On 4/26/06, Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote: ...
Sounds vaguely familiar. Let's see...
- Avatars (user names) ... check
- Thousands of players online at any time ... check
- Highly addictive ... check
- Players can engage in alliances (user page templates) ... check
- Extreme players can become super-players (admins) ... check
- Trolls ... check
- (Edit) wars ... check
Wikipedia - largest MMORPG *ever*!
Magnus
Nah... I prefer the analogy of CCGs. One's deck corresponds to one's watchlist. Every turn (or "day"), one goes through one's deck, drawing certain edits. Careful strategic choice of edits allows one to accumulate edits (one can choose to use one's limited time/number of edit selections to revert vandalism, getting a moderate number of riskfree additions to one's edit counts, or one can choose to revert or add text, possibly starting a battle with the other player- a risky ploy, but with the chance of reaping many additions to one's edit count).
Once the draw phase is over, one then lays out one's policy cards (each of which costs a certain number of edit points), and finally one summons one's "monsters"- or editors, I should say. IE, one could start with a lowly cheap anon editor, upgrading to a new registered user. With the passage of three or four turns (or "days"), one's registered editor evolves into a regular user. Regular users' stats can be boosted.
If a player invests some policy cards and a healthy number of edit points into a particular editor, he can activate the RFA policy card, and flip some coins. If successful, the editor then becomes a dreaded Administrator, with devastating powers of deletion and stasis-inducing.
When the attack phase comes, such an editor will be a powerful asset for a player (but expensive!). Of course, one can shun the-few,-the-proud,-the-expensive strategy, and go for more of a Zergling rush attack, or a "sock puppet strategy".
Of course, there is more to it than just editors and policy cards. One has field bonuses, like Wikiprojects (ex: if a player has the Star Wars Wikiproject on the field, and the current battle is over a Star Wars-related article, the player's editors could get defense bonuses or special summons), or magic cards like semi-protection (stops lower-level editors cold). And what would a CCG be without special cards, such as (with apologies to Yu-Gi-Oh) "Limb of Wales"- assemble all the pieces on the field, and you summon the God-King himself?
Victory of course comes when certain conditions relating to the articles are met, or you destroy all the "tolerance points" of the other player with your editors and the other person is indef banned.
~maru