The original article is over 6 months old, but I didn't see it until
now (it is linked to BatMUD's wikipedia entry). Below is the reply I
sent to its author (who suicided his char) and I include it here as
a reminder about what our "restricted pkill" policy means or rather
doesn't mean.

++ Gore


Dear Joseph,

I know this is something of a dead horse (excuse the pun), as the
topic is half a year old. I'm sorry for not seeing this earlier
and reacting to it then, tho most likely the outcome would have
been the same.

Player killing is a part of BatMUD. There are other games (CS, Quake,
you name it), where killing others is basically the whole purpose of
the game. As the admins of BatMUD, we have not wanted pkilling to
become the whole game (and usually have acted against players who
only seem to focus on killing others), but it is not something we
totally discourage either. In a way, player versus player interaction
brings much more depth than fighting against scripted npc's, and
typically also requires more skills. Which is why many other large
MMORPG's (e.g. WoW) have included player killing into them.

I'm sorry to hear that you felt "contempt, the loathing, the rage
that I physically felt at this act taken against me". To a degree,
it means that you truly have gotten into your character and been
engulfed in the game (as opposed to being just another casualty on
a Quake summary screen). It also sounds a bit unhealthy, and may
explain your somewhat biased article against our MUD.

If I recall correctly, the Mudconnector has three categories for
pkilling: Full pkilling (or "Pure pkilling" as one of their mud-
lists is called), Restricted pkilling and No pkilling. Full
pkilling refers to MUDs in which killing other interactive players
is *the* essence, or atleast a significant part of the game.
No pkilling is a game in which player killing is either impossible,
or harshly sanctioned ("kill a player and you will be banned").
This leaves the middle category, "restricted pkilling", into which
BatMUD includes itself, as do many other MUDs that mimic us, or
which just otherwise have similarities to us.

So what does "restricted pkilling" mean to us? It means that we
will take action against totally unwarranted player killing, such
as someone logging on drunk and deciding to go on a killing spree
against random players. It means taking action against a player
that is constantly harassing someone specific, for no apparent
reason whatsoever. It does not, however, mean that we interfere
in every situation, nor should we. A good game is one that runs
on its own, with minimal interference from the administration.

In conclusion, I want to say that I'm sorry that you did not like
or agree with our version of what "restricted pkilling" is like,
and that you thereby feel you have wasted a significant amount of
time on the game. I'm sure things could have had a better
resolution, both if we had seen this earlier, but also had you and
your "enemy" behaved more sensibly. Nevertheless, I hope you have
found happiness (and maybe even another MUD with more restrictive
pkilling than BatMUD, there's lots of good games out there). Also,
feel free to check back with us should you happen to change your
mind about player killing (just don't get too heated up about it,
in the end - it's just games

Regards,
Gore (an admin of BatMUD)