Originally posted by Black Peter
Yeah, but you'd be seeing it in a slightly different light if you'd already experienced the same thing in GLB1. You didn't since you never played that game. Most dev houses actually learn some from their past. Once upon a time there was this game named Ultima Online (I'd go with some of the text based MUD's I played on that went through this nonsense, but UO is a bit better known). And in that game there were nasty vile creatures known as Player Killers, or PK's for short.
PK's were the bane of UO. They were all exploiters, cheats, hackers, whatever other ad hominem the local carebears could think to call them (and to be honest, some of the PK's actually were exploiters and cheats, but that doesn't really apply to this story at this time). Perhaps the most well known of those PK's was a charming rogue named Xavori (no really. Xavori once upon a time got interviewed for Wired Magazine).
Now, UO was ruled by a wise and benevolent dev named Designer Dragon. Designer Dragon heard the pleas of the desperate masses, "Help us, Designer Dragon. You're our only hope." And DD's heart was moved (and ya know, that's the first time it's occured to me that DD - Designer Dragon and DD - Digital Daggers share the same initials for their online personas. Pretty sure Raph isn't a pro wrestling fan, tho). But what to do?
At this time, living on a message board known as the Crossroads of Britannia (a board whose members would not-at-all coincidentally become part of The Lost Lounge) was a future Lounger named MNBob. MNBob was a fun and happy person who also wanted to do something about the scourge of the PK's. So he came up with a great and wonderous plan that would solve the problem once and for all and unicorns and rainbows would fly out of everyone's butt. He called it The Reputation System. By this system there would be Great Lords and Dread Lords, and best of all, the system would be totally automatic.
DD read of this wonderous invention, and being a wise and benevolent dev, asked for others opinions on it. It took the rogue Xavori about .0000001 seconds to explain all the fun and exciting ways that the system was going to fail, get abused, and generally make life even worse. But Xavori was a vile PK whose only popularity came from having a really good PR agent writing all his press releases. So Xavori's concerns were ignored. DD put MNBob's reputation system into UO, and there was much rejoicing.
For about .0000001 seconds.
Xavori, true to his word, began exploiting the holy living hell out of the reputation system changing from Great Lord to Dread Lord pretty much at will based on what he wanted to do that day. At the same time, those vile nasty PK's all made themselves into good Great Lords and then found all kinds of amusing (well, amusing to them anyway) ways of getting otherwise innocent players to do something that would get them flagged as attackable. Once flagged, the valiant and noble PK's would gank the hell of the innocent. The innocent's friends could not fight back as attacking a Great Lord was the easiest way to get yourself flagged Dread Lord and become a bright red target for everyone in the game. So the innocent was left to defend himself alone. But it gets better. If the innocent did in fact defend themself, they'd start racking up negative karma which would start them on the path to Dread Lord.
In short, MNBob's fix made the game much, much worse. Except for Xavori because again, he's really good at finding the loopholes in games.
If anyone is so mind numbingly bored they'd like to hear more of these stories, I've got bunches and bunches. In fact, one of the very firstest articles I ever got paid to write was how to abuse the stock market in Railroad Tycoon II to take over all the AI railroads with minimal actual railroad building of your own
