Evil isn't cool

How would it be to be an evil person in a society full of evil persons? Many games have a "good" and an "evil" side, or only the evil side, but most of them are giving a very wrong impression of evil. In very many games "evil" is either not fundamentally different from "good", besides changing the decoration to something with a more cool, black, gothic look (Play an undead in WoW to know what I mean). Or "evil" is depicted as more interesting as good, with you as the evil guy being the actor, and the good guys being the victims (for example the Grand Theft Auto series).

But the first time I had a realistic feeling of evil was when this weekend I played an evil character in Freeport in the Everquest 2 beta. Being weak and poor meant I had to live in a slum. The whole city being evil meant the slums are dirty, scarcely furnished, and bleak. The NPC giving quests to me either obviously lied, or didn't tell me much about why they sent me doing something. Some quest givers even cheated me of my reward. All NPC, quest givers, merchants, or passer-by, were rude and unfriendly, or displayed a wide range of unpleasant character traits. Living in Freeport is extremely unpleasant, but one has to admire how brilliantly realistic this evil community is shown.

Problem is, players instinctively don't like it. Most people try both the good and the evil side, and then tend to stick to the much more pleasant city of Qeynos, where even the poor suburbs are clean and cheerful, and the NPC are nice, sometimes funny, and at worst a bit grumpy. Although the world is designed to be symmetrical, with the same number and size of zones in Freeport and Qeynos, there are significantly more people on the Qeynos side. A lot less people are interested in playing evil when evil isn't cool.

I will play on the more pleasant Qeynos side in the live version as well, Freeport is depressing me. But players that are not that impressible might consider playing evil the better strategy when the game is released. Overpopulation is causing problems in MMORPG. Lag in the Commonlands around Freeport is significantly less than in Antonica around Qeynos. And there is less competition for "phat lewt" from named monsters, and for other scarce resources. Being evil has its advantages even in EQ2, they just aren't that obvious.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:32 AM Permanent Link