to your character's reputation to get into pvp (and the losses that come with learning how), consider changing it up in Starmourn. We're all starting equal here, no one has a reputation to uphold, and you have all the time in the world to play the fully established character with a reputation later. Give it a shot.
@Indi — I agree with everything you said, 100% — although at the same time, I would levy that advice not just towards the timid people afraid to get their feet wet, but also towards the cocky deathlords who run the scene. They're the ones who stand the most to benefit from a conflict-rich atmosphere, and they're the ones who should be taking it upon themselves to sell the scene so that more people take an interest in participating. They're very often the ones who drive people away from wanting to participate.
MKO, the IRE MUD I played the longest (and was a somewhat active mid-range PvPer in), had some stellar players like Akaxi and Raelyr who were not only incredibly skilled, but also incredibly personable, approachable, welcoming and graceful in their victories. I have fond memories of Akaxi asking my character for a duel — he never jumped anyone, to my knowledge, only followed them to demand a fight — which undoubtedly I would lose, but he would afterwards politely thank me and offer respect for my willingness to engage. Contrast this with the sadly more common attitude of following up with a yell/shout rubbing it in to tell everyone what a loser so-and-so is and how they really can't fight and/or used cheap tactics or are an embarrassment to the org they lead or whatever else. It's everyone's responsibility to make competition sporting and welcoming, and to remove the stigma of defeat.
"They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty." — Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before." — Margaret Atwood
In Everquest we just made sure to have enough "safety exp" to avoid losing a level before doing anything potentially dangerous... But, we could also get revives to get some of the exp back if we did die... It adds to the danger element, makes people second guess their choices. "Is this going to be worth the potential loss of exp?"
Hey @Indi If I could, I'd like to add one more. The people that simply don't enjoy it. I don't want that much stress/excitement/adrenaline in my game. I'm here to relax, not kick off my fight-or-flight reflexes. So I avoid PvP, as every time I have done it, I've found it to be very intense. Not worried about losing anything, shame isn't involved, I just don't find PvP to be fun. I'm guessing I'm not the only one.
@bairloch that means you fall into the category that doesn’t find exp too precious to risk losing. The fact you don’t enjoy the pvp is a separate thing entirely.
@Kestrel Those people will talk shit whether you fight them or not. Some people are just arseholes. Run your own race. Remember this: “Other people’s opinion of me is none of my business.” - I forget who I am quoting but this has helped me in life.
I've played Achaea the most of any MUD. I had two goals, one - to become a dragon and two - to finally get engaged in PvP. The thing I hated was that I could not realistically pursue both of those items at the same time. So what ended up happening is that I never participated in PvP until I got dragon, which took me two or three times of quitting the game and coming back to it because the grind was crazy (my own fault for spending the time this way, but I've always been goal oriented). The exp loss from PvP made me feel inefficient and I knew starting out I would die A LOT. So it really effected my time and enjoyment of Achaea. I eventually did get dragon and did get into PvP and was glad to have done both, but I think it literally added a year or more of time to that journey with multiple bouts of inactivity.
Two: This is somewhat related. I never understood the idea of 'tanks' in Achaea. A 'tank' would get charged depending on the amount of people that died. So if my city was being raided only the strongest were supposed to defend. Now, the city still encouraged new players and non-PvPers to help in defense but they knew it would ultimately lead to the enemy winning more quickly. I absolutely hated this and I really think @Kestrel is on to something.
Please don't make ANY mechanics that might hold people back from PvPing if you want it to be a healthy PvP environment for new players or just players who want to participate. The learning curve is steep enough, not to mention artefact gaps.
If it's meant to be "free to play", you should have a loss in those situations. Even if you're not spending cash, you're spending a lot of your own invaluable time.
It's not free, just because you're not spending cash.
I haven't been involved in any IRE MUDs since MKO shut down, but I was feeling nostalgic today and thought I'd skim the other IRE forums to see some of the old threads discussing MKO's final days. I stumbled across this thread in the forum search and because my character was mentioned I thought I'd respond to say it warms my heart to be remembered so fondly. So, thanks, @Kestrel!
And while I'm at it I'll say hello to any other MKO vets who remember Akaxi or my admin name, Ka-hooli. I hope everyone is enjoying Starmourn!
I haven't been involved in any IRE MUDs since MKO shut down, but I was feeling nostalgic today and thought I'd skim the other IRE forums to see some of the old threads discussing MKO's final days. I stumbled across this thread in the forum search and because my character was mentioned I thought I'd respond to say it warms my heart to be remembered so fondly. So, thanks, @Kestrel!
And while I'm at it I'll say hello to any other MKO vets who remember Akaxi or my admin name, Ka-hooli. I hope everyone is enjoying Starmourn!
Good to see you around, Akaxi! Don't be a stranger now, we'd love to have you around! (This is your contemporary Prandur saying hi)
Comments
https://wiki.starmourn.com/Death
Jin
VOTE FOR STARMOURN
if there's no kittens in space
I'm going on a rampage
TectonToday at 2:17 PM
They're called w'hoorn, Groot
sets out a saucer of milk
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood
Edit: I do agree that EXP penalties on death are boring and I have always ignored them completely. On the other hand I do not have a genius idea about how to solve the problem of how to deal with the mechanics of in game death that would appeal to the majority of people and style of IRE games. Sad face.
You see evidence of this even in the way that targeted emotes are handled. RPIs refer to your character in the third-person, no matter whose perspective it's from; IRE/balance MUDs serve up the story to each audience of one in second-person. You attack X, X attacks you. Dying in IRE games is being a loser. It's being dunked on. Nobody wants to be that guy. It isn't just your character who loses a fight, it's you. Can you imagine the butthurt if you were to add completely losing your character to that?
Speaking of butthurt though, I think people really underestimate the humiliation of defeat. Nobody likes losing/dying. Saying you want an XP penalty because you want death to hurt is nonsense. Death already upsets people. What an XP penalty does is discourage people.
MKO had its fair share of butthurt but what it also had was a higher level of player-engagement in PvP compared to any other IRE MUD I've played. If you were a non-com on MKO, you were the weirdo. In other IREs, that's the norm; you're either the baddest of asses, or you let those few true badasses fight your battles for you. PvPers *cough* Killers *cough* love to cry 'omggg no one engages in PvP any more this game suuuucks u r all a bunch of pussies!' yet ironically they also seem to be the most vocal advocates of making death/loss as humiliating and painful as possible. It's counterproductive. The reason MKO had such a healthy PvP atmosphere compared to other IRE games is you honestly had very little to lose. If you suck and die a lot, well it's not like you lost more than 5 minutes of your time waiting for rez; you wouldn't have had any warpoints to lose in the first place (different, parallel system) but you did help the better combatants in your city by serving as good cannon-fodder. But if you win? You stand a chance of gaining a bunch of warpoints for a lucky kill-shot, and glory from your city for those little David vs. Goliath moment. Speaking as someone who always sucked at combat on MKO, no one ever hated or criticised me for it, because I was always game to roll the dice anyway. Opponents were happy for an easy target and allies were happy that at least I'm trying.
We should have that in Starmourn. A healthy spirit of competition that lets you engage at any level — because what have you got to lose? — rather than making you feel like if you can't be the best, there's no point in trying at all, because you'll only be hurting and embarrassing yourself. Negative incentives (like permadeath and XP loss) shouldn't be seen as cornerstones of a competitive environment. They are antithetical to it. Death hurts on RPIs and carries consequence because death is supposed to be rare. Do we want death and consequently combat to be rare on Starmourn?
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood
I, personally, do not get humiliated by defeat. The very, very rare times I pvp, I expect to lose, so there is no humiliation. Losing in PvE is usually a solo thing, so what's to get humiliated about? But, as I pointed out, that's a personal opinion, and not one I would attempt to paint all "people" with.
I, for one, want a mechanical penalty. I don't care if it is XP, but it seems to work, and has for almost 2 decades across various games I've played. Again, I said "for one", admitting that my stance is not universally accepted.
The "some people" or "people like me" comes in again with the statement of "death already upsets people". That is entirely subjective and far from universal. The same applies to "what an XP penalty does is discourage people". For some, it is energizing, possibly even more so if given a chance to get it back, like with these corpse runs that the devs spelled out to get back your "INR". https://www.starmourn.com/2017/10/12/death-in-starmourn/
Assuming that certain points of view apply to all is a good way to alienate sections of a playerbase. A better way to go about it, is for the devs to decide what kind of game they want to make, be open and upfront about it, and then not change horses midstream. That way no one feels blindsided or mistreated, and the folks that want that style are happy and the ones that can deal with are content. The ones that don't, well, they don't have anyone but themselves to blame because it was never a secret or surprise as to how it was going to work.
In my experience though, most people that are timid about pvp seem more scared of losing not because of the exp, but some other reasons - I suspect a common one is that they feel shame when they lose.
Breaking free of the mindset that pvp death is something to avoid at all cost isn't easy, but is a liberating experience that I recommend. It will open the game up for you.
If you're someone that has been too attached to your character's reputation to get into pvp (and the losses that come with learning how), consider changing it up in Starmourn. We're all starting equal here, no one has a reputation to uphold, and you have all the time in the world to play the fully established character with a reputation later. Give it a shot.
MKO, the IRE MUD I played the longest (and was a somewhat active mid-range PvPer in), had some stellar players like Akaxi and Raelyr who were not only incredibly skilled, but also incredibly personable, approachable, welcoming and graceful in their victories. I have fond memories of Akaxi asking my character for a duel — he never jumped anyone, to my knowledge, only followed them to demand a fight — which undoubtedly I would lose, but he would afterwards politely thank me and offer respect for my willingness to engage. Contrast this with the sadly more common attitude of following up with a yell/shout rubbing it in to tell everyone what a loser so-and-so is and how they really can't fight and/or used cheap tactics or are an embarrassment to the org they lead or whatever else. It's everyone's responsibility to make competition sporting and welcoming, and to remove the stigma of defeat.
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood
If I could, I'd like to add one more. The people that simply don't enjoy it. I don't want that much stress/excitement/adrenaline in my game. I'm here to relax, not kick off my fight-or-flight reflexes. So I avoid PvP, as every time I have done it, I've found it to be very intense.
Not worried about losing anything, shame isn't involved, I just don't find PvP to be fun. I'm guessing I'm not the only one.
that means you fall into the category that doesn’t find exp too precious to risk losing. The fact you don’t enjoy the pvp is a separate thing entirely.
@Kestrel
Those people will talk shit whether you fight them or not. Some people are just arseholes. Run your own race. Remember this: “Other people’s opinion of me is none of my business.” - I forget who I am quoting but this has helped me in life.
Two: This is somewhat related. I never understood the idea of 'tanks' in Achaea. A 'tank' would get charged depending on the amount of people that died. So if my city was being raided only the strongest were supposed to defend. Now, the city still encouraged new players and non-PvPers to help in defense but they knew it would ultimately lead to the enemy winning more quickly. I absolutely hated this and I really think @Kestrel is on to something.
Please don't make ANY mechanics that might hold people back from PvPing if you want it to be a healthy PvP environment for new players or just players who want to participate. The learning curve is steep enough, not to mention artefact gaps.
It's not free, just because you're not spending cash.
I haven't been involved in any IRE MUDs since MKO shut down, but I was feeling nostalgic today and thought I'd skim the other IRE forums to see some of the old threads discussing MKO's final days. I stumbled across this thread in the forum search and because my character was mentioned I thought I'd respond to say it warms my heart to be remembered so fondly. So, thanks, @Kestrel!
And while I'm at it I'll say hello to any other MKO vets who remember Akaxi or my admin name, Ka-hooli. I hope everyone is enjoying Starmourn!
Good to see you around, Akaxi! Don't be a stranger now, we'd love to have you around! (This is your contemporary Prandur saying hi)