Something about what CIG is doing, and how they are doing it is really connecting with players though. It's lightning in a bottle and I'm really unsure any other developer could pull it off.
For example, one of my fellow Goonrathi started a thread inquiring as to how far we can push the Pirate RP, specifically in regards to scamming. The thread was pretty hot and heavy, and developer
wcloaf replied with some very measured information:
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The easy-but-unsatisfying answer is that we haven't set any rules of this kind yet. But I guess I would go as far as to say that no one is specifically looking to ban anyone for being a pirate right now. The EULA is designed to give us the freedom to deal with issues as they emerge... but at the moment we're imagining banning the guy who spends all day screaming racial slurs over the comm system, not the guy roleplaying one of the careers the game was built to support.
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One of the stories Richard Garriott tells over and over about Ultima Online is about how he went out in his Lord British character and told a thief who was luring other users out into the woods to stop. And the thief promised he would but kept doing it. And that went around and around until Richard got ready to ban the guy, who explained that he was roleplaying a thief... of course he was going to pretend to change his tune when the King stopped by.
So as frustrating as that thief is for other users at times, they're part of the game. They're obeying the spirit and the rules of the game world as established by the developers. It's the kind of problem you want to "solve" within the universe. The guy luring everyone into pirate space and murdering them and eating their babies should be cause for other players to issue bounties and band together to hunt him down... not for them to click a BAN THIS USER button and wait for someone to do that.
Now there are all sorts of instances where griefers *aren't* playing by the rules like this... people who are using tools to cheat, who are exploiting game mechanics in a way that technically works but breaks the spirit of the game and so on... and we'll likely be a lot less forgiving about that kind of thing. But the guy playing a pirate and being a jerk like an actual pirate would be is just playing the game.
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https://forums.robertsspaceindustrie...s-to-piracy/p1