If the idea is to protect monsters, make it possible for players to protect them and get benefits for doing so.

Like the Monster Ranch idea, a player could see that griffins or whatnot are pretty cool, so they capture a few and breed them for either harvesting the items from them or selling them as pets, guard animals, arena monsters etc...

Perhaps have something like an Eco-Mage. A character can choose a type of monster (like monkeys) and then by learning certain spells or getting items they can join a monkey clan and work with them.

So you could have an Eco-Mage of monkeys living in a forest teaching the monkeys to gather food, killing monkey-eating lizards, building havens from nasty players etc...

But then, one of the real jerk players could become an Eco-Mage of monkeys and breed an army of killer spear weilding monkeys and use them to pester other players.

Quote:

Original post by The Shadow Nose But then, one of the real jerk players could become an Eco-Mage of monkeys and breed an army of killer spear weilding monkeys and use them to pester other players.

How is this person a jerk? That seems like a valid way to play the game. . . except for the pestering other players.

Having a legion of spear-weilding monkeys seems like a fun gameplay dynamic.

Id program it to make it hard to kill them all, if a race is all killed then it wont be seen again/(or a long while) and to stop groups from killing of every single species

and for scarce/extint
its to give the players some challange, say your a crafter you know a species is running close to extinct, and you use one of the materials from them, you have to find and hire someone to capture two young (I havn't decided if there should be male/female or just make them asexual (or just depend on certain species)

Also if players dont, then npc's will

The biggest thing is choice, some people will want to wipe out a species, others might want to save it (not all of these would be eco, some might be merchants, or trainers)

for newbies, id prob see about getting npc's to create yards where people can fight, but not allowed to kill, but the monsters if raised by a npc wouldn't be as strong as wild ones (npc being very cheap with diets)

I was playing UO, and i decided to go for a new career Petnapping
I got my herding skill up high, then when i saw a chance id kidnap a pet, put them on a boat and put the boat in the middle of the ocean
then id tell the person that there pet was napped, and id sent sc and ask for money, and returning the pet when the money was payed, thats pestering other players, but it was fun.
in a game that allowed more control over monsters then uo, being a pet napper could be lots of fun ^.^

I also wanted to make a arena for vs pets, but the game
didn't really have enough support.