Noonway:    Will players be able to combat other players in Athiria?
Kressilac:    As is indicated on our About and FAQ pages, yes, players will be able to attack other players. Doing so, however, will have some potentially severe consequences. Nobody should expect an easy life after murdering another player.

Noonway:    What do you mean murder?
Kressilac:    Athiria has a form of non-lethal combat that is the default action for every character in the game. A player has the ability to turn this action to lethal combat whenever they want. In doing so, they will be able to attempt to kill (and loot if successful), another player’s character. This is allowed only with tremendous consequences that players will be made aware of in documentation and when they start the game. So, to answer your question now, a murder is the nonconsensual killing of another player. In order to murder, a player must turn on their intent to kill while engaged in combat or prior to engaging in combat with another player.

Noonway:    Is every battle nonconsensual?
Kressilac:    Absolutely not. Obviously, the opposite of nonconsensual is consensual, and we consider consensual conflict to be truly meaningful. This is reflected in Athiria with the ability to declare duels, guild wars, city wars, kingdom wars, etc, which are started by issuing commands from the respective individuals or leaders. Once the server knows that both sides have accepted (engaged in) a consensual duel or war, any resulting deaths will not be considered murder since they were casualties of war versus grief-killings. Both sides must accept the combat before the death will be considered not a murder. Using this mechanism we hope that dynamic struggles between player-run cities will result in epic tales and sweeping sagas. PvP is a good thing and is necessary in a world where players have so much control over their environment. We have designed these rules to allow meaningful PvP and to minimize nonconsensual PvP, a.k.a. grief killing.

Noonway:    So you will not be able to eliminate grief killing?
Kressilac:    We could eliminate it simply enough, just by disallowing PvP combat unless you are in a duel or war. However, we’re not going to do that, and for a very important reason. With “lethal” combat, the server can properly label a “murder” and deal with the event in our faction system. More importantly, it will be built into our player-run government system to allow for a player driven justice system. In this system, any nonconsensual, grief killing of a citizen of a player-run government opens the perpetrator to various forms of punishment by the victim’s government. So, if you murder a citizen of a player-run government, that government will have the ability to punish you. Governments are able to define who is able to carry out justice for its citizens … it could be a special bounty-hunting group or every single citizen that can dispense justice. It boils down to being able to impose a number of different sentences on a captured murderer. Alliances between different player-run governments are very important here too, allowing a potentially very tight noose in which to capture murderers.

Depending on how the government is setup, a citizen of that government could be granted the power to carry out justice for its citizens, then if they hunt down a murderer, happen upon a murderer, or befriend a murderer that has murdered one of his fellow citizens, then they will be able to carry out a number of different sentences on that player. We have set it up so that if the murderer has died and his/her corpse is on the ground, or they are bested in non-lethal combat, then justice may be enacted upon that murderer in that instance by another player of appropriate citizenship/alliance with the power to do so.

Given the above rules Player A is from Dakvia and Player B is from Caluven. Player B murders Player A in nonconsensual combat. Player B will suffer negative faction adjustments for Dakvia and their “murder” flag will be turned on for the city of Dakvia. Player C is also a citizen of Dakvia and is a member of their military guard. In Dakvia, guards have the ability to dispense justice on criminals. When Player C happens across the fallen corpse of Player B, Player C has the ability to dispense justice on Player B for being a known “murderer”. Another player, Player D, however, is from Kremen and happens across the same corpse of Player B. Player D would have no ability to dispense justice on Player B, because the crime was not committed against Kremen.

Noonway:    So if I catch you I can kill you.  What prevents you from doing it again?
Kressilac:    As a citizen of a player-run government, the punishment is at your disposal. Those that can dish out justice will have the ability to imprison characters, ban characters from entering their cities or even delete the murderer’s character from the game. Yes, I said delete, which is also known as “permadeath”. After many hours of hashing this decision around the design table, we came to the conclusion that unless you could get rid of the offender permanently, any justice system run by players would be ineffective and horribly abused.

Noonway:    Wow.  Won't that be a detriment to playing?  It most definately will receive much criticism the first time an innocent player defending himself is permadeathed.
Kressilac:    Remember, using the lethal/non-lethal system it is not possible to get flagged as a murderer involuntarily. If someone attacks you and you defend yourself successfully, you will have only beaten them down and not “murdered” them. The only way someone can get flagged as a “murderer” is by telling the server, specifically, that you want to "kill" this player at which point you are on your own and good luck. Once you’ve murdered a citizen of a city, you might as well not show up in that city, because yes, you can be deleted from the game. If you murder a player that is not a citizen, then by default you will be able to be punished by that victim. Needless to say it is much more “safe” to declare your citizenship. We hope that the end result of this will be a small few players that manage to live with the “murderer flag” and are considered dangerous, while the vast majority of grief killers will be low-skilled, easily defeated players with nearly new characters.

It should be mentioned, that NPCs will react to you properly, and crimes will be automatically reported to the authorities where appropriate. The victim and any other PC always retains the right to report the crime to other authorities as well giving them the right to hunt the “murderer” down as well. Built into the government management system, and the player-driven justice system, will be various reporting mechanisms available in the game, to help its citizens dispense justice to the appropriate characters. The information will be readily available to the public on our web site, on your city’s web site, and from in-game sources (i.e. books, newspapers, bulletin boards, guild/city commands…).

Noonway:    So it is possible to make your way through life as an assassin?
Kressilac:    Yes it is. You will always know that you're one wrong step from starting your character over, but the thrill should be enough to make it worthwhile. Witness the Hardcore players in Diablo II and you will see that some people will try it. The major difference in Athiria is that the justice is player-driven, not just dumb AI that can bring your "hardcoreness" to an end. To live in this environment, you are going to have to make allies, always have protection and never let yourself go unguarded. Kill too many people, make too many enemies, and you will have a hunting party after you. The intent is to still allow player killing to be possible but to give the players the ability to set the culture of the game by providing them the tools to eradicate nonconsensual, grief killing on their own. We feel this design will meet all of our goals and not deter from the desire to have meaningful, consensual PvP in the game.

Noonway:    What did you mean about jail time or imprisonment.
Kressilac:    Player-run cities will have the ability to build a jail and hire guards to patrol it. When justice is handed out an option will be to give the player a sentence of in-game time for their crime. While this will only moderately adjust faction with the offended city, it will clear the perpetrator of the murder flag.

Noonway:    So how does one protect possessions and such?
Kressilac:    Various forms of protection will be available. Players can hire guards to follow them from place to place. In larger cities, insurance will be available for items that will magically protect those items from being looted upon death. Cities will also provide mechanisms, such as banks and guild vaults, to protect items of value. In addition to these, there are ways to use the magic system to protect yourself for little-to-no cost and there are ways to use a few of the other features of the game to protect your items as well. By default the game doesn't provide "automatic" protection, but every player will be able to afford some kind of protection such that, with a little planning, deaths will not be a traumatic item loss situation.

Noonway:    What about looting rights to unprotected items?
Kressilac:    Looting rights are simple. If you die, anything protected (by spell or insurance means) remains on your corpse and is not lootable by anyone but you. Anything that is not protected, is lootable by what killed you and then publicly lootable after 5 minutes of game time has passed. If you are defeated in non-lethal combat, there is no corpse, so nothing can be looted from your person. Remember, there are ways to protect you from this and that ability is a critical component of our game.

Noonway:    What about groups? What happens if I group with a known “murderer”?
Kressilac:    In every MMORPG, grouping is where some of the cut and dry rules of single player conflict can become cloudy. In our game various events are triggered when another player resorts to non-consensual lethal combat. You can group with anyone that you want at any time and there are no restrictions upon this. If a group member turns on their lethal combat while they are grouped with you, then you will be notified that they have been removed from your group because of their intentions to engage in lethal combat. If you invite a player into your group that has the lethal combat option active, then a dialog box will inform you of this giving you the ability to reject that person from joining the group. In all cases, party members will be notified. If you decide to remain grouped with a “murder flagged” PC, then any action they perform will also apply to you as well which could leave you with a murder flag as well.

Noonway:    What if I help a combatant while not grouped with either the assailant or the victim?
Kressilac:    The result of the PC you aided will be applied to you as well. If you help the victim and the victim wins using non-lethal combat, then nothing happens to you as well. If you help the assailant and the victim dies, then you are a murderer along with the assailant. It is worthy to note that when an NPC bests a PC and kills that PC resulting in a corpse, it is considered “murder” in all cases. NPCs killed by PCs are always consensual combat scenarios. These two rules limit the involvement of NPCs in aiding a non-consensual combat situation by ensuring that any player-controlled NPC actions have their effects transferred to the PC as if they were directly involved (i.e. charming). In the cases where aid is given to both sides or involvement is with both sides, the worst result will pass through to the aiding PC.

Noonway:    Any parting thoughts for our readers?
Kressilac:    Yes. The design goal for our PvP system is to develop a small set of concrete rules that players can choose to live by. The simpler the rules, the easier it is to apply them to the game situation at hand. This is why some of the rules may seem unbending. During beta testing we will be able to determine the effects of this design and I look forward to seeing how it turns out. I had two conflicting goals when designing this system and it seems that this design is best suited to meet our goals for meaningful player ownership of houses, objects… and providing a relatively “safe” and enjoyable entertaining environment to play in.

Noonway:    Sounds exciting.  I can't wait to see this in action.  Thank you for your time.
Kressilac:    You're welcome.  I hope this helps to bring light to some of the revolutionary concepts Athiria is bringing to the genre.