Azaroth

I’m certainly not an expert on the situation. However, as far as I’m understanding, some HD-DVD key was posted on the site. MPAA proceeds to do what it does, and the administrators of the site remove the offending post.

Shitstorm ensues. Users bombard the site with copies of the key. The servers actually have a hard time keeping up.

Digg’s owners are forced to change their stance, basically forced by a very low tech version of DOS. They’re now likely to be sued by the MPAA, and it’s possible the site goes bye-bye.

I found this particularly interesting after reading Matt’s take on it, where he expands with the thought:

I think the lesson for game operators is that you are always one decision away from alienating a huge portion of your userbase. It doesn’t matter how many fanbois you have. Not only will some of them turn on you and become your harshest critics, but most of your players have little to no real loyalty to you. They may admire you but most of them are there for the experience, not you. Bad decisions are permitted, but decisions that fly directly in the face of everything your players expect from you could elicit a response remarkably like spontaneous combustion.

We saw this on IPY, to an extent. Because of the incredible PK problem that we had (and OSI thought they had a problem.. heh), changes to the game were necessary. I still argue that Origin was already on a type of right track and Trammel wasn’t necessary, but if their PK population was 1%, ours was easily 10-15%. That’s a problem. That demands change. Especially since we didn’t even have statloss, which they did at the time (not a system I liked, but I’d also say that the ends were justifying the means in that case).

Here’s the rub, though - IPY was a “classic server”. Advertised as such, the majority of players attracted for that exact type of gameplay. To make major changes to the ruleset in ANY fashion would cause monumental outrage, but major changes to the gameplay outlet that the loudest, most aggressive, most destructive, most avid (this, being most “hardcore”) would cause an uproar that’d fucking give Ghandi an ulcer. It just couldn’t be done.

In the end, I decided to go extremely light on the situation. Certain very light (and thus largely ineffective) deterrents were introduced. What’s more important is that we tried to point PvPers more toward Order/Chaos faction, or consensual warfare. All of the fun, none of the malevolent newbie slaughtering (or, well, not as much). As can be expected with halfway measures, it panned out halfway. Some PvPers enjoyed themselves and played with each other, generally leaving the newbies alone but getting all of the challenging PvP they wanted - some stayed red, and some of those reds. Some REALLY revolted. Sort of like what was seen, apparently, with Digg.

And while these people certainly have a point, they’re almost always very short sighted. Digg will get sued out of existence because of something not in its control. Their users are putting them between a rock and a hard place, they’re being selfish. With IPY, we had the luxury of minimalizing this sort of impact. But in the end, the impact that was there, coupled with the very fact that we had to be WARY of that factor, and thus simply couldn’t change the game in any meaningful manner, did spell the death of the game.

I like oldschool UO. Hell, I even liked WoW a hell of a lot more before they went raid-ass-crazy. But games have to change and adapt to thrive. IPY’s playerbase silently (and no so silently) demanded NO CHANGE. We tweaked, but never changed. It spelled doom. As fun as the ruleset was. And as fun as getting my gear solely out of five mans like Scholomance and Stratholme was, not having to go to raids, and just sort of enjoy my gaming on my own time with a friend - as fun as that was, would I still be playing if they hadn’t changed the game? No.

Of course, I’m not now either. But they decided to change in a way that doesn’t fit my tastes, and they put all of their eggs into one basket, really. It’s working out for them, so maybe my tastes suck. But the fact is, had they not changed at ALL since release, not many people would be talking about World of Warcraft right now.

Matt asks:

I’ll leave off with one thought-question. Does the (assumed) increased emotional investment that most people experience in an MMORPG decrease or increase the likelihood of this kind of flash-revolt as compared to people’s experience/”avatar” (their persona basically) in Digg? On the one hand, the greater attachment in an MMORPG serves to create a switching cost but it would also seem to create a more potentially volatile situation. Passion goes both ways.

The thing about this question is that you’d hope the increased emotional investment that people experience in a MMO versus a website would lead them to calm their itchy trigger fingers when thinking about starting revolts and putting the game operators between rocks and hard places. As far as I’ve experienced, it doesn’t. It seems like the more emotionally involved people are with the game, the more riled they get about changes, problems, et cetera. Even to the point of being illogical, sort of like the Digg situation - but we experienced a somewhat unique problem with players attempting to damage the server through gameplay means - more specifically, by using the freedom that they had to hurt the game. The very same freedom that was given to them, and that they were enjoying so thoroughly, because other games had decided not to even bother giving them. They literally took their precious, sought-after freedom of play and used it to destroy one of the rare present day games that offered it to them, proving (once again) that these freedoms are omitted from current game designs for a real good reason in the first place.

So, that’s to say, it might seem strange at first as to why a more precious outlet that people are more emotionally involved in would be more quickly turned into flambé by its own users - but the simple fact is that these people just aren’t thinking ahead, or, sometimes, thinking at all. They’re simply reacting. And you get a stronger reaction the more emotionally invested people are.