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World of Warcraft loses 1.3 million players in three months

Have theme-park MMO's run their course?

Too many have been using the term "pet" when discussing various, integral animal or supernatural "animals" that are part of a fully skilled class. Druids start with an animal companion (not a pet), Wizards can accept a familiar (not a pet). Rangers, at the equivalent of Fourth level gain a hunting companion. Some Arcane and Divine casters can summon animals, undead and outsiders. These define and describe the classes mentioned in many cases. Without them, they are not fully rounded Pathfinder classes.

Ryan has noted in the past that GW hopes to add in other classes from the APG and Ultimate books. Without a familiar a Witch cannot have access to spells at all, and a Summoner isn't summoning much beyond what any other arcane spell caster without his/her Eidolon. These are NOT pets.

Now a Wizard can bond with an object rather than a familiar, but the choice should be there for the player to make. Druids, Rangers with enough skills trained, and both Clerical and Wizard Necromancers need the ability to summon companions and undead, respectively. Later when introduced, the Witch and Summoner classes must absolutely have their familiar and eidolon , respectively.

Right now, though, based upon Ryan's post in the current Blog thread, it will seem no one will get these important integral parts of their "classes", except, and this is a maybe, Druids. I am putting my crowdforging vote here for having familiars, animal companions and summoned creatures. I hope others will add their voices to keep as much of Pathfinder in PFO as possible.

Also, as noted, while the general term in MMO's is to use "Pets" to describe these, they aren't pets - pets are more fluff. Familiars, animal companions, hunting companions and eidolons are part of defining the Pathfinder classes that have access to them, so I would ask we stop calling them pets. Class components sounds more accurate, and can include summoned animals (Summoning spells), Undead and Outsiders fall neatly under this as well. A guard dog is a pet, or some fluff animal for a home is a pet. These creatures are part and parcel of going all the correct skill trees to be a Class. Let's respect them as such.

I am starting this thread so the numerous threads discussing griefing can consolidate the discussion regarding the question "is using the bounty system to infinitely put a bounty on your killers' head(s) griefing?"

There pertinent info that Ryan has provided via the GW Blog is as follows:

Many Shades of Grief

One thing that we're deeply committed to at Goblinworks is building a game that has a low tolerance for "griefing." Loosely defined, griefing means taking actions within the game that are designed to harass another player to elicit bad feelings without any other reasonable purpose. Griefing encompasses a wide spectrum of behavior, and there will be players who feel that they have been subjected to griefing while their opponents feel they're engaged in legitimate gameplay. An example is a group who attacks and kills trespassers in a certain area to deny access to that territory to other players. The people trying to get in might feel it's unfair that they keep getting attacked and killed, whereas the attackers feel completely justified in defending their territory. Goblinworks will be creating an organic, evolving policy on griefing to identify practices that we consider abusive. We will take severe action out-of-game against regularly abusive players, while less flagrant issues will be dealt with in-game by way of an innovative bounty system designed to deter unwanted aggression.

There have been attempts at bounty systems in many MMOs in the past, and they tend to have the same problem: If I put a reward on your character's head, you can arrange for one of your friends to kill your character, and you then split the reward with your friend. You're not deterred from doing whatever it was that caused me to place the bounty, and I've ended up giving you and your friend even more of my scarce resources.

Pathfinder Online's bounty system is a lot more selective. When you are murdered—that is, killed unlawfully—you will have the option to place a bounty on your killer's head. The twist is that you can specify who can redeem the bounty: a specific character, a chartered adventuring group, or members of a specific player organization. Everyone who is eligible to earn the bounty receives a notification, and if they encounter a character with a price on his head, they'll be reminded of the bounty outstanding on that character. You'll be able to put a bounty on any character who inflicted damage on you within a limited time preceding your character's death, and on their companions and those who rendered them assistance, so you can ensure that a gang of criminals suffers as much as a lone assassin.

We fully expect that there will be characters who become specialized bounty hunters, tracking down and redeeming bounties and earning acclaim (which will translate into more commissioned bounties). These characters would never want their reputations besmirched by the idea that they'd be splitting the bounties with the targets, so the social reputation of these characters will dictate how successful they are at this role. Furthermore, we expect that some players will form bounty-hunting organizations, and those organizations will also need to maintain scrupulous reputations as agents of vengeance rather than agents of collaboration. Knowing that these experienced and deadly foes may be lawfully unleashed to hunt down and kill murderers will be a powerful deterrent to griefing.

Oh, and one more twist: Each time the bounty is paid, the victim has the option to issue it again. And again. A wealthy victim could maintain the price on the head of a murderer for a very long time—forever, if they like. Murder the wrong person, and you might find your character reduced to a life constantly on the run, or you may need to try to heal the breach via penance and apology (and likely restitution).

Bounties can only be issued when a character unlawfully kills another. Killing an opponent as a part of a declared war, or in an area that does not have laws against murder, will not trigger the bounty system. The intent is to deter characters from arbitrarily attacking and killing others simply for fun. Of course, those who simply wish to avoid any PvP at all will choose to remain within the very high security zones close to NPC settlements where PvP is effectively impossible. Such players will have fewer opportunities to find adventure or to earn treasure than their braver and less risk-averse peers, but they'll be safe from griefers.

The key issue is that is one plays a bandit or an assassin (or some other under-handed rogue-type character) can infinite bounties could be used to grief the killer when he/she is legitimately RP a nefarious character.

My take on it is that I don't foresee an economy existing in PFO that would support this without the person working closely with the bounty hunters, as gold will likely be scarce for a long while. So the only way for someone to do this is by deception.

The deception can occur in at least two ways:

1) Player A gets killed by Player B (who happens to be a bandit), and then Player A starts a bounty against Player B, granting sole rights to group X, who happen to be his friends. Fine so far, but then Player A does it again, and again Group X gets sole bounty rights. This continues to go on for as long as both Player A and Group X wish it to, as they are likely using small bounties and then using the coin looted from Player B and from the selling of Player B's items to fund their farce.

2) Player A is wealthy and not low level, but decides he/she doesn't like Player B for being a bandit, so Player A heads out in newbie outfit and barely fights back allowing Player B to think he/she is a low level character. When Player A is dead, he/she starts placing bounties ad nauseum on Player B because he/she can afford it and doesn't like Player B for some reason (likely an OOC one).

In both these cases, I would say yes, the use of infinite bounties are griefing, even if Player A is using the system as intended by the letter of the law, but not the spirit of it. Then Player B has a legitimate complaint and either could go to a GM or to some in game group, as has been proposed in LINK

However, that being stated, if Player A is just a rich player and he/she gets killed by Player B, even if Player B is an RP Bandit or assassin, and so decides to teach Player B not to mess with him/her, and sets bounty after bounty for a few weeks. In that case, then no, it isn't griefing - it just sucks to be the player that pissed off a player with a rich PC. Bandits, thieves, assassins, and the like have to expect that sometimes they will make enemies of the wrong people.

Well, that is how I see it. What do others think? Am I reading the blog info correctly, and have I interpreted the intent behind them correctly? Now we can discuss this apart from other types of griefing and potential alliances against organized griefing.