What Made Halberd a Good Server

(This is going to be part one of a series of essays that I wanted to write about Rubies of Eventide.)

Background

The Lithtech Jupiter version of Rubies of Eventide (The one that most of us are familiar with) had some backend technical issues that were never fully addressed during the life of the game. These technical limitations prevented the servers from running reliably with good latency once the number of users online reached > 150 users. Due to this, and the goal of adding varied game play, RoE had five production servers that I am aware of:

Phoenix - (Normal Server. Moderated help channel, and profanity prohibited) Pegasus - (Normal Server. Moderated help channel, and profanity prohibited) Fire Opals - (Role play only server. Moderation of all chat channels and character names) Halberd - (Player vs. player server. Corpse carrying, corpse looting, no moderation, world PvP available at all times) Nemesis - (Player vs player server. Corpse carrying, corpse looting, some moderation, world PvP available at all times)

Characters were not able to be transferred between servers except during three events that happened during the course of the game’s history:

Pegasus was closed and merged with Phoenix. (All characters from Pegasus were transferred to Phoenix)

Halberd was closed and replaced with Nemesis. (All characters from Halberd were transferred to Nemesis)

Nemesis was closed and merged with Phoenix. (All characters from Halberd were transferred to Phoenix IIRC)

Thesis

After playing extensively on all five servers (Granted I only played on Phoenix post-merge) I believe that Halberd was the most unique and enjoyable Rubies of Eventide experience.

Explanation

In order to defend my position, I want to spell out some of the central aspects of non-restrictive social gameplay that make it so engaging and immersive.

MMORPGs are fundamentally social games.

Any game designer that allows speaking with, interacting with, and cooperating with other people has chosen to make social interactivity as a feature of the game. Depending on the goals of the game, a designer might decide to add some interactivity, but limit others; such as allowing you to see other players and emote to them, but preventing them from chatting through text/voice. Other games may let you see the actions of the other player, but prevent you from seeing a physical representation of them (such as playing online chess). Whenever you add an additional social feature to your game, you are fundamentally altering the game play for better or worse. I would argue that there are many social additions you can make to your game that will make it a more enjoyable and immersive experience.

By all measures Rubies of Eventide was a very social game, and had some features that made it more social that other competing MMORPGs. (Such as having a relatively small world, and small active population) However, it did moderate and limit certain types of social behaviors on the core servers such as profanity, open pvp, griefing, corpse looting, corpse carrying, world chat, channel moderation, collusion etc… Some behaviors were even moderated subjectively based on the whims of the sages and GMs. Many of these behaviors are justifiably seen as negative and even punishable, but I would like to argue that

Using moderator powers to punish nefarious characters and enforce certain behaviors causes a suspension of disbelief in the game.

One of the reasons that we love a really good book, video game, or movie is that through the imagery and story, we become fully immersed in a fictional world. If something in the content causes you to question that immersion, it can easily interrupt your suspension of disbelief, bringing you back to reality where you realize you are just playing a game. I view this as a serious downfall in any work of fiction, and almost doubly in an immersive MMORPG. Forcing players to play a game how you want them to may protect people’s feelings and give a better overall experience to a majority of the players, but you are fundamentally limiting the set of possible experiences in your game. This is a design decision that needs to be carefully weighed by any game designer working in this genre.

Even in tabletop RPG where you require a dungeon master to be arbiter of the game rules, most people who play them can agree that some of the most amazing experiences can be had when a DM knows how to bend the rules within the realm of plausibility. In this sense, even subjective game masters add some value to MMORPGs. Obviously I am not advocating for the absence of rules and moderation in every case, as games a fundamentally constructed by a set of rules. I am however raising the concern on how much limitation and moderation is necessary to maintain an immersive world.

In the absence of a supreme moderator, players will develop their own sense of morality and moderation.

In life there is a concept of something called Natural Law which is the idea that some rules can be “understood universally through human reason”. This concept includes the universality of belief that thing such as stealing, assault, and murder are wrong, and that they can be at least roughly understood by a toddler. I believe that something akin to natural law develops in video games as well. When left to their own devices, players will develop and enforce their own set of rules, which are often tied directly to game mechanics. To argue this point I will give several examples from my own gaming experience that emphasize this phenomenon:

Minecraft

My favorite way to play Minecraft is on a small vanilla sandbox server. On these servers, no block is protected (You can freely destroy people’s bases and creations), chests can be accessed by any player, and you can openly PvP with anyone and take the contents of their inventories.

On the surface this may sound terrible to a new player, who is fearful of losing his possessions or creations. However when a person begins to vandalize your creations, or steal your items, it pushes you to innovate ways of dealing with the problems.

Perhaps you switch your valuable items to an ender chest, or make a very hidden location where vandals would never look. You might start creating booby traps in your house that help to keep outsiders from successfully pillaging while you are away. It drives a game cycle that would have quickly become stale if no malicious social interactions could take place.

Vanilla World of Warcraft

The original World of Warcraft was one of the most prolific and immersive video games of all history. PvP private servers were some of the most interesting communities that I have ever experienced. One of the key features that made it immersive was the integrity of a server community and scarce resources that forced people to compete to get the best possible progression rate.

One example is that of Blackrock Mountain - an underground dungeon hub that all level 60 players must eventually explore as part of the core game content. Two raids and several dungeons cannot be accessed outside of this hub. Because of this, incredible world PvP battles would take place in order to build faction rivalry, show dominance between guilds, and prevent others from reaching server first objectives.

Another example is that of world gathering nodes. World of Warcraft had a gathering system that relied on a static set of gathering nodes that were only harvestable by a single player. These harvesting routes became highly contested territories which drove massive interpersonal and interfactional conflict, developing the drama of the server. The Devilsaur Mafia and Felwood Herb Gathering, and Winterspring Juju/Firewater Farming Since characters were bound to the server, this created a rich community history that is remembered by all of its players.

Rubies of Eventide Halberd

Rubies of Eventide is remarkable because of its character creation system, but playing RoE on Halberd took the game to a new plane of social fabric. Behaviors were quickly identified that caused problems on the server. When people would violate these rules, they would not call a GM to punish the offender, but rather guilds would come together to meaningfully punish the perpetrator.

Some examples include: players trying to free ride from single digit levels by joining slime groups in the Tomb of the Undying, but capping the entire party’s experience due to their laziness. This behavior became a sin to the Pirate guild who would retaliate against the involved parties by slaughtering everyone in the zone. Those who did not immediately log off would have their corpses carried to difficult locations such Ruins 3, Silver Lake Lisk area, or others.

Another example was when people were found killing others in an exploitative state such as during their loading screen from another zone, this would become a black mark on the individual that could potentially follow them for the rest of their character’s life. Punishments included killing on sight, excluding from pick up groups and parties, or public berating and humiliation.

The global /h chat helped players to communicate problems happening anywhere on the server at any time, and guild wars could start at the drop of a hat.

Summary

This rich interpersonal drama allows a second tier of gameplay to form over the top of the core game mechanics, something that enriched the experience and made it that much more interesting to everyone involved. The cat-and-mouse games, guild rules and culture, and proverbial arms races created an environment where you don’t just sign on to grind the content, but rather to stir up trouble, write the next chapter of social dialogue, or become a character in the next server-wide movement.

There is never a dull moment when you are playing a game within a game.