Eco’s recent stretch goal reveal tickled my fancy, mainly because I’ve been ranting about the lack of meaningful criminal justice systems in PvP sandboxes for years. If you missed the announcement, Eco’s proposed system has teeth in that possible consequences for criminal behavior include not only permadeath/character deletion but a ban that prevents the account from creating another character on a particular server!
As I did that Citizen Kane clap and mouthed the word “finally” while reading the announcement, I got to thinking about why all these other PvP sandbox devs lack the stones to do something similar. Is it too hard? Is it too impractical? Is it because they don’t care about building an actual sandbox and would rather build another meaningless me-too MMO that’s a combat simulator instead of a virtual world? What do you think, MOP readers? Why don’t more PvP sandboxes have harsh consequences for criminal gameplay?