Shattered Kingdoms

One of my large projects for this term deals with ethics of online communities. I've been doing research on various other gaming communities and guilds specifically and looking over their official and sometimes unofficial codes of conduct/ethics for game play. I am aware that among certain groups of players on SK there is an unofficial code but not everyone follows this. Further over the years these unofficial codes have also changed as the players have changed.

What I am curious about is what sorts of things would you as players like to see if there were a more official code of conduct/ethics stated for in game play? For now we will leave the forum interactions out of it. Although this is part of a class project, my ultimate hope would be able to see where we have similar desires for conduct and ethics and foster a stronger community around it.

I hope there is not any official code of conduct or ethics. I don't want anyone else's interpretation of the game interfering with my own.

Because of the nature of Shattered Kingdoms, I have always believed that IC problems need to be handled in character, and OOC problems must be dealt with out of character.

From an OOC perspective: don't be a jerk, have a positive attitude. It can be hard to say "OOC wow, I didn't see that coming at all, good coordination" after getting ganked, but an attitude like that will go far. Remember that just because the person your character is interacting with is a jerk, doesn't mean the person behind the computer is. It also falls on the ganker's shoulders to remind the other person that they are not, in fact, a jerk.

Respect each other's roleplay. I may think that "being possessed" roleplay, or "my character is a drunk" roleplay is dumb, but that won't stop me from helping others have fun by roleplaying with them.

QFT

I believe there should be a code of conduct, and there should really only be one rule. Muktar is banned from Shattered Kingdoms.

This most certainly forms the foundation for any ethical framework on SK. It irritates me greatly when people blur that line.

I think this should go deeper. For instance: People who roll characters that selectively interact with a small population of the player base. That to me is worse than being junk looted.

I'm not so sure about this. As long as I have played SK I have always played with a friend of mine. That is the reason we play, really; It is something we can do together.

Ain't nobody got time for schoolwork, eh?

That's fine, Opey. The problem Terrus is referring to is when you get a group of 5 people that roll together, and in-game, they only sit and talk with each other or go hunting. They only interact with themselves and mostly ignore everyone else. Or just one person who choses to only interact with 5 people and ignores everyone else. That one person sucks.