13. COMUNICATION

How much interaction between players will there be? I want as much as possible.

No /guildsay, no /shout, no /auc, no /ooc, no /tell functions will be available. Period. There will be (if the PC's set one up) a mail service, newspapers (if the PC's figure out how to make presses), cell phones (etc, in a modern day campaign). In lieu of these, the PC's will have a strong interdependence on each other. One person won't be able to master all of the crafts. You will have to buy stuff from other players. Unlike in many games where the PC's who can make stuff are out wandering around, all of the true professional merchants will be found anchored securely to their shops. After all, without a shop, you can't make most things. That allows (also) other PC's to find them. You can't make platemail in a weaving shop. It doesn't work. The shop doesn't have the resources. Players can make their own signs to hang above the shop. If you want woven goods and see two weaving shops, one labeled 'Suxxor U weavion beotch' (he made a typo when he gave it to the artist to paint) and the other labeled 'Woven Goods by Mable', you then have a choice of which to do business with.

There will be an /ignore function. There will also be no emotes other than ones we figured out. This is to keep people from communicating with others when they don't understand their language. (Note - in a futuristic campaign there will be cell phones, etc.) Also, I'd have /ignore tied into the account to prevent griefing of that nature. If you are going through the problem of ignoring ONE person chances are good you don't want to talk to any of their other characters. This can be done with no 'account information' avaiable to the players.

Without global channels, a players reputation would begin to matter that much more. In EQ, if you want to buy a sword, you /auction WTB sword for 200pp. Anyone can reply from across the zone, instantly, with their wares. In this game, you will have to work to find a swordsmith. So if you team up with a group in a dungeon, and you notice the other warrior just slicing and dicing, while you are having problems, you would ask him where he bought his sword at. Then you can trudge off to the swordsmith's shop. When you start getting nearer, and you notices small paths merging into larger paths, the phrase "beating a path to your door" starts to make sense.

Next, there will be more tradeoffs possible. Do you want to use Bill's good swords next door, or do you want to spend 8 real time hours travelling to Ye Oldie Sword Shoppe and get a better sword? This will not be as trivial as it sounds, because the people who initially create a trade shop will do so close to "Atlantis" or whatever the base starting point is. However, as time marches on, these areas will become civilized, so the most likely adventurers will not be anywhere near. So it is possible that over time, merchants who travel from place to place will buy items on spec, and sell for what they can, reinventing the need for pin money.

Won't having no instantaneous communication world wide hurt player interaction?

To some degree, perhaps. Since buildings are required to do all of the crafting skills in, you will learn who owns what building in and have to go see them. If you are wanting to sell something, it makes sense to be in the building someone would normally go to when they wish to buy that sort of thing. Since the towns will be far apart, people will have to form their own communities within their town. I feel this will lead to more realistic forms of mercantile exchange as well as better role-playing. Oh - and a lot less useless spam. After over three years of playing in MMOLG's, I've discovered that (aside from auctioning), nothing of use has ever been said on zone wide chat channels. They are monopolized by the ignorant to spam the zone.

Don't you believe that having a severe lack of in game communications (i.e. chat channels, looking for group channels, etc) will stymie many players?

We favor immersiveness and exploration. If you are looking for a group, we recommend going to the tavern or town square if they have been built. If you want to socialize, we recommend going to a good building to do so. If a player has built a nightclub (and if you pay the cover to get in) then you can 'hang out' with many other people. We at Evil Enterprises think it is darned silly to instantly communicate with everyone else in the world. Note - if it is a modern game and they have cellphones and you are close to a cell tower, yak it up.

[Option: Being that communication can really help to get people socializing, hence having a good time, hence staying longer in my game world and giving me more money, I could be persuaded to have inexpensive magic communication devices. These would be usable for /tells only. In order to be able to give someone else a tell, he would have to give you his 'phone number' (or a business card or whatever fantasy equivalent I can construct). That would get people in communication with whoever they wanted while keeping buff beggars, port beggars and what not from being able to give people tells. Stymieing those people is a good thing. If I allowed 'magic tells', I'd also have an /antisocial friends, /antisocial guild, etc. so that you can only get tells from people on your friends list, guildmates, etc. Everyone else gets the answer "***Your message was not received***".