Via PlayNoEvil comes an editorial on MMORPG.com that makes me want to cry a little bit. It’s about factions and what the editor thinks could be changed to be better. He writes, for instance:

First should be how one is able to join a faction. Let fellow players decide who can join their faction. More importantly, if a group of players is being dishonorable, allow the players the ability to exile them from their own faction. Have a certain election system implemented where certain leaders from each faction form a council where everything is discussed on the grand scale. This would create a truly faction friendly gaming system, where all members of the faction really have to work together in order to succeed. If one leader abuses his power in removing people that should not be removed, there is always the election system to remove them from that council, so someone better can lead.

Wow. I think Avalon did that first in 1990. I know our games have been doing it since 1997, though in both cases factions are called cities. I understand that text MMORPGs/MUDs are not for everyone, but I sometimes feel like reading sites focused on graphical MMORPGs is remarkably like reading text MUD newsgroups in 1991. I’ve given up expecting that designers and commentators might actually try out text MUDs if they haven’t previously, and check out what’s happened/happening in them, but that’s kind of a shame, because frankly, very little happens in the graphical MMORPG world that hasn’t previously been done in text. There are many, many mistakes to learn from instead of making them for yourself.

For example, not only is the kind of system the MMORPG.com editor talks about above well-explored, but he could discover where implementing that kind of system ultimately leads. How will players abuse it? How did designers successfully counter that abuse? What enhancements proved popular and useful?

Oh well. I used to spend a fair amount of time on places like mud-dev trying to explain to novice virtual world developers why and what they need to pay attention to in terms of the history of virtual worlds (which is largely writ by text MUDs in terms of innovations), but I have mainly given up doing anything more than occasionally irritating graphical-only folk by pointing out how their “innovative” feature was done 10 years ago in text, with greater depth, if likely less polish.

Of course, at the end of the day, it’s not whether something has been done or not that matters to the end consumer, who cares only about the value of the product he or she is using. It’s only of value to a developer who wants to learn from past mistakes and successes. There are way too many MMO developers who don’t fit that category, but should. (Yes, I realize MMORPG.com isn’t a developer.)