I'm not an MMO player so this may be off base, but it seems to me less an aspect of maturity than actually implementing in gameplay the "Great Chain of Being," that moral philosophy of obligation that held so many medieval societies in check. The players don't believe in it, so the gameplay has to motivate them toward acts of responsibility, magnaminity and justice.

I think you'll need a fairly good simulation of the populace to pull this off. The citizens need to hold concepts like legitimacy along with happiness, so that even if a usurper takes the throne and makes people happy there will always be those that see it as an offense.

Does in-game religion play any role? Maybe this could also be a motivating factor for getting players to behave a certain way, even if it's functional and somewhat hollow.

Finally, I wonder if you can make the social aspect somewhat secondary to the population management aspect in order to encourage more of that sense of obligation? For instance, those that do the most for the peasantry have the largest voices in the player-to-player social arena. A king, for instance, might rate a vassal player poorly, causing that vassal player's people to be harder to deal with; or, the vassal may be so popular (a war hero?) that the king has trouble in the social arena moving against him/her because it would cause unrest in his own kingdom.

While not quite what you are talking about, the MMO Eve Online has players who run corporations, which make them a sort of king with alot of power and wealth. The larger corporations are quite big and can take control of certain areas of space.

Quote:Original post by Wavinator
I'm not an MMO player so this may be off base, but it seems to me less an aspect of maturity than actually implementing in gameplay the "Great Chain of Being," that moral philosophy of obligation that held so many medieval societies in check. The players don't believe in it, so the gameplay has to motivate them toward acts of responsibility, magnaminity and justice.

I wasn't aware of this chart, I'll have to look into it. Thanks for the referral.

Quote:I think you'll need a fairly good simulation of the populace to pull this off. The citizens need to hold concepts like legitimacy along with happiness, so that even if a usurper takes the throne and makes people happy there will always be those that see it as an offense.

Agreed. In the game, the population will hopefully adhere to some modicum of allegiance to families as opposed to individuals. Since the game mechanic of bloodlines would be in play, hopefully the populace will take severe offense if a long line of benevolent kings is abruptly brought to a bloody end by someone who "thinks" they can do a better job. No telling for sure, but it seems logical enough, particularly if the individual's motives include greed or megalomania.

Quote:Does in-game religion play any role? Maybe this could also be a motivating factor for getting players to behave a certain way, even if it's functional and somewhat hollow.

To a certain extent; there's an all-around "good vs. evil" pseudo-religion with few opportunities for misconstruing one for the other. The "good god" granted peace, magic, healing, knowledge, and other cool stuff to the masses, whereas the "evil god" perverted those to his own liking.

Quote:Finally, I wonder if you can make the social aspect somewhat secondary to the population management aspect in order to encourage more of that sense of obligation? For instance, those that do the most for the peasantry have the largest voices in the player-to-player social arena. A king, for instance, might rate a vassal player poorly, causing that vassal player's people to be harder to deal with; or, the vassal may be so popular (a war hero?) that the king has trouble in the social arena moving against him/her because it would cause unrest in his own kingdom.

I suppose this could be supported in game mechanics with a faction system that is directly controlled by heads-of-faction. For example, a mercenary who takes on a quest for Kingdom X has his favor/faction variable increased if he succeeds in the quest, and lowered if he fails. Since the faction variables could also be passed down to later generations (imagine being son of a hero, or daughter of the betrayer of the kingdom), cleaning up your ancestor's messes might become an important factor if a player, playing as the character of a well-known servant/tyrant of the realm, wants to live life differently than his parents did.

Quote:Original post by domhnall4h
Then how does the 'King' get his gold?

This single sentence immediately caught my eye. The answer is simple - tie it to the in-game economy. All items bought from an NPC under the vassalage of a lord automatically send a percentage to the 'King' (or his financial advisor). The King could easily impose taxes upon non-NPC shopkeepers by threatening them with the mercenary forces you also mention if they fail to pay up (who will, if he picks the Killers that got into the game, steal the victim's possessions, money, horse, and wife, and probably burn his shop down for good measure). This is likely to upset people (rich merchants), leading to a high rebellion rate and/or other players splitting off to form their own kingdoms. We can assume that the 'King' would prefer to profit for himself than upset others (unless he's a Killer, in which case his reign is likely to be very short and bloody anyway), so the 'Tax Collectors' come in. All of this is perfectly implementable with just a few tweaks to the normal MMO systems of trading and titles - perhaps a king can bestow titles upon vassals, who can then spread any titles the king has allowed them to.
Let's show an example:

'Gog the Great' serves under 'Keiran the King' as the 'Commander of the Guard'. His majesty has bestowed upon Gog the power to assign the following titles: 'Sergant of the Guard, Corporal of the Guard, Captain of the Guard, Lieuteneunt of the Guard, etc.'.

The problem I see here is His Majesty having to create all the titles he wanted, along with titles they could assign. This could be solved by pre-defined titles.