The title of this Daily Grind can go in a lot of directions, can’t it? We could be talking here about an actual thief picking your pack, a ninja looter, maybe even just the game refusing to log your actions at a critical moment.
What prompted this one, however, was remembering the story of one of my old Ultima Online houses. I spent weeks building that house, tile by tile, in the form of a Tokuno Isles multi-roomed teahouse. No one else had anything quite like it, and I lived in it for years.
That is, until I was reading the forums one day and I happened to see pictures of my house in a thread collecting kudos and accolades. Only it wasn’t my house; it was someone else’s house. That someone had clearly seen my house, taken pics, and recreated it on another server, down to the tile, and then posted screenshots claiming full credit.
Does this really matter? No. It’s not like there are tangible rewards for having a pretty house in a video game sandbox. All the compliments were really for my work, and the plagiarist had to go to bed at night knowing he was a fraud. But even knowing all that, I still felt robbed, and it killed my enjoyment of the house. I eventually moved to a new house in Zento and started over.
Have you ever felt robbed in an MMO?
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!
