It’s “enlightened self interest” for the devs not to make something that will burn players out. There’s no legislation necessary for that (if it were even possible in the first place, which I doubt), just a bit of self-restraint and careful designon the part of the devs.

Whether or not that happens might easily be debated, but it really is in the best interests of devs not to abuse their players.

Is it prefectly acceptable for a person to play MMo’s 18+ hours a day…for weeks at a time? Maybe. I mean what if I have sort of physical problem or somesuch which means I’m basicaly housebound for a long period of time. Day-time TV sucks!

But what if they’re playing 48 hours at a stretch with minimal amounts of downtime, again for weeks/months. Obviously someone pushing it to the edge or a team of persons? Maybe.

Glad its not my call to make!

Some states mandate casino loss limits, there’s a consequence for overservice of alcohol… even people who have risky sex have a duty to tell their partner about potential risks (Magic Johnson got sued when his partner contracted HIV, because he failed to tell her about the risks!)…

We could conceivably see something like that with MMO gaming, where it’s easy to distinguish how long a person has been active in the game. Not so easy for something like a Facebook game, though. And practically impossible for something done offline like Solitaire or single-player console games. It’s very interesting, at least. Thanks for the thought.

I’m rather against legislation. How would you make, spamming say, illegal without putting a law in that makes criminals out of people who have 200 wedding guests then send them the wedding photos by email?

According to the psychology book I just read (Cialdini on Influence) we can defend ourselves against scams and hustles by understanding them. For example being given a gift inspires an urge to reciprocate but if we understand it’s not actually a gift, it’s a manipulation we become much less likely to reciprocate.

Hopefully our blogs will help people enjoy a diverse internet while being too aware to be easily fooled.

The only two reasons that kept you in game, was actually fun and social activity.

I have played the games in a senior clan for over two years. The charm was, that you could come in whenever you liked to spend a few hours, without missing any content. A Rookie was able to play with a veteran, without any difference besides personal skills.

Having this in mind, I think an active combat mechanism with a level free environment and customised character improvement could be the way. Dark Fall tried this, but the translation from shooter to RPG still feels to much like Shooter and not as tactical as an RPG should feel. But it’s a start, to work around with.

As I said, just play around with the idea and adapt it to your needs.
My ulterior motive is always, to eliminate boundaries that keep people from playing together. Level Systems create barriers, you can’t join your level 13 friend with your level 80 character. Ideally you, as the skilled veteran, could take your newbie friend along from the start. Give him some average gear you have collected and start slaying difficult monsters.

MMORPGs use artificial progression (gear, levels etc.).

Probably you are familiar with the original Battlefield 1942. A relatively slow First-Person Shooter with classes, but no progression.

Everything you could achieve was personal improvement

A lot of thoughts here. You are right, there are diverging parts of game design that allow people to play less and still stay competitive, but at the same time there are things that are supposed to keep them occupied.

Daily Quests are an example of design that tries to keep players playing and paying for subscription games, be it WoW or LOTRO. Funnily, Guild Wars copied the daily quest idea as well – but this was late in its development cycle as it was clear they have a lot of time to bridge till GW2 gets released.

EVE has its own smart approach: You do not need the game to progress, but you need to keep paying/stay subscribed to train “offline”. Which is nice in a way, but it also always bugged me to pay for a game I am not really playing. Not to mention this “2nd account” thing that is so common in EVE. Brrr!

I think Guild Wars “pay once” model and the game itself were the best thing that happened to me in ages. The design had the brilliant idea that people should be able to drop the game, play something else and come back later easily when new content is out without having fallen back or getting discouraged by having to resubscribe or something like that.

I hope they do not forget their former design ideas with Guild Wars 2. I really fear they are going more and more item shop. They already testing how much the audience is willing to pay for what in Guild Wars 1 with optional items in the NCsoft store.

I think MMOs need to get away from the pay for time model. Pay for content might be the future. I don’t think the current lame “little by little” F2P offers or DLCs, often packed on top of a subscription game that also makes you pay for the box, are going to stay.

While there is a trend to allow people to play less and still stay effective, most sub based games nowadays go for badge grind or rep grind. They are relying heavily on addictive mechanisms to keep their paying customers subscribed.