I am trying to figure out if its possible to implement a political system into a MMORPG. I wanted to know if it should be controlled by the Company creating the game or could it be controlled by the player who could work there way up to president by being elected. Please let me know what you guys think any help would be appericated Shadow

Wich political system?

"Demo"cracy?, Dictatorship?, communist? Anarchy?

Anyways i dislike the common democracy'cause it sux! (think in Bush for example). And in online-play it will be more corrupt and cheat-able.

But the company can pre-choice a bunch of *good* candidates, avoing any trolls, no-life-nerds, fanboysh, "cross-dressing" (for example someone with nick Little_Mary but in the real world its a fat-ugly guy) and cheaters. So, the users can choice into only good candidates, which they choice will be the correct choice ^__^

How the company choice candidates?.
Looking in the logs to avoid bad-mouth candidates or offensive-candidates.
See the history, how many time it spend in the game, 1 or 2 hours daily is good.
...

Anyways all depend in the real power of the president. If the president have the power to ban to someone then the candidates MUST BE someone of the company's staff.

Towards what purpose? What would this President be responsible for? In what kind of setting? What is the political climate like?

Do you really want to have ONE person as a "President" in an MMO? What kind of power would they have? That's a considerable position.

Would you also, assuming a US democratic structure, have a congress/senate? Do players compete for these positions? What laws would they be able to enact? What would be the benefit of having these positions? What would stop someone from abusing these positions? What would stop a particular group/guild from controlling the presidency, the house and the senate - and effectively controlling the game/server?

It's absolutely possible to implement a political system, but is it possible to create a viably interesting one that doesn't allow for abuse of power?

well the political system I was thinking about about the 3 major ones I haven't picked one yet. the 3 I am thinking of are monarchy, dictatorship and democracy. The things the president or leader of the political system would control things like taxes that would be in the game, security protecting new players with creating PVP zones. My other alternative maybe was to have a NPC controlled by the company as like the president and allow the players to elect the NPC they like the best. Each NPC would be different from each other and they would all want different things. Like one might want utter chaos and another might want peace. I am just trying to figure out what they would control in the MMORPG world. I hope nobody would abuse the system, but if somebody did try to abuse it I hope the players would setup some type of rebellion to select a new leader. I think the best would let it be that the players elect an NPC of there choice and if they don't like what that NPC is doing they can have him assassinated or wait until the next election to kick him out. When a NPC president is assassinated or killed that would have to lead to anarchy until the next election. I was thinking of having an election like every 2 months in the game.

The person who assassinates their way to power should be able to set up an absolute monarchy that they can slowly transition to a totalitarian police state over time.

That would be good fun indeed.

I dont think dictatorship type governments run by players can exsist in an MMORPG. The reasoning is simple: No risk in acting against the government. In real life, you cant talk shit about your dictator, because then your life is over. In a game, you die and you respawn. No power.

Also, for the players to care about electing a president, there has to be factors that the president controlls that effects the players. Taxes would be the easiest to impliment. But what about new laws? I dont think you can make a virtual world so dynamic that having a president would really change much. Also, who would WANT to be a president? Sounds pretty boring to have nothing to do but set taxes and make laws all day.

I dont know. I cant really imagine politics on that scale. Now, on a city size scale, it could work well.

But theres one more factor of most MMORPGs that effects that majorly: population.
How manypeople are going to be running for president? ALOT. and ALOT of them are going to be lame ass 13 year olds.


So no. I dont think Politics would work very smoothly in an MMORPG. Well, that is unless the game's main concept is that its a Political world. But then every player would have to have their own place in power over some region, and the regions are full of NPCs. But then that doesnt sound like a game I'd pay for. It sounds like a game Id play for a couple months randomly and then lose interest (despite how much I'd like to play a game like that)

Aren't MMORPGs generally benign dictatorships / oligarchies? Basically all power, economic, social, even the weather etc. is determined by the game maintainence crew. Unless you want your elected PC to be handy with 3DS Max too... :P