i have scanned boards and seen an intersting debate: to take batmud to next
level and include some drastic means of player v player interaction, or to
accept that this PvP aspect is best left to other (shall we say less evolved
muds).

One strong point for PvP upgrade: it would bring a new excitement level to
mud.
One strong point against: Batmud is in the habit of being slightly highbie
oriented, and as it is becoming more newbie oriented (thank the gods) it would
be a slap in the face to all who began to try to build their characters if
everything they had could be stolen by a rude means of incessant pkilling and
looting of their corpse. Poor Noobies!

Solution: in order to involve a strong PvP system, allowing for added
excitement and also for the growth of newbies (and even freedom from being
forced into a PvP system for all characters should they choose so) I recommend
a jewel of an area, my personal brainchild: The Colloseum.

The Colloseum:
Here we would have instituted basically a different type of arena. The
arena system is a nice thought, but it is frankly old hat, and thoroughly
antiquated. No, in The Colloseum players would join together into two,three,
or four groups, each battling each other (group free for all, or group team
against group team) essentially for their enemies\' forts.
Example: Players A,B,C, and D, combine into Blue team, whose job it is to
either defend their Blue Castle, or make attack against Players 1,2,3, and 4
in Red Castle, or even both. The Colloseum would essentially be a
cordonned-off area from the rest of the batmap (no summon area, no enter while
battle in progress) that generates itself based on number of players (room
size for battlefield) and number of teams (number and complexity of Color
Castles). Anyway, the details can be worked on and expanded upon by the
coder.

Where is the real PvP action you say? Herein lies your answer!
Any players choosing to enter The Colloseum might consider bringing with
them a collection of armour and weps that is suitable for Colloseum combat,
but also not so precious as they wouldnt mind them being looted from their
bloodied and defiled corpse as they fall victim to their enemies. A cretain
amount of exp could be generated upon a kill (both for the team and the player
who scores a kill, this way tarms and ressers could recieve team exp for kills
they would have no chance of achieving on their own) and this would solve the
problem of people training exp before entering Colloseum and leaving nothing
for others to loot from them.
Money you ask? I gotchyer money right here! <Nips grabs himself by the
crotch>. The goal of entering and collapsing your opponents Color Castle
will simply be this: dependent upon the # of players, ttl experience of each
and time of The Colloseum War, a chest will appear as the conquering company
breaches and overtakes the Color Castle. A group of newbies could expect to
open the chest and find maybe 20k or so to split (after all the poitn should
be PvP action not just money making or exp making, thats for party and solo).
If the newbie team succesfully defeated a troup of say Qurp, and others like
him, i would expect their experience from kills and monetary prize to grow
exponentially. Pace to this would be if a group of highbies decimated a ragtag
group of newbies, certainly thier rewards would be less than desireable.

So here we have a controlled environment that simultaneaously offers freedom
to participate in PvP action or not, experiencial and monitary rewards, and
honestly hours and hours of good clean, addicting as ell fun. I cant see
anything in this plan that couldnt be built using existing batmud techniques
and code, and the idea of king of the hill is not a new one, but as i said
earlier this is my beainchild, and executed correctly, it could have a long
lasting effect on the popularity of its users, bot old and new.

This idea is free for any wizard to implement, and i would love to see some
variation of it installed. If anyone has any questions about The Colloseum, or
comments, please post them. any wizzes who would like to chat about this
prospect i humbly offer my mudmail, and feel free to tell. YOU are the
immortal after all, heh. The Olympics were started as a symbolic gatheringof
the ancient civilizatoins; The Colloseum could be seen to harbor those same
feelings of community and sport as the Olympics. I hereby propose that in
front of The Colloseum there should be placed a massive, solemn memorial to
all those players that were once friends to batmud and tragically had their
lives cut short, by accidents, life hardship, or even for those poor
individuals that felt it necessary to take their own lives. The Colloseum
would stand forever in their memories, a testiment to the fact that we
Batmudders upon entering The Colloseum do so in good humor and congeniality to
our fellows, and in fervant mindfullness that we enjoy life, as they would
have us do.

Thank you for your attention
yours, Nips