Alignment Systems

If you don't know what an alignment system is allow me to update you.

Praebeo mihi ut doceo vos...

When we refer to alignment we are essentially refering to the moralities of your avatar. Is he aligned benevalently, malovently or somewhere in the middle. An alignment system is in its basic essence designed to be a good thing. It is designed to help the players to behave and get a long and is a means of instantaneous justice.

But are alignment systems needed in a virtual world that is portraying reality? Are we disallowing evil characters or punishing them? Are we encouraging and rewarding players who are deemed to be good? It would seem to me that the online society, were it capable of doing so, would reward those that should be. However you answer there are a few things I want to make I address..

• There is no all seeing eye that judges us always and instantly punishes us for doing something wrong. (Unless you live with your mom) We want to emulate a real virtual world and yes if someone catches you and chooses to do something about it then your caught, but should you pull of the perfect robbery or murder (virtually speaking) you should be allowed to reap the rewards.


• The goal is a virtual world and people want to play and should allowed to play characters of pure evil and malice. After all, we can not have good without evil.


• Code, and normally poorly written code, will determine your alignment tendencies based on exactly what happens in game. As an example: Should you accidentally click on the ground dropping your house key and someone wanders by and picks it up, well then they own it. They refuse to give it back and you kill them and take it back... Now your evil. Now the developers want to fix this, so they allow any item dropped to be flagged with a no steal flag for 30 seconds. Now if someone picks up they key you dropped they are flagged evil... Of course this time the guy who picks up your key is your friend and he hands it back to you... Is he still evil? The devs don't have time to mull the over though as there is a bank in the center of town where larry, moe and curly are dropping platinum coins and waiting for noobs to pick them up and thus be flagged evil and slain.

But some players cry that we NEED an alignment system to protect them. No they don't. What they need is a meaningful way to protect themselves in game. A way they can respond that griefers will understand. Consider The guild of Stygian (Fictional) has stationed 10 max level (or max skill) warriors outside the gates or Noeveb. (Fictional city populated with mostly new players) Their top twitch gamers each armed with Teamspeak and a keen desire to make sure the new players stay that way. The new players are getting slaughtered. A few are confused as to how they are even dying. This goes on for about 30 minutes until the Enforcers of Justice (Fictional good guys guild) swings through and kills the invaders on their way somewhere else. Since the Enforcers have warned Stygian of these actions several times they hunt each one down assigning 5 men to each Stygian member and kill each and everyone of them. They even get the guild leader twice! This takes a whole weekend and screenshots are posted as well as a short flash movie showing Stygians Guild Leader dying twice. Its all quite humerous and the Enforcers are on the forums all busy patting themselves on the back for a weekend of fun and chumming it up on the forums. They get PM and Stygian is back in Noeveb this time with 20 members. Nothing has changed. The Stygian Guild members involved in the affair are now aligned as evil and are KOS to most people. (Of course they were before too... But now their aligned as evil.) Should they need a good guy for shopping etc, they'll just log an alternate character.

All in all an alignment system is pointless and artficially restricts our freedom as players. We should be able to creep through our town through the dead of night after curfew to burgle the rich baron. And yes maybe we'll get caught... But we shouldn't defintely get caught.

Let the players police the players... To some degree most stories don't even make sense when played in their artfical world. The great menace of evil King Nordstrom came to the Good Kings castle and killed him sending a sliver of hate throughout the world forever. When in reality... This evil red king guy tried to come to town but he was evil and the guards autokilled. He respawned 17 times before he realized he can't make it to the good kings castle while he's evil. So he spent all night befriending rabbits and giving them carrots until he was good. Once he was blue he went to the kings castle and killed him which turned him red, which made the guards kill him and now they are both spawned in the cemetary and have been fighting there all day... . Egads...