Permanent Death

People really do not like it when their character dies. That’s really do not like it. Not only will they say they’ll leave if it happens, some of them actually will leave. There’s ample evidence of this from virtual worlds that launched with PD but toned it down in the face of player opposition. You can take steps to minimize this—keep the incidence of PD low but the awareness of its possibility high—but it’ll still happen. Even non-PD PvP was softened in early flagship graphical worlds. People don’t like to lose, they don’t like to suffer, and they especially don’t like other people making them suffer.

It’s easy to dismiss this as a short-term thing, and that once players “mature enough” to see the benefits that PD brings they will be willing to tolerate it; there’s informal evidence to support this position from long-term textual worlds with PD. However, even supposing that it’s correct, this still doesn’t help. Virtual worlds rely on newbies for their survival. Newbies are, by definition, immature (in their appreciation of virtual worlds). Given the choice between a virtual world that they can explore in complete safety and one where it seems a moment’s lapse of concentration could undo weeks of play, well, they’ll take the safe one, thank you very much.

Ah, the argument continues, but in time people will come to realize that such virtual worlds are unsatisfying, and, although they may be newbies to my virtual world, they won’t be newbies to virtual worlds in general. They will be mature enough to give PD a chance. Well, perhaps, yes, but remember that people view all virtual worlds in the context of the virtual world with which they started. If they began with a virtual world that had no PD, they’ll judge your virtual world from that standpoint ¹. It had better be a damned good one if they’re to give it a try.

Even if they are “mature enough” for PD, their attitude is analogous to the way that people in the real world view public transport. I like the idea of public transport, so do you, so does everyone else. I like it because the more that other people travel by bus, the roads will be less congested for me to travel by car. So do you, so does everyone else. We’re all in favor of it, but only for other people. So it is with PD: It’s fine when it happens to you, but not so fine when it happens to me.

Another issue is that PD is regularly confused with PvP. Players of Ultima Online didn’t like it when their characters were attacked by large numbers of PCs operating in well co-ordinated gangs. It was unfair: These PKers were ruining the game. That’s true, it was unfair and they were ruining the game; but it’s a PvP issue, not a PD issue—those “PKers” weren’t actually PKing. Nevertheless, because PvP and PD are so often combined to such disastrous effect, in many players’ minds they’re two sides of the same coin. Most players today haven’t even experienced PD but are categorically opposed to it.

So, PD has an (not entirely unjustified) image problem which means players will probably stay away. Furthermore, if it occurs too often or too unexpectedly, so that players feel it’s either arbitrary or unavoidable, even those players who came may decide to go. This is why developers of virtual worlds are rarely keen on PD.

There is, however, another reason why PD (in combination with PvP) is off-putting: The need for a very strong elder game. Players who manage to survive to “the end” need something to occupy them fully. If the designers don’t provide it, they’ll make their own entertainment. This may well take the form of employing their finely honed combat skills (possibly using a secondary character) to attack other PCs. A single, highly skilled killer can literally empty a small virtual world of other players, and it’s very hard for administrators to stop them. After all, they’re not exactly cheating. The fact that they want to protect the integrity of their rank by ensuring no “undeserving” characters reach it is, to them, incidental. For larger virtual worlds, these people would probably lead mobs rather than work alone, but the effect is the same: Other players quit to avoid the intimidation. As Chapter 3 pointed out, there is often a place in virtual worlds for small numbers of players of this type. Beyond a certain threshold, though, they can rapidly bring a virtual world to its knees. If you let fun PKing become your virtual world’s elder game, prepare for the worst.

Despite all this, PD nevertheless has a lot going for it. Quite how much is best shown by considering what happens when it’s taken away.