MagicManICT wrote:wolf1000wolf wrote:I'd bet that you could double your playerbase just be making two islands and having one island be completely PvP-free. All the casuals and peaceful folks would be playing there, slowly progressing. For "end-game" content, just add dragons or Balrogs.
On the first statement, it then becomes a matter of game management. How to deal with griefers, and the man hours to deal with it. There used to be a write-up by jorb on the matter, but it was lost with the forum changes at the start of world 8.
For the second, it was already answered in this thread, and the answer can be summed up as "see mammoths and trolls." In other words, it's still too easy to exploit mechanics.
I actually do vaguely recall the write-up on griefing and how fundamentally in a resource-scarce game, most actions can be considered PvP. (Might be separate discussions though).
However, don't you feel that it might be a matter of gameplay/features attracting playerbase types?
Would a care-bear server still have griefers? Yes.
Would that server have a lower % of negative player-to-player interactions? Probably yes too?
As for tough critters (mammoths,trolls, whatnot), exploiting mechanics to kill them is the practical thing to do but killing them straight-up would be some folks' in-game goals, no?