In response to the point that if evil and good mages have the same power, you would definately choose the evil one for it''s freedom:

Has anyone ever played black and white? If you have, did you at any point decide, I wanna be really good. i want to make my power greater, but by earning my peoples love and devotion, not by throwing rocks at them and burning their houses down. Being good might be harder, but it also means that it will be a sort of "next level" of difficulty, something to try after youve wasted 600 goblins and got quite bored.

Also, you could have a dynamic world system, where greater players actually become renound by the NPCs. e.g. you go to a newspaper vendor, and you hear him shouting (albeit in text mode in an MMORPG) "MrEvil suspected to have assasinated Prince Handsom! Read all about it!!!". This means, do you really want to become a great evil mage? Soon after learning your mighty spell of mass destruction, you''ll have a smelly, noisy angry mob of warriors and adventures knocking at your door.

I admit, this dynamic world is an extremely difficult system to implement. But, for anyone who has played Everquest or something, havent you ever got annoyed that 1 month later you hear the same seedy story line about this corrupt guard meeting some thief. Dynamic worlds are the way future! But i think ive got onto a whole new subject.

I think that when playing fallout, torment, etc. what kept me from being the bad guy was that the prices rose incredibly, steal and everyone in the town would be on your ar$e, no one would tlak to you, and biggest: if you were a d1@k to someone, then you woyuld miss out on a quest or you would get attacked, in which case everyone in the town would be on your ar$e, etc..

IRL, if you steal from someone then they wont attack you if they are a weak little junkie or poor townsperson. There must be some rewards for being evil. I mean, if you are evil, it is jsut for the sake of being evil, but you lose experience, quests, cahs, etc. I suppose it balances out, but there should be places where being evil is rewarded. Like you are one tuff mutha, so you walk into town, the guards eye you, you head over to the poor section and everyone is in awe of you...

Maybe if the real, sage-mages are very few, but the maching lightningers are many, then the sage-mages would look at them like immature children. If they are running about blowing stuff up, then they are not learning all the stuff, keeping up with the latest journals that the sage-mages are. Like a doctor at John Hopkins and a doctor at the downtown clinic.

Right on...
Dynamic game world- a definite must !
the more evil you do, the more would-be Conans show up.
And if you are really evil and powerful, the big boys show up cause they get all the gold that you`ve been squezzing from your slaves for all(in-game) that time.
Generally, the more evil you are, the easier you can bend stupid people. You can cow them....man, I really need to write this up in a file.
Also, the more evil you are, the more you misuse power.
"Evil is misuse of power"
That`s something I heard once, and I think it would be well applied.
So the more power you misuse, the more evil you are.
So a Bill Ferny would only get a few rewards and enimies, while Saruman gets even greater, and Sauron gets serious power and serious enemies, and should the game world allow a Morgoth, he would have really intense power, and really intense enemies...

Oh yeah...good guys must have some kind of a edge.
The good guys MUST win in the end. It will ruin a game if he bad guys are on top and the good guys can`t toppple them. Course, you can struggle a bit in the winning.

Has anybody read Christopher Stasheff`s books ?
Something like Her Majesties Wizard might be a viable world.
There is an existing world, players are dropped in and are allowed choose their destiny. Different countries are under good and evil rulers, and you fight for them. So you can go from country to country, working for your side...
Or you can go and be a trader, selling to everybody, or a robber, quietly robbing people....

Key word- dynamic !

Bugle4d

Chris stasheff, that is familiar. Did he do the warlock series?

Yuppers.


Bugle4d

Some people want blasting mages.
Other people want gandalf mages.

Maybe u have to be a gandalf mage until u are powerful enuff to be blasting mage? When u become powerful enuff blast when u feel like.

Check out www.runescape.com for a FREE mmorpg (at least it was still free the last time I played) Runescape is interesting because it avoids the main bitch you all seem to have; being typecast into being one type of character. In Runescape, the more you use a skill the higher level you become in it. If I remember right you still have to pick a class but that means almost nothing. You can be a chef, a miner, a smith, a priest, a magician or whatever(you can even be a jewelsmith). I played a fighter but when I got tired of losing all my stuff when I got pk''ed (killed by another player)I decided to become a monk and built my spell casting/priest abilities so then I could walk around with no possessions and whup *ss. There are some quest in it, but some of them are pretty lame and the game world is pretty small. It was fun for a while.