Whenever we’re reminiscing about the glory days of MMOs, we invariably bring up the prevalence of events and GMs in those classic games. What we sometimes forget to mention, however, is that not all of the events were nice. For every wedding I saw a benevolent GM officiate in EverQuest, for example, I saw four Verant reps rampaging around as Sand Giants, stomping on newbies in Oasis, provoking more elite characters to come to the rescue.
That’s the topic on the mind of Kickstarter donor Xijit, who’s written in to ask,
Would you play a game with antagonistic GMs? That is to say, GMs who log in with maxed-out characters and start PK-ing people until enough players ganged up to bring them down? Or GMs who take other actions that negatively affect the playerbase?
If those sorts of events happened today with actual GMs behind them, I suspect, the greater MMO playerbase would flip out. We might love events, but there’s something fundamentally unfair about being attacked by the gamemaster (especially in a game with experience loss!). At the same time, isn’t it better to have live events against devs or GMs than just repetitive, automated ones?
Would you play an MMO with antagonistic GMs?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
