[...] recent blog posts on the subject of Metaverse 2.0 (thanks, Stefan). Start off with these three (Raph’s Koster & 3pointD & OgleEarth).First, for those who want to see Metaverse 2.0 (from here on, M2) as [...]

[...] Player Governance in an MMO Dangerous Commoner Joined: 21 Apr 2006 Posts: 14 Location: UK 281 XP 0 0 0 268 0 View Inventory Posted: Fri May 26, 2006 9:07 am     Post subject: Player Governance in an MMO I am fascinated by the idea of player governance in an MMO, which Ryan mentions in his article on the end game. It would not interest everyone, but then many people live in the real world without paying attention to politics; despite the impact that it has on their daily lives. For the sake of this post, I am going to assume an MMO with several city states as a basis for the examples. The same questions would arise if players controlled planets in a far distant galaxy, or nations across an entire globe. If the rules controlling participation in the governing of a city are in the hands of the government, will there be a trend to open up that government or concentrate power in the hands of a single ruler or clique. Will cities have any sort of independent judiciary, or will justice be administered by the government. Will there be any non-republican democracies, by which I mean cities in which decisions are reached by the people directly and not through their representatives. Will those in government use that participation to enrich themselves either through direct use of tax revenues or by accepting donations to make decisions favourable to the paying player? How will the tax versus expenditure balance play out. If tax revenues can pay for things that make the city better for players, will there be support for higher taxes that bring tangible benefits to the citizens? If a government is unpopular, will it be possible for a group of players to attempt a coup? If low taxes have left the city guard underpaid, will they turn on the government? In the real world there are substantial impediments to moving to a new country, such as distance from family, moving property, language and cultural differences. In an MMO these are less of a factor, therefore we could see people moving between cities seeking a place with the tax regime, political stability, or governmental system they wanted. Would states attempt to restrict people leaving? Would states put barriers in the way of incoming immigration? The MMO that provided for this sort of political development, would be a world in which players had an influence on how cities grew and shrunk. A world that did not reset itself every each server reboot. If NPC monsters tended to move away from well populated, well guarded cities, then we could see players in search of adventure moving, even if not permanently to a city in a less secure area. All of these questions intrigue me. I do not know if the same lower restraints compared to r/l on anti-social behaviour that are seen in existing MMO would make such a game impossible, but I would certainly be interested in trying to find out._________________Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. garvity Vassal Joined: 21 Apr 2006 Posts: 35 879 XP 0 0 0 618 0 View Inventory Posted: Fri May 26, 2006 12:44 pm     Post subject: A Tale in the Desert has a really interesting player government system. Players can collect signatures from other players and then submit their proposals up for a server-wide vote. Players can create and vote on laws (game rules) and game features. Of course, in the end it’s up to the devs to implement the changes (or not), but that veto power isn’t used very often. There is also another aspect that involves nationwide elections for a "Demi-Pharaoh." A player elected to that position has the power to permanently ban a limited number of players. The power can be used to deal with griefers or for other less virtuous purposes. Needless to say, it’s a very interesting virtual political environment. Raph also wrote on this topic earlier this week: Horses and the user-governed world_________________MMOz.com Glazius Page Joined: 08 May 2006 Posts: 104 1623 XP 0 0 0 99 1 View Inventory Posted: Tue May 30, 2006 7:40 am     Post subject: Player governance would work better in SWG than in WoW. Or rather, it _won’t_ work in anything with a raid-based "endgame", because all you need is one guild to drop a prohibitive "toll road" on the way to the next boss in the raid chain and your server drama asplode. Informal player governance is working in EVE. Powerful corporations can lay claim to certain areas of space and set up things like guardbots and repair stations. But ultimately, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, or something like that. Player governance will only take off if people don’t have to carve their own niches out of someone else’s hide. –GF Giblet Serf Joined: 01 Jun 2006 Posts: 3 Location: I dunno, but it smells really bad. 140 XP 0 0 0 95 0 View Inventory Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 10:00 am     Post subject: Player run instanced cities might work for this. Lets say for example in eq2 a guild that has done quest X to acheive the rights to build a city gets its own instance where certain guild ranks can move and edit certain features of the city. Lower merchant costs for items but at the same time require a minimum weekly fee of coin and status to maintain the city so that merchant costs cannot be abused below the standard. Employ guards that will attack certain other guilds if they are foolish enough to entire your city. Or perhaps those guards will crumble beneath the might of unwelcome guests. Earn "city coin" based on the sales made by your city merchants and from the rent costs from anyone who lives in your city, so more popular cities can earn "city coin" and purchase upgrades for your town. Grow from a small village to a small town to a thriving walled metropolis to fend off the legions of orcs and packs of gnolls that attack daily. Omg, I think I just reinvented sim city The real fun will be the quests that can be obtained only via player owned cites. Npc’s should frequent towns at will and perhaps if your city is large enough some important member of a distant land will come seeking aid from the guild of your city…………just some ideas, i think i could be somthing really cool and offer the opportunity to add the "surprises" we all look for._________________Just stop thinking…Trust me it will be fun. Darniaq Serf Joined: 21 Jun 2006 Posts: 2 0 XP 0 0 0 0 0 View Inventory Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 12:38 pm     Post subject: Man. Really wish I knew about this place before now As it happens, [u]I agree with you on the concept of Player Politicians. The problem with implementation, in my mind, is two fold: A lot of development effort spent on features relatively few would care about. This includes those interested in running large groups (few) and those interested in the goings-on of those running large groups (few+). The guilds I ran and the SWG city I founded and co-ran seemed like full-time jobs for the few people interested and the rest I kept trying to get interested How often do city mayors in SWG truly turn over. I always felt like it was a semi-wasted role, something people did once a week when their votes came in and unlocked new abilites. I often wondered how many city groups just had someone make an alt to be the mayor for the few times the role was needed to be played. [...]

[...] It’s interesting that, aside from game design, one of the common topics you are likely to always see in any game discussion are complaints about the attitude and behaviors of certain players. Players complaining about players. The Guardian last week had an article regarding griefers and interviewed Lum and Richard Bartle. Similarly, in a post last week on his personal blog, Chris Bateman felt compelled to defend himself from a drive-by flaming. We also had on GO last week Geldonyetich’s thread about forums users and their impact. These aren’t references to people complaining, but instead these are examples in one week of a growing concern for the state of behaviors apparent in online gaming. I don’t think this is a moral issue. It’s not about censuring people or driving out the newbs or whatever. I think this is an interesting problem for a couple of reasons: 1) Learned Behavior The average gamer age in 2005, according to the ESA, is 33. A fact I found startling was that only 31% of players surveyed were under 18, leading to the speculation of an average age and a further breakdown that 44% of players are 18-49 years and 25% are 50+ years. This seems large, but the point is still meaningful whatever the data; namely, that there’s a majority of players out there who should know how to act with others. If the adults are the ones acting badly on average, what is this going to teach new entrants to genres and gaming in general? This isn’t an appeal to morals, it’s common sense. More experienced and more mature players should know how to govern themselves better and how to encourage better behaviors. Otherwise, there’s no guarantee things won’t be worse in the future — the future being tonight or whenever you’ll be playing next. 2) Growing Market With the story breaking from f13 and Sir Bruce the other day, we know that Blizzard has reached worldwide 6M users and is probably planning to expand its other successful titles to the MMO genre. Aside from that, we also all know from watching planned releases and industry buzz that there’s a sizable amount of investment going on by other providers looking to match Blizzard. The market is growing and so are the tactics and reach for demographics so far unmined for online games. Maybe it’s like the late 1990′s AOL example of a sudden surge of newbies to the Internet, but we’re going to see more new gamers from probably different cultures and backgrounds to MMO’s. How are these people going to react, and how will they behave based on some of the common griefing we all know about? They’ll probably reciprocate, since a lot of bad behaviors aren’t curbed. And in some cases, like with RMT farming, they’re rewarded. 3) New Designs If poor behaviors continue in a game and get enough visibility or provider concern, the provider usually has to respond. It’s more cost effective for them to prevent any common problems than to work at resolving individual user issues. This is why we see some providers rolling back innovative designs and launching new titles with much thinner and/or restrictive feature sets. For example, if enough people keep having negative experiences in PvP, then of course we’ll see some providers launch MMO’s without it. If combat imbalances and skewed economies from duping or whatever are a worry, then we’ll get MMO’s without any player crafting at all. Whether you’re aching for innovation or just a game with a different mix of common themes, if there are endemic bad player behaviors with those themes, that’s likely to scare away any designer from taking any chances. The designer will redeploy the feature or build it in a future title with a lot of extra oversight or curbs. Whatever you care about (e.g. socialization, PvP, trading, crafting), it’s likely you’ll be affected in the future by some new or existing title if there’s already seems to be a lot of griefing in your favorite design — or just a lot less enthusiasm to experiment. 4) External Governance There’s been lots of examples, but it’s proof enough that politicians and the people who service them are starting to find online gaming an area to exploit. It’s in the best interest of any provider to avoid bad publicity, but it’s really beneficial to avoid the kind of Hot Coffee press, because that brings a level of scrutiny and persistence to an issue that tags a provider for years. Forgetting about ESRB ratings and Jack Thompson for a minute, if politicians and their handlers (including the media) feel that griefing in online games is a tasty issue, it will chill innovation and probably affect directly the kind of play we’ve become used to. We can’t be naďve about this or issues like net neutrality. 5) Costs It’s not always acknowledged, but the cost to maintain an online service’s code of conduct is probably significant. Usually, any phone call, email or customer “touch” has an n+$1 cost to a provider. Anytime human involvement is required to inform or resolve a situation it is a substantial cost for an online gaming company. Substantial, because they could otherwise just depend on a EULA or TOS or FAQ to govern player activities. And that’s money that could have been spent on infrastructure, new development, defect correction, new artwork, new design, etc. The more a community spirals out of control, the less flexibility a provider has to budget money aside for new things, or for items already promised or needed. It’s not just the costs of human CSR’s, it’s also the effort and hardware costs to build new CSR tools, to correct exploits, to provide and update documentation and more. Defects always have a cost, but when people exploit them, I expect the costs are exponential, since they have a rippling effect requiring CSR involvement, documentation, etc. And defects aside, just the costs to remedy individual harassment or whatever has probably a larger cost (since it takes more time to prove and resolve ) than just helping a player who is stuck in the geometry. So bad behaviors do cost and do take away from innovation or new releases. I think those are good reasons for us to take bad behaviors seriously in games and on their official forums (which are just an extension of the game itself). Enough developers have tried to comment on why things like forums and player governance are problematic, and how forum fires start . It seems to me enough people just aren’t getting it. Or else there are further problems, maybe from design or things like RMT, that increase the problem. Regardless, griefing and deliberate negativity have a bad affect, and gamers may be starting to realize these costs more.Let us know how you really feel _uacct = “UA-389212-1″; urchinTracker(); [...]

>I honestly thought you’d never left one game and gone to another that you liked better. It’s pretty easy. Much, much easier than going to another country– much easier than going to another city, or another job, in fact. Which is one big reason why I believe games will never be regulated in the way you’re proposing. Leaving for greener pastures is just too easy. (It’s also a big reason why I’m encouraging you to put together those greener pastures.)

Actually, no. I found leaving TSO to migrate to SL to be very wrenching and saddening. It involved selling one of my sims on ebay for $157, he had had some amazing adventures, he was skilled up to the max, he had the Afghan dogs and even the founder’s Simmy, it was a crushing loss, really, the thought of him in someone else’s hands is just too sad, but he had to go in order to finance my virtual estate business. I feel the long, anguished discussions many of us had about the disappointments of TSOs, the difficulties of SL, having to leave others behind, trying to get them to make the crossover — well, I don’t want to trivialize the experience of leaving Ireland in the 1900s, but I think I could get at least get a glimmer of what it was like for our ancestors.

>I’m not sure that insisting (hortatorially?) that a MMO is a country is particularly useful either. It’s not like they’re going to be recognized by the UN anytime soon. And the people running them are running them with more of an eye to their players’ happiness than any other leaders in this world; because otherwise, their players will leave and join someone else’s country.

Actually, it’s hard to think of game/social world “countries” that have the good social tools of TSO and the good building/creation possibilities of TSO, and nobody really wants to leave the countries for these reasons. The idea that there are just all these countries out there that will “do” is false — there aren’t. People are always shouting “love it or leave it” on the forums, but hey, you can criticize it and stay, too.

>And you might be surprised how many people actually like the sort of tribal authority devs wield. (Though you might believe they want it for themselves, in game terms…) There was a discussion of whether Player Associations or Player Cities should be democratic on the SWG Beta boards was dominated by players saying, “No, they shouldn’t be! What if some group of griefers goes and stuffs your PA / City with alts, and then votes the long-standing mayor that we all like out of office?” In fact, this was pretty much the consensus among the players, much to Raph’s surprise.

Oh, I believe it, totally! Most people want to be told what to do; a smaller group would like to tell others what to do; few want to bother with democracy, yet the results of the countries that do bother with liberal democracy and open markets are what causes droves of people to immigrate to them.

>A lot of people lose their hearts in Middle-Earth, or Disneyland, or some socially-constructed quasi-space like Pro Football Fandom. Doesn’t make them countries (or in some cases, any less fictional).

Disneyland isn’t as immersive, you can always get sick on the hotdogs or sunburned or need to go to the bathroom really badly in ways you won’t in an immersive world, i.e. it’s not a feature of that world itself. I think the ways in which virtual worlds access your heart, mind, and soul are simply different than the way the constructs of RL access these human faculties. This just needs to be studied more.

>Sorry Proke, you picked the wrong high-falutin’ comparison….

Speaking as someone who’s actually a) sat on PCCBs, b) tried (trying) to design a virtual world, and c) professionally mucked about with Keplerian Orbital elements, (the Music of the Spheres you mentioned…) I can say the third is by far the easiest of the three. And I know for a fact that the first two aren’t any easier– in fact are considerably more difficult — when people who don’t know what they’re talking about have a say.

I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but I was referring to the ancients’ concept of the “music of the spheres” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_the_spheres) and what I meant by this was that “it isn’t as complicated as the laws of creation instilled in the created universe by the Creator,” not necessarily some actual mathematical concept you’re accessing.

>Honestly man, I’m not just taunting you or dismissing you when I say you should design your own game, it’s meant as a helpful suggestion. Now, either this game / world is going to be produced by legislation and litigation, or it’s going to be produced by people going out and doing it. Well, take the legislation / litigation route, and it’s going to take thousands of likeminded, dedicated people at least the better part of a decade to produce… if not more. If it even works at all.

Why? There are already these game devs that made games. Why can’t we work with this and urge them to get off their high horses, to continue this thread’s metaphors, and make worlds work better for people? Why 10 years? Everything accelerates in the metaverse.

>You’re selling yourself short if you think that self-righteous bullying on someone else’s blog (in a thread that few, by now, are reading) is the best thing you can do to make the Metaverse happen. Learn to code, C++ or Java are good solid places to start, or learn to do 3D graphics / animation (Blender3D has a free download you can use, and a good Wiki tutorial to help you out.)

Um, there’s nothing “self-righteous” about this, I’m just applying common sense and universal principles accessible to all. It doesn’t matter if only a few read it — you yourself said that most people prefer tyranny and happily follow the game god-tyrants anywhere and even form fanboyz’ clubs. I do my little part for making the Metaverse happen by running my SL business and continuing to comment on the issues of the world.

The “learn to code” crap is the usual creator-fascism we deal with constantly in SL. “Make something or die,” is the cry of the social darwinists and Randians on the forums. Why? “Someone will make everything,” in the famous words of Philip Linden. If someone will make everything, then the rest of us can concentrate not only on passive consumption of the creator fascists’ products, but can concentrate on the making of something non-inventoriable, which is the liberal democratic community.

I find with these tools like PSP or Blender, which I can only work just a bit in order to make a few textures or signs or odds and ends for my business, that you are either talented or you are not. Either you have a knack for working these things, or they are counterintuitive for you. Perhaps it’s an age thing — I noticed very young children even learn them faster because they have absorbed all the routines and loops of games taught them by game gods in offline games and various online games, too.

>Go on, take the plunge. Express your deep yearnings in constructive work instead of noise.

Um, I’m already engaged a substantial part of every day in my work in SL which is hard work, and usually not very rewarding. The concept that people just sound off on forums is a popular one, but there’s no direct hydraulic connection between the writing someone does on a forum and what they can “produce” inworld. Indeed, the whole construct of “producer/creator/consumer/” isn’t one I can accept in such a stark fashion. Plenty of creators are forced to consume at least another creator’s products at some level; ever consumer ends up creating another product called “my game play” or “my house arrangement” that I think game gods and consumer-fascists (in whose interests it is to keep these harsh distinctions) are forced to contend with if they want customers.

>Higher and higher legal damages / losses will probably backfire. For one, the TOS’s you’re so dismissive of are actually legally binding. For another, claiming large losses will probably lead more quickly to tort reform and legislation about frivolous lawsuits than it will lead to the sort of change you’re proposing.

I think gradually, when more and more businesses of the big and RL type come into places like Second Life, they will force these changers faster than you think. They are likely to sit still for as long as the rest of us have to sit being told our Linden $ is “of no intrinsic value”.

>And despite the fact that many online currencies are worth more in USD than the Iraqi Dinar is, I doubt courts will see them as anything better than sheer speculation. In fact, in terms of investment grading, the SEC would probably like to see tighter controls on their value on the devs’ part than the sort of freedom you’re envisioning.

Well, that’s why their lawyers insert the language about the “no intrinsic value,” but that’s likely to change. Perhaps gaming commissions will be regulating these worlds faster than you think. I don’t see that any of us can claim there will be no successful lawsuits — successful lawsuits always surprise all the pundits when they appear.

>If real losses of “wealth” are going to be the discriminator here, games will get worse, not better. You remember how the Lindens flooded the land market rather than allow land barons to fleece the rest of their customer base? That’s probably the clearest example, in dollars and cents, of “wealth” damage a set of devs can do to their playerbase. How could you write a law, such that that sort of control wasn’t the first to go?

No, I totally disagree with your analysis that “land barons fleece the rest of the customers”. Indeed, the Lindens set up this very paradigm to keep operating this way precisely because they do flood and because then the very largest baron can keep buying and undercutting the others. Only when there are more land barons to compete successfully with each other and improve various niche markets can this huge discrepancy in wealth in the society, and the high cost of valued land, begin to even out. Indeed, by land glutting, the Lindens ensure that oligarchs can last forever.

When ordinary people can sell their land for what they paid, adjusted for inflation, or even a bit more, then the civilization can develop more. People are always wanting to curb land barons and stop them “exploiting teh ppl” — but the “teh ppl” want to sell their land, too, and make a buck. You can’t have that happen unless you are willing to stop regulation of the market. What we have now is over-regulation in the forum of Lindens deliberately land glutting to keep an artificial figure of $5/meter.

>And there are a few battles, more worth fighting, that need to be won in the courts first. For one thing, someone can be ejected from a more-or-less public mall for wearing a T-shirt that expresses an opinion that the mall owners don’t approve of. This isn’t protected by free speech (as you’ll probably agree with me that it should be). But until this is turned around, there’s little or no chance that an MMO will not be able to simply eject anyone they feel is a threat to the game… even ones whose only “threat” is to be a dissident like yourself.

Actually, the t-shirt guy prevailed in that case
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/859744/posts?page=55

[...] Here’s a bit of synthesis and opinion following several recent blog posts on the subject of Metaverse 2.0 (thanks, Stefan). Start off with these three (Raph’s Koster & 3pointD & OgleEarth).First, for those who want to see Metaverse 2.0 (from here on, M2) as an open unrestricted peer to peer world, I’ll argue that custom worlds/apps like SecondLife and WoW will always exist, much as AOL continues to exist (and I don’t mean to insult anyone with the stigma of AOL users) despite or perhaps because of the wide open web. There’s a reason people choose MySpace vs. any number of free  homepage hosting services. These private virtual worlds can and will continue to grow with time. [...]

- My “SL is the only game you’ve ever played” assumption was not a non-sequitur, as you assumed– I honestly thought you’d never left one game and gone to another that you liked better. It’s pretty easy. Much, much easier than going to another country– much easier than going to another city, or another job, in fact. Which is one big reason why I believe games will never be regulated in the way you’re proposing. Leaving for greener pastures is just too easy. (It’s also a big reason why I’m encouraging you to put together those greener pastures.)

- I’m not sure that insisting (hortatorially?) that a MMO is a country is particularly useful either. It’s not like they’re going to be recognized by the UN anytime soon. And the people running them are running them with more of an eye to their players’ happiness than any other leaders in this world; because otherwise, their players will leave and join someone else’s country.

And you might be surprised how many people actually like the sort of tribal authority devs wield. (Though you might believe they want it for themselves, in game terms…) There was a discussion of whether Player Associations or Player Cities should be democratic on the SWG Beta boards was dominated by players saying, “No, they shouldn’t be! What if some group of griefers goes and stuffs your PA / City with alts, and then votes the long-standing mayor that we all like out of office?” In fact, this was pretty much the consensus among the players, much to Raph’s surprise.

- A lot of people lose their hearts in Middle-Earth, or Disneyland, or some socially-constructed quasi-space like Pro Football Fandom. Doesn’t make them countries (or in some cases, any less fictional).

- Sorry Proke, you picked the wrong high-falutin’ comparison….

Speaking as someone who’s actually a) sat on PCCBs, b) tried (trying) to design a virtual world, and c) professionally mucked about with Keplerian Orbital elements, (the Music of the Spheres you mentioned…) I can say the third is by far the easiest of the three. And I know for a fact that the first two aren’t any easier– in fact are considerably more difficult — when people who don’t know what they’re talking about have a say.

- Honestly man, I’m not just taunting you or dismissing you when I say you should design your own game, it’s meant as a helpful suggestion. Now, either this game / world is going to be produced by legislation and litigation, or it’s going to be produced by people going out and doing it. Well, take the legislation / litigation route, and it’s going to take thousands of likeminded, dedicated people at least the better part of a decade to produce… if not more. If it even works at all.

Take the “Design it yourself” route, and you need a couple dozen likeminded, dedicated people at least a couple/few years to put together.

You’re selling yourself short if you think that self-righteous bullying on someone else’s blog (in a thread that few, by now, are reading) is the best thing you can do to make the Metaverse happen. Learn to code, C++ or Java are good solid places to start, or learn to do 3D graphics / animation (Blender3D has a free download you can use, and a good Wiki tutorial to help you out.)

Go on, take the plunge. Express your deep yearnings in constructive work instead of noise.

- Higher and higher legal damages / losses will probably backfire. For one, the TOS’s you’re so dismissive of are actually legally binding. For another, claiming large losses will probably lead more quickly to tort reform and legislation about frivolous lawsuits than it will lead to the sort of change you’re proposing.

And despite the fact that many online currencies are worth more in USD than the Iraqi Dinar is, I doubt courts will see them as anything better than sheer speculation. In fact, in terms of investment grading, the SEC would probably like to see tighter controls on their value on the devs’ part than the sort of freedom you’re envisioning.

If real losses of “wealth” are going to be the discriminator here, games will get worse, not better. You remember how the Lindens flooded the land market rather than allow land barons to fleece the rest of their customer base? That’s probably the clearest example, in dollars and cents, of “wealth” damage a set of devs can do to their playerbase. How could you write a law, such that that sort of control wasn’t the first to go?

And there are a few battles, more worth fighting, that need to be won in the courts first. For one thing, someone can be ejected from a more-or-less public mall for wearing a T-shirt that expresses an opinion that the mall owners don’t approve of. This isn’t protected by free speech (as you’ll probably agree with me that it should be). But until this is turned around, there’s little or no chance that an MMO will not be able to simply eject anyone they feel is a threat to the game… even ones whose only “threat” is to be a dissident like yourself.

Gotta sign off for now. Thanks for the stimulating discussion though, this is fun even if it’s not going anywhere.

http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=222

Actually, in a way, Prok is correct. You do pay to stay in a country, in a way; usually in the form of taxes. If you don’t, they do things like banning you from standard access. Like… jail.

Prok is also correct about law trumping code. Think of it this way:

Programmers are like law enforcement officers, military or civilian. Their job, really, is to take an idea and make it a reality via code. They’re not actually supposed to be the top dogs; they never were. Which is why I suggested translators: such people would take the role of representatives and senators, fielding the opinion of the public, converting it into technospeak, and passing it to the coders for implementation.

That said, Prok also interpreted the statement incorrectly.

The on/off switch is a necessary evil, and furthermore, is reserved necessarily to an elite. Unless, of course, you think that you should be able to vote for that; some coders have tried that.

The best RL metaphor for the on/off switch (even though Raph says there isn’t one) is a doomsday device, the most tame of which is a nuclear winter. (Run a search for 10 ways to destroy the Earth.) Hitting “off” is like triggering the destruction of the entirety of existence. It’s simply not there anymore. Should that be put to a vote?

Asheron’s Call 2 was shut down (the off button was hit) because Turbine could no longer generate profit off it (or something like that). (Link) Does Turbine have a legal or moral obligation to maintain service for it? Or is it Turbine’s right, as the initial creators of the world, as its primary maintainers, despite the thousands of man-hours poured into its world by those who opted-in, to pull the plug when they choose to? What if a world becomes an explicit money sink for those who run it, and further, its citizens are not inclined towards paying for it? (This is analogous to the United States’ deficit, naturally.) The obligation, if there is one, would effectively bankrupt them. This, too, is not conscionable.

What if it’s not an economic deficit? What if its maintainers are so sick of dealing with its citizenry that they don’t want to suffer it anymore? Do they have the right to stop?

[...] Horses and the user-governed world [...]