Glaurung's post makes it sound like he needs to destroy the eq of monsters as
a form of self-defense. G, I've seen your stats and eq, and you've got nothing
to worry about. However, his argument is based on a logical fallicy. He said
that other players getting stronger will make monsters stronger. This is not
the fallicy. He then says that if the monsters get stronger, he effectively
becomes weaker. This is the fallicy.

To explain by metaphor: let's say you are stinking rich. You can afford every
house in town. Not a problem. Then, other rich people start to move into town.
Local builders say "hey, look at all the rich people" and build a house that
costs more than you can afford. This does not make you any less rich. It just
means you will need to go work some more and get more money if you want the
biggest house in a town full of rich people.

BatMUD is a supply and demand economy in all sorts of ways. In the ongoing
effort to provide a challenge even to the strongest of players, sometimes the
strongest monsters will need to be upgraded, and sometimes new, stronger
monsters will need to be developed as well. The alternative is to have a game
which someone of Glaurung's abilities can "beat" and leave little else to do.
Personally, I don't like that idea. Maybe the toughest players should have the
toughest challenges to prove they're the top of the top.

As for running around and destroying things, I'll say more or less the same
thing I said about "owning areas" (and desting eq out of spite is just about
the same thing). If a _specific_ player pkilled you, stole from you, or
otherwise gave you a good reason, I can understand if you dested the eq on a
monster his party was killing. But just like pkilling, there is a limit to the
number of times you can do this. In addition, running around and destroying
all monsters' eq "just because I don't want anyone else to have it" is just as
bad as putting up force fields or the like to seal the areas off. If someone
did this, other players would be in their rights to kill or otherwise seek
retribution on site. And, since you're talking about top-end eq monsters, you'
re talking about top-end players, armed and ready for battle, who suddenly
find themselves with nothing better to do and are very angry. Eq is more
important than a couple of kills, so it sounds logical that they'd be allowed
to kill you or otherwise interfere with your playing a lot more than if you
just killed someone. It sounds like a very, very bad idea to me.

If that doesn't dissuade you, try this: deliberately interfering with
someone's ability to play the game just because you don't want them to have
the power is extortion. Doing this to everyone is mass extortion. If I had
proof that a player was deliberately interfering with a large portion of the
MUD's ability to play and have fun, out of sheer malice and spite, I would
correct the problem in such a way that it does not happen again.

Shinarae Lluminus

This is hardly a new issue, but let's address it yet
again...

There's (atleast) three groups of players:
1. Players who have just started playing and still
find everything new and exciting. Sadly, this is
a minority.
2. Players who have been here a little while, gotten
into the game and want to become better at it.
3. Players who have been here a long long time,
achieved highbie status and now wants to hold on
to it, and possibly get new challenges.

I think this part we can all agree on?

Now, people from group 3 are screaming that all
eqmobs that they are able to kill should be upgraded,
so that other's can't kill them. On the other hand,
people from group 2 are saying that the oldtimers
should go away already and leave the playingfield open
for people from group 2. Both claims are very selfish,
and shortsighted.

There are lots of trendy games that people play in
masses for a short while. And then there are the truly
addictive games, like BatMUD, which some people chose
to play for a very long time. It's a totally conscious
decision from our point of view, that we don't want
to push away our highbies. They bring alot into the
game. Demanding that they "STOP PLAYING" or that they
rebirth is about as stupid as blocking you or anybody
else from group 1 or 2 from playing BatMUD.

On the other hand, they are not our only target
audience, so we can't go around and just upgrading
every eqmob that is getting raped. We will have to
come up with alternate ways of preventing those eqmobs
from having their items flooded on the market.

As for running BatMUD as a business - well, BatMUD is
not a business. We don't make design- or tune decisions
around how we can optimize donations.

Maybe we can learn a thing or two from other MMORPG's.
Limiting how often a specific person can complete a
certain area. Introducing (more) items that are only
usable by the persons who were in the party when the
mob was killed (tho I'm sure some wiseguy will then
start selling party spots). The solution, however, is
not to get rid of all highbies or to just keep on
making all eqmobs more difficult, effectively limiting
them to only certain parties / eq societies.

++ Gore

P.s. With all due respect to Shinarae, I could not
disagree more with his assessment that in a
capitalist society, generally improved finances
wouldn't lessen the value of money. Capitalism
is a competition about having more money than
someone else, and that is the defining factor
in pricing

Mrr! My analogy has been stunned and critted but is not yet dead.

I will spare you my weak attempts to further explain my analogy and simply
downtune Glaurung.

Shinarae Lluminus

You're post seems to convey a lack of "what the game is about". It is a
*game*, shouldn't you use your "power" to be having some fun? If you've
attained some level of power and you find yourself continually trying to
defend your power then maybe you've lost sight of the fun.

To actually suggest that you are better off trying to police some eq instead
of playing is just retarded. Even if that worked, what is the point? I mean,
let's say you can spend 90% of your time on here trying to dest eq so noone
else gets any new eq. Ok, big deal. Now you are using your power solely to
keep others at less power than you, but the only thing you are using your
power for is to keep others less powerful. Anyone in this situation is
probably already sick of the actual batmud game or is just a bastard.

I'd say, if one is so motivated to try and control the tune from the player
side, then you need to wiz. You cannot and will not be able to control the
tune from the mortal side, it is a lost cause. If you were smart you'd stay
ahead of the tune, definitely not behind it and certainly not standing in
front of it trying to hold it back.


To directly answer your question about the legality of it:

I *personally* don't think it would be illegal to do what you suggest. You
are desting eq off a monster, players cannot own a monster so they don't own
the eq until they are holding it.