Generally speaking, do you think an online game where your goal is to "save the world" would have a bigger amount of player than a game where your goal is to "destroy the world" ?

By "saving the world", I'm not just talking about literally saving the world, but rather making good vs being evil.

From a general perspective, I think that making good is better, but since there are a lot more games where your goal is to save the world, would a game where your goal is to destroy the world not have more chances to have a bigger amount of players ?

What if you are destroying the world for good reasons ? Thoses reasons have to be simple and clear for players in this case ?

Does this factor count a lot in the success of a game ?

Aren't the mechanics of the game way more importants than this questions ?

Destroying an entire world could be a fun goal -- but if it's "the" world, then wouldn't the game end when the goal is achieved? If not (if there are other worlds to destroy after that), then it could be a plausible construct.

This is a mechanic on its own, as the destruction or saving of the world could be the end of a match.

Honestly I think a goal of dominating/owning a world is more appealing than either destroying or saving.

Some friends and I began a quest to search the world for 4 spirit crystals to prevent the world from being destroyed. But with international security being so much tighter these days, they wouldn't allow us on the plane with our swords and all the healing potions we brought. We went home and waited expecting the worst. The new baktun came and went without incident and now we're not so sure what to do.

Or at least, I think I'd like to play a game that starts out that way. There's gotta be a good story in there somewhere.

Thanks you for your answers

Plausible "good" reason for destroying the world:
A) To rejuvenate the world through fire. Forests do this all the time - they gradually accumulate underbrush that dries out, and then in a lightning storm eventually catch fire and burn to the ground, allowing a new forest to spring up from the ashes. Geological evidence (in a discovery channel documentary I watched once) suggested that this happened on average every 200 years or so in California before it became heavily populated and we started putting out the brush fires (potentially, we might be building up more dry underbrush as kinder making whatever fire that we finally can't contain even more destructive than the normal ~200 year burns).

You don't need to destroy the entire world at once to rejuvenate it! You could do it in sections, possibly over periods of years, shepherding people out of the way to burn one section, then another. Perhaps your world does this in rotation, one section every 100 years, so with 10 sections, any given section is only destroyed once every 1000 years.

B) To prevent an alien parasite from spreading to other planets and eventually taking over the entire galaxy. If the planet you are on happens to be a ring-world, you could intentionally overheat the engines of your giant spaceship to cause a massive explosion that causes the ring-world to break apart.

Plausible 'bad' reasons for destroying a world:

A) Look what I can do

Honestly I think a goal of dominating/owning a world is more appealing than either destroying or saving.

this is the natural evolution of all in-depth game simulations, to eventually conquer the game world as the ultimate goal. very few games have ever been built with that level of scope though. i did one once. RPG. start out as 1st level newbie. get all the way up to high level, start building a castle and raising an army. Conquer all the other fiefdoms on the map and then there's nothing left but random dungeon adventures to pay troop and castle upkeep.

Why not a game that incorperates both? Players who want to save the world pair off against players who are trying to destroy it.

Another obvious option: saving the world through selective destruction.

For example, imagine something like the noxious substance around Zerg buildings in Starcraft, but more harmful, spreading fast and on a larger scale: reclaiming the land from the invasion requires thorough eradication of harmful alien life.

A different traditional option is some kind of blight, emanating from supernatural sources and subverting the laws of nature; if the effects are bad and permanent enough, corrupted things and creatures will need to be purged. Good for fighting (possessed and mutated creatures) and exploration (finding the sources), not to mention special effects.