mmorality
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Hiding from justice
Mesta on Eldre'thelas has an interesting tale of woe over on the forums: he had someone within his guild ninja a few items from the guild bank, and then they discovered the next day that the guy had "disappeared" completely-- he not only didn't appear on their server, but he didn't show up in the Armory, either. Metsa thinks name change, and that appears to be the likeliest scenario-- not a lot of reason to ninja valuable items if you're just quitting the game with them. So it looks like yes, name changes will simply let ninjas run free.Blizzard's official response in the thread is pretty apathetic-- Bornakk basically says that you've got to be careful about who you let into the guild bank ("l2bank," essentially). Over on Massively, we recently posted about something called "MMOrality"-- the idea that players uphold a social code in game. But that's all based on each player having their own identity, and the premise that if someone does something wrong, you can hold them responsible for it. But these paid name changes, it seems, takes away that little bit of justice-- if we can't hold players responsible for their actions at all, we can't enforce MMOrality in any way.Blizzard still can-- obviously, they know who's who even if names get changed. But just the same, I'm not sure if players should necessarily have access to name changes-- the majority of people who change their names have legitimate reasons for doing so, I'd guess, and it's a shame to let the few ninjas ruin everything. Is there a way we can allow players to pay to change their identity while still making sure those who break the "MMOral" laws are held responsible for what they do?
The concept of MMOrality, and how players pass it around
Ryan Shwayder has a look up at what he calls "MMOrality"-- the idea of a calling within any given game that determines how we as our avatars act. When newbie players first sign on to a new game, they are innocent in every meaning of the word-- they have no idea how to act, and even though they may do things that are against the ingame code (killstealing, ninja looting, grabbing quests without grouping, and so on), they are innocent, because they don't know yet what's right and wrong. Only after they're introduced to the "MMOrality" within the game can they figure out whether they want to be immoral, and go against the codes put in place by the game, or moral, and follow the etiquette and standards laid out by the other players.It's an interesting thought, and not a new one-- just as we have morality in the real world, our virtual worlds also have their own codes that can be upheld or broken. Shwayder speculates, however, that this morality requires PvP-- players can only uphold the morality they've put in place if they have the option to control other players by ganking them. But I'm not so sure that's true.
