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This is _supposed_ to be a factional conflict (in all the zone except WB). I simply can't understand why it seems the same people that claim to enjoy PvE and the story lines don't see this as a complete destruction of immersion. I can't see many comic heroes not helping another hero, though certainly villains don't naturally have the same loyalty they are all part of the same organization.
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Funny... I made this same argument regarding WB and why the entire concept behind it is flawed. I remember your response being "heroes fight heroes all the time in the comics".
So...
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Woa, Idea man!
*Juggernaut*
One player is spawned into the PvP zone, every player in the zone is on the same team, and their goal is to defeat the player that is given super-AV level power.
Said player will have a timer of 5:00 minuntes to be Juggernaut, and it will pick at random, so as to not unfairly pick same person over and over.
If Juggernaut is defeated it will randomly attach to another player, and whoever defeats the Juggernaut will get some kind of really good reward, like bounty. Or something.
Since it will take more than one person to kill the juggernaut, they can make it so its like a monster. Give whichever team that does (10% right?) the rewards.
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That would be severely cool.
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Now, if you have a real solution to dealing with "poo monkeys" I'm all ears.
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Shutting them down within the limits of the game seems to work. There is nothing a bully fears more than a united front willing to fight back.
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I have yet to see that really work. IME all it does is encourage them.
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I've found the opposite. Your mileage may vary.
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My first "official" class in games theory was in 1979, but I was pretty young at the time. I've been studying it as an actual mathematical discipline off and on for approximately twenty-two years. I know people who've studied it longer, but they're all mathematics or economics professors.
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Then color me surprised, I first engaged with game theory in the early 80's, 84 IIRC.
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But whatever its worth to publishers, game designers don't generally make that kind of money. Castle could hit his coworkers with lightning and actually *give* them superpowers, and I doubt it would take him higher than the high five figures. Lead programmers can make more, but lead programmers don't normally get rich unless the game you end up writing happens to have "Quake" in the name.
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I'm well aware of what programmers, skill balancers, and designers make. However, someone able to come up with an algorithm that actually describes balancing in an accurate model could make a great deal more. Programmers and artists (and community managers for that matter) aren't the one's who get rich in the gaming business because in most cases they are working for a salary and if they're lucky a few thousand stock options.
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If you are a game theorist, then here's the principles surrounding effective 1v1 PvP balance. You'd want to exploit three separate player decisions. First, you'd want to ensure that the act of making a build decision has population-based negative feedback. Each person that chooses to build in a particular way reduces the value of that build. That's possible: ensure that every build contains its own specific weakness (trivial examples, Focused Fighting offers a tohit buff: Unyielding buffs character with unresistable smashing damage). This means even if a particular build is "better" than all the others, that fact is only true so long as not too many other players take it. By definition, the strongest builds are not the most popular, they are the least popular, and that's impossible to circumvent.
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The problem with this is that while it does use self correcting forces to aid in balance, it doesn't create a fun game. Who wants to play a game where the effectiveness of your power is determined by how many other people choose the same one?
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Second, design proportional stacking rules, so that no game attributes exponentially increase, and so incremental improvements always have constant incremental value. This prevents single-point balancing from being upset by odd combinations of things, and allows for linear balancing metrics. This takes away the incentive to overstack, or accumulate lots of one thing, and allows players to make diversity decisions on an equal footing with stacked decisions.
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Agreed, but I'll also put forward that this is much more important to team v team balance than it is to 1 v 1 balance, since teams are where overloading occurs. Part of the balance issue, is imperfect information, not only do you not know the power choices or the slotting of your opponent you also don't know their strategy. No matter how you handle it, you can't provide perfect information because the game can't know what I'm planning to do.
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Third, create a requirement to commit to combat to achieve maximum effectiveness, and force the decision to commit to occur prior to gaining complete information about the combatants. This eliminates the ability to arbitrarily decide to engage in only fights where you have mathematically demonstrable advantages. This closes the exploitable hole in the first principle above: players have to decide to fight with imperfect information, which means they cannot precalculate overpowering advantages and decide to fight on that basis.
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Imperfect information isn't something to run from in games, while perfect information helps balance it doesn't make the game more enjoyable. To my mind making less information available would be a better approach for CoX than providing all information. I would prefer that the archetype tags not be displayed in PvP, this would have the effect of lowering cherry picking of targets to a degree. Although astute players will still determine who is playing what, it requires the use of observation and will lengthen combat in many cases. Providing perfect information only feeds into the drive to change, especially when combined with your first technique.
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There are lots of untapped ideas for balancing capabilities in 1v1 combat, and all of them have the additional property that they make teamed PvP combat more interesting also: they are not specifically 1v1-targeted adjustments.
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Let me be perfectly clear here. 1 v 1 balance is not possible in the modern MMO environment. While its possible to create a model, as you did above and many people have done before, it doesn't create an enjoyable game because the key to everything is the idea that something becomes less powerful as it gains popularity. Even in Guild Wars or Fury where changing powers is simply a matter of loading a new template between matches/maps players want predictability in the performance of their powers. Now, as I said all or almost all changes to balance are done on individual powers, but the changes are (or should) only be done in light of how that power affects team play. I really wish I could share some of the information I have that really illustrates this well, but I'm still bound by NDA's.
Having said all of that, we come to two fairly obvious conclusions. Its relatively easy to develop a model for balance that isn't fun and its relatively easy to develop a fun game that isn't balanced. The challenge becomes how do you craft a fun MMO from one of the balanced models? Everyone has been taking the other track, ie creating a fun game and then trying to cram into a state of balance mainly because no one has found the algorithm for fun yet 
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
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This is _supposed_ to be a factional conflict (in all the zone except WB). I simply can't understand why it seems the same people that claim to enjoy PvE and the story lines don't see this as a complete destruction of immersion. I can't see many comic heroes not helping another hero, though certainly villains don't naturally have the same loyalty they are all part of the same organization.
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Funny... I made this same argument regarding WB and why the entire concept behind it is flawed. I remember your response being "heroes fight heroes all the time in the comics".
So...
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So... what? There isn't an inconsistency there. Yes, heroes do fight other heroes in comics quite regularly. Yes, heroes help other heroes fight villains. Even when heroes disagree and have fought in the past they will often work together to take on a threat.
I've also stated, numerous times, that WB has a weak RP reason to be FFA and BB had a much better "story" for being FFA. However, having the lowest leve PvP zone be a FFA was something I and others campaigned against during the CoV Beta.
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
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I'd actually like to try my hand at PvP in this game. All my 'negative experience' come from other games.
So far, a number of (CoH specific) things keep me from giving it a go though:
1) I refuse to respec a character just to be viable. My build is my build, and if that's not good enough I'll stay the heck away, thankyouverymuch (I don't actually know how accurate this perception is. For all I know, it could be hugely exaggerated).
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In my experience, PVE builds can do a decent job in PVP zones AS LONG AS YOU ARE TEAMED. The vast majority of PVP-specific builds emphasize self-sufficiency. You will need to play with a team who understands how to actually "team," however, or you won't last long. Dom's in particular, just like trollers and defs on the hero side, are high-priority targets and you'll need to be protected. That means playing with a group of like-minded players who will work with you for the better of the team and not run off with "look at me!!!" syndrome to basically solo while teamed.
There is one exception to this rule. Most PVE builds slot a single accuracy in their attacks/debuffs. This is not sufficient for PVP in almost any circumstance. Beyond those players who emphasize +DEF or -TOHIT in their own PVP-centric builds, the game mechanics of PVP actually lower your native to-hit chance. You'll need/want double-slotted ACC. This doesn't impact my PVE builds at all since I've been double-slotting 2xACC since well before ED came along. But if you don't do this, you'll be very frustrated at how often you miss.
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2) My favourite character is a Dominator.
3) As far as I'm concerned, life before Fire Imps might as well not have existed. So that pretty much rules out Bloody Bay and Siren's Call.
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Since imps were your reference, your dom is fire. Generally, I do ok with a few different flavors of PVE-build Dom's in Sirens. The holds can work against squishies (mainly defs, blasters and trollers), but I can see your POV if you don't want to play without pets. But again, see number 1....with a team, you could do fine in Siren's. BB is usually deadsville anyways.
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4) I think Free for all PvP is kinda stupid. While it might make sense for villains to wail on one another, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for heroes. Especially not while Lord Recluse is trying to nab nuclear weapons. I don't buy the excuse for why Warbug is free for all. At least Bloody Bay had a story that made kinda sense for it... Warbug? Not so much. So this rules out Warbug.
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While not a role-player myself, I can understand why you don't like the idea of same-faction player v player. But note that this is optional behavior. I go to Warburg all the time with a team of vills just to wail on heroes. You don't HAVE to attack your own faction unless you choose to do so. I know a few stalkers in Warburg who ONLY target other stalkers as their own personal role-playing "shtick"....they are trying to "redeem" themselves is their backstory. One guy (forget his name) has a great bio that says he hunts other stalkers as a means of retribution for being displaced as leader of an assassins guild. It's all up to your personal creativity and preference, of course. But Warburg is likely he most equal footing for hero v villian PVP....it's a shame you rule it out. Sirens is second place to me in the balance equation, with stalkers really anchoring that bell curve. RV is very one sided most of the time. A combination of the differences between APP/PPP and the introduction of Heavies really tends to mess with balance.
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Can you site the source of these 'facts'?
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Yes I can, and without the single quotes around the word facts as well.
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Thank you! I apologize if I offended you. I doubted you actually had a link, but if it existed was quite interested in looking at whatever source you were pulling your information from.
/em hits the links
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Can you site the source of these 'facts'?
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Yes I can, and without the single quotes around the word facts as well.
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Thank you! I apologize if I offended you. I doubted you actually had a link, but if it existed was quite interested in looking at whatever source you were pulling your information from.
/em hits the links
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No worries, I'm thick skinned
(My wife says thick headed but we won't go into that.)
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
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Laylyn of HAUNT:
Please read my response on page ten. Also, please realize the orginal post was aimed at the pvp-needs-to-be-removed from-this-game crowd. There are a couple of others you missed on the past two pages.
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Whisky Tango Foxtrot?
Try going back and reading what I said without assuming I am attacking you....
...Poo Flingers...
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I wasn't attacking either. On a side note, I think you and Jack would make a perfect couple...
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Yeah, maybe we would. Neither one of us cuts up the quotes of another person to edit it so that it creates the appearance of making random insults.
Unlike yourself, I don't make up facts but refuse to give links to the data to back up my claims. I don't take my personal game experience and claim it is how everyone else experiences the game.
I give my opinion, I say what it is based on and claim only to represent myself and the people I know who have told me they feel the same.
You are very correct. Jack and I are two of a kind, we're not liars.
"SARS, Bird Flue, 9/11, Anthrax in the Mail, Mad Cow Disease. Pope John Paul didn't die, he preboarded." - Christopher Titus "5th Annual End of the World Tour"
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Obviously someone who PvPs would visit the PvP zones so often to know that they are ghost towns... right?
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I think you meant PvE in the first part, but whatever. You seem to believe I do not go into PvP zones. Actually I do quite often. I like Bloody Bay and Warburg. I like the temp powers and I like the maps. I pop in at least two times a week into one or both of them. Unlike you and the other PvPers In This Thread, I do not make up facts and I do not claim to have secret knowledge about what they do in the game.
Admittedly, /whoall is an imperfect tool since most of the time there will be several people who are in /hide but its a decent way to test the water. At any point in time in any zone, PvE or PvP, someone might be in /hide and in other threads on this subject I have been told many times that no real PvPer uses /hide because they are looking for the thrill of a fight we can imply that anyone in /hide is a whiny Badger trying to get his badges without being noticed.
The conditions of this experiment:
I did not count my own presence in the zone.
Someone may be in /hide mode in either type of zone and trying to count who might be doing so is rather like trying to find UFOs. Im not chasing crop circles.
There are fewer PvP Zones than PvE and to try and compare entire server populations based on All Zones is artificially weighting things in favor of my personal viewpoint. Therefore I am only surveying the zones directly connected to the PvP zones. And only on Hero Side on Liberty, because Im not committing my entire day to this with switching to other servers and Villain Side Alts.
At this morning: 0830-0840 Pacific Time
Whoall in Steel Canyon: 5
Whoall in Sirens Call: 0
Whoall in Skyway: 3
Whoall in Bloody Bay: 2
Whoall in Kings Row: 3
Whoall in Warburg: 0
Whoall in Atlas Park: 15
Whoall in Recluses Victory: 5
Total PvE: 26
Total PvP: 07
If I get bored enough, Ill make another pass this evening when more people should be on the servers. That is, if the other people in this thread can (a) stop cutting up my statements to turn them into insults for no reason and (b) if the other people in this thread can stop citing facts without providing the evidence to back up what they say.
In the meantime, heres a question for you all:
If PvE is such a dead duck and not financially worthwhile, why is it that I see threads over and over again about how PvPers are trying to get more people into their zones and trying to come up with more ways to have PvP forced into other zones but I do not think I have ever seen a thread started with the idea that PvE areas need to have more incentive to get all those PvPers to come out of their zones and join us?
"SARS, Bird Flue, 9/11, Anthrax in the Mail, Mad Cow Disease. Pope John Paul didn't die, he preboarded." - Christopher Titus "5th Annual End of the World Tour"
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If Juggernaut is defeated it will randomly attach to another player, and whoever defeats the Juggernaut will get some kind of really good reward, like bounty. Or something.
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Ogre by Steve Jackson games.
"SARS, Bird Flue, 9/11, Anthrax in the Mail, Mad Cow Disease. Pope John Paul didn't die, he preboarded." - Christopher Titus "5th Annual End of the World Tour"
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Unlike you and the other PvPers In This Thread, I do not make up facts and I do not claim to have secret knowledge about what they do in the game.
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That's a mighty broad stroke there neighbor, care to point any place this PvP'er made up facts?
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At this morning: 0830-0840 Pacific Time
Whoall in Steel Canyon: 5
Whoall in Sirens Call: 0
Whoall in Skyway: 3
Whoall in Bloody Bay: 2
Whoall in Kings Row: 3
Whoall in Warburg: 0
Whoall in Atlas Park: 15
Whoall in Recluses Victory: 5
Total PvE: 26
Total PvP: 07
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This, as I think you realize, isn't particularly scientific nor is it all that compelling. First, having one sample is like assuming it rains all the time in San Diego because the one time I went it rained for three days. Without taking a broad sample you can't see trends and anomalies. Its equally interesting to note that with the exception of the home of costume contests (AP) the highest population PvP zone matches the highest population PvE zone in your survey. However, as I said a sample size of 1 is basically worthless. If you want to use stats to support a position, please do the work and gather statistically significant data.
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if the other people in this thread can stop citing facts without providing the evidence to back up what they say.
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Again, I believe that I provided a significant amount of verifiable data. I hope you'd avoid using broad strokes if didn't intend to include my posts.
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In the meantime, heres a question for you all:
If PvE is such a dead duck and not financially worthwhile, why is it that I see threads over and over again about how PvPers are trying to get more people into their zones and trying to come up with more ways to have PvP forced into other zones but I do not think I have ever seen a thread started with the idea that PvE areas need to have more incentive to get all those PvPers to come out of their zones and join us?
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I don't personally believe that PvE is dead, far from it. My personal position is that pure PvE games won't succeed, but we have yet to see a pure PvP MMO work. Fury is the first to be released and it will be very interesting to see how successful it is in the marketplace. In short, its worth the developers time and energy to put some focus on PvP, but that is not the same thing as saying stop working on PvE.
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
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Obviously someone who PvPs would visit the PvP zones so often to know that they are ghost towns... right?
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Not sure who it is you quoted there. But it wasn't me.
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Obviously someone who PvPs would visit the PvP zones so often to know that they are ghost towns... right?
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Not sure who it is you quoted there. But it wasn't me.
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*sigh*
I use quick reply or tend to reply to the last person in a thread because I often try to reply to several people at once instead of posting multiple times in a row.
Also:
In the past, when someone made a statement that a Forum Monitor thought was nasty and needed deleting, or when a person felt they needed to delete their message, the action of deleting a message also deleted every single message that was reply to to that particular message.
That is, after all, the purpose of the quote boxes. To let someone know I quoted a message. People reading the entire thread know who I quoted. Someone coming in and not wanting to scroll through 30+ pages of messages can get a sense of what I am responding to and not feel lost.
So, if what I quoted was not said by you, then I just replied to the last active message in the thread, which by coincidence happened to be posted by you. Practice some reading comprehension skills, grow a thicker skin, dont sweat the small stuff, or you are going to be unhappy in the forums a lot of the time and continually think that someone is attacking you.
Everything said, even in direct reply to a single person is not an attack. If I ever want to carry on a personal conversation with a single person in CoX, I use the PM system. Anything posted in the forums is generally for everyone and I do try (but obviously do not always succeed) in making it clear that while I may be responding to one person in particular, I am intending my message to be for all persons reading the forums.
In General, I think (to respond to the message that started this) that PvP does not in fact pay the bills in CoX.
In General, I think that whatever PvP does in other games is immaterial. Yes, there is a market for PvP, but CoX was not that market in the beginning and I believe that trying to make CoX more PvP oriented is a bad idea. Bad for me, bad for the game.
In General, I think the links provided by most everyone in this thread to support their claims of how valuable PvP is to CoX are fallacious. They prove PvP is popular in other games, which I have already stated I see as having no bearing whatsoever on CoX. Or they have been completely off topic and without bearing on the discussion at all.
In General, I think PvP fans let the Tools and Poo Flingers have control of their game. In CoX or in any game I have been part of that allows PvP, the Tools and Poo Flingers are the most vocal, the most obvious and the greatest number of active persons.
In General, I think PvP fans could change this simply by not engaging with the Tools and Poo Flingers, ostracize them and not let them ruin the PvP image, but they choose not to.
In General, I think the PvP zones are under populated and under utilized. If someone wants to come up with a Zone to Zone appropriate matches for me to randomly survey, thats fine. But even if you take Atlas Park completely out of the picture, PvP zones are at a significant percentage lower in population than PvE zones.
In General, I think most of the facts quoted by people in this thread are about as factual as the cover of the Midnight Star. Id really like to know who was taking a class in MMORPGs in the year 1979 when my college was still using punch cards to teach programming.
In General, I think its a moot point. PvP appears to be a sideline issue for CoX. Despite the number of nerfs it appears to drive, it is not yet in my opinion the foremost issue in the minds of the Developers. It is my hope that the Developers will continue to keep PvP as a secondary issue, but it is my fear that they are more and more listening to the minority in CoX. And it is my belief that this will cause CoX to die.
You can all go back to flinging poo, clipping messages to misquote and misrepresent what people who disagree with you say. The Fantasy Island Line was passed long ago in this thread, insofar as any factual information being expressed. As long as you continue to characterize your opinions as facts, its a waste of time to keep talking to any of you.
"SARS, Bird Flue, 9/11, Anthrax in the Mail, Mad Cow Disease. Pope John Paul didn't die, he preboarded." - Christopher Titus "5th Annual End of the World Tour"
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Obviously someone who PvPs would visit the PvP zones so often to know that they are ghost towns... right?
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Not sure who it is you quoted there. But it wasn't me.
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*sigh*
I use quick reply or tend to reply to the last person in a thread because I often try to reply to several people at once instead of posting multiple times in a row.
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Condescending sighs aside, quick replying to someone and then directly quoting someone else immediately beneath their name is confusing. It's already difficult to follow this thread without tossing random, incorrectly attributed quotes into lenghty replies with no way to track the conversation back.
Just sayin'.
I think you would have been better served by not answering than posting this.
You spent probably 20 minutes writing something that boils down to, I think that everything that was said is wrong, but can't be bothered to provide any evidence or even a rational argument to counter it.
You claim that game trends in the whole MMO industry are somehow not applicable to CoX...by what reasoning?
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In General, I think that whatever PvP does in other games is immaterial. Yes, there is a market for PvP, but CoX was not that market in the beginning and I believe that trying to make CoX more PvP oriented is a bad idea. Bad for me, bad for the game.
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So, because we didn't sell toilet paper when we opened the store we shouldn't sell it now that its proven its popularity at every other store. BTW, Arcanaville and I were discussing Game Theory, a field of study that originated in the 1940's.
Please, feel free to educate yourself on one more topic:
Game Theory
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
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Id really like to know who was taking a class in MMORPGs in the year 1979 when my college was still using punch cards to teach programming.
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Game Theory /= MMORPG Class
And you questioned *my* reading comprehension?
[edit] bleh, Thor beat me to it...
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Player Auction houses are a great example of PvP content that is typically embraced by PvE players.
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Why do I get the feeling that you've played EVE Online?
DS
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Woa, Idea man!
*Juggernaut*
One player is spawned into the PvP zone, every player in the zone is on the same team, and their goal is to defeat the player that is given super-AV level power.
Said player will have a timer of 5:00 minuntes to be Juggernaut, and it will pick at random, so as to not unfairly pick same person over and over.
If Juggernaut is defeated it will randomly attach to another player, and whoever defeats the Juggernaut will get some kind of really good reward, like bounty. Or something.
Since it will take more than one person to kill the juggernaut, they can make it so its like a monster. Give whichever team that does (10% right?) the rewards.
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That would be severely cool.
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Somebody must play Ogre
EDIT: Curses! Scooped
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If you are a game theorist, then here's the principles surrounding effective 1v1 PvP balance. You'd want to exploit three separate player decisions. First, you'd want to ensure that the act of making a build decision has population-based negative feedback. Each person that chooses to build in a particular way reduces the value of that build. That's possible: ensure that every build contains its own specific weakness (trivial examples, Focused Fighting offers a tohit buff: Unyielding buffs character with unresistable smashing damage). This means even if a particular build is "better" than all the others, that fact is only true so long as not too many other players take it. By definition, the strongest builds are not the most popular, they are the least popular, and that's impossible to circumvent.
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The problem with this is that while it does use self correcting forces to aid in balance, it doesn't create a fun game. Who wants to play a game where the effectiveness of your power is determined by how many other people choose the same one?
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If its not fun, we already have that now: everyone has strengths and weaknessess, and the strength of a particular build is based on how common corresponding counter-strengths and weaknessess are in the opponents you are likely to face, not on the absolute lack of them. This idea above doesn't (necessarily) invent all new strengths and weaknessess, it simply shuffles them around so that its impossible to buy a strength package that arbitrarily makes you stronger than most, and at worst equal to those that replicate your build. Its the ability to make builds that are strong against most, equal to most of the rest, and weak to only a very few that encourages FotM builds: the decision for someone to specifically build to counter an FotM build is often hampered by such buillds being sufficiently specialized that there is a penalty for doing so in being effective against anything else. If there exists builds that are good against most things and weak against few, *and* the few that are good against it are not good against many other things, that is a bad positive feedback loop that encourages such building. If you eliminate such situations, you still have the same strengths and weaknessess you had before, you still have the same general range of effectiveness (at least in theory: you don't *have* to change such things if you don't want to, although if it were me, there are lots of such things I would want to change as a separate issue), but what you take away is the self-reinforcing that happens when some builds (or build strategies) become pre-eminent.
Its only an accident of design that, say, SR did not get intrinsic tohit buffs: in fact, its clear that *now* the devs are thinking exactly this thought in the invention system: the high order tohit buff enhancement is slottable in defense powers; the thinking was probably on the lines that there would be a neutralizing effect of doing so: tohit buffs would exist in PvP in proportion to the amount of defense powers. Problem is, its too clumsy in itself, and the stacking mechanics make such an attempt extremely difficult to pull off in isolation like that.
But to reiterate: you are only as effective as what everyone else decides to build for, today. This doesn't change. What changes is how the game uses the PvP players themselves as the backdrop environment for making PvP build decisions. Right now, you build on the assumption that most people will think (roughly) like you, and make similar build decisions. With this in place, you can't think like that anymore, because the feedback intrinsic in this design asthetic puts you into the position of having to think recursively: how will people build if they build like they think I will build to counter how they would originally build? And as a practical matter, that's a virtually impossible thing to predict.
One thing, though. This game isn't really rock/paper/scissors, because not all rocks have paper. For example, slows are highly effective in PvP because even those things with slow resistance don't have enough to fully counter the effects of slows, and slows simultaneously hurt an opponents offense, defense (most of the time), and maneuverability. Slows have no real paper. To follow this design principle fully, everything should be effective against at least a few things and be relatively ineffective against other things, or you don't even have the basics of rock/paper/scissors balance, much less more sophisticated forms of balance.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
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Keep in mind of lot of pve is people grinding to get their toons to pvp level :lol.
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In General, I think most of the “facts” quoted by people in this thread are about as factual as the cover of the Midnight Star. I’d really like to know who was taking a class in MMORPGs in the year 1979 when my college was still using punch cards to teach programming.
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This has to be a reference to me, and what I said was that I had a class in games theory then, not MMORPGs. It was actually a very basic introduction to games theory, and elementary games design. I was, err, significantly under eighteen at the time.
The precursors for MMORPGs, though, can trace back at least to the early MUDs; my first contact with those was back around 1989, although they were around for at least a few years before then (some of the early work on them I understand goes back to at least the early 80s, actually).
Of course, there are people who think email was invented in 1991.
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Of course, there are people who think email was invented in 1991.
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That's because there wasn't anyone out there to tell us we had it until then. "You've got mail!" 
Open case.
I don't understand
Open box
I don't understand
Touch Crate
You open the box and a magic demon comes out and kills you.
Delete Zork....
I don't understand.
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That's like going to a busy, loud nightclub and screaming over the loudspeaker system "Please keep it down, I'm just here to read!"
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I very much enjoyed this analogy. I am thankful the PvP in CoX is consentual. If I do not wish to PvP or be subjected to PKing, I do not enter the zones that allow this to happen to me. Period. Until there is something different introduced in this game that provides an increased incentive to enter the PvP areas, I plan to leave the sharks feed on themselves. I am not alone.