I admire the consistency of the posters above.
I needed to explain some fundamentals in another place, so it could be warranted to repeat them here. Oldies have heard about them many times, but I have got the impression that there are some new ones seeking to make sense of it.
WorldWe are building an alternative world. It is completely independent of the place called "outside world". There are some ways of interaction provided for characters that may or may not have a presence in outside world as well. For humans, the main way for interaction is cryptokingdom.me "Ultima gaming platform". Other interfaces exist as well. Ingame actions may only be taken via the channels existing.
State of the WorldThe state of the world contains everything that is known of the world at a given time. At present, the state of the world is kept in "Ultima database", which is centralized. Backups of previous states of the world are kept. Ultimately the validity of the data is ensured by player consensus - the game state is completely public, so any suspicious things can be reported and investigated. Changelogs are kept, which clearly reveal where suspicious activity occurred, when, and by whom. This is deemed enough for now - the principle kept us going for a year in a public google document where everyone (who asked) got unlimited write access.
GoldOwners of gold (CKG) select the Town Council, governing body of of the Town Corporation.
GovernanceThe Town Council makes the rules of the game and appoints Gamemaster (GM) and Mayor.
Gamemaster and adminsGamemaster is the head of admins, and their job is to keep the game going, provide ingame content, manage data, help players, etc. Gamemaster is the ultimate authority who decides the State of the World if any dispute arises for any reason. Admin ranks are:
- Gamemaster
- Senior Admin (practically same permissions)
- Junior Admin (lower permission).
Senior Admins belong to the Ancient Order of the King.
MayorMayor leads the Town and chairs the Council.
KingKing is the big bully who has massive influence because he was in so early, is so wealthy and well-connected and holds all the other positions. Also many game conventions give favors to the King. On the balancing side, it is a full time job, and requires being married to the Kingdom and always putting the Kingdom's happiness before personal. Also he owns 40% of the gold, but half of that is tied up in the Coinshop, and cannot be sold at will. Similarly 25,000 XMR is on deposit only guaranteeing the solvency of the coinshop. Just today he gave 5,000 XMR loan to the town to make CON market making (causing it to be tied up so once again money thrown to the game without withdrawal option). The King is a person, the soul of the game. The next King will have very different way of reigning. This one sticks to "le roi gouverne par lui-même" as far as it feels best for the Kingdom.
(In reality, the role of King has suffered a lot because of my other roles, and I await to get a bit more depth.)Lead Designer and designersLead Designer decides the datatypes and scripts that are implemented to contain and change the State of the World. Designers (currently: none but Thud did earn a few kCKG by designing Ultima) help the lead designer.
Lead Developer and developersLead Developer (Wizard Developer P.J.) is responsible to the Lead Designer for the implementation of the new features, and currently also maintains the system storing the State of the World. Other developers and contributors help him. There are currently no developers, except the lead, who receive monetary compensation.
InvestingBoth time and money can be invested, and time in two ways:
- Being in early
- Spending time to optimize game.
We are 100 players and are aiming at millions, so congratulations: you are fabulously early. The downside is that you need to put some effort to hang on, and things will change a lot for a long time still. Spending time to optimize game, I don't know if it is possible to make real-world salaries ($5 or more per hour), hopefully not, because otherwise the Asians will sap us dry very soon
Previously architecting made me about $30 per hour, now paused. Wealth managing for other players and working as ingame admin are about $10 per hour.
I wrote at length about how to
invest in liquid investments (the only ones that you can safely buy however much, and the rules don't change as long as the World exists, and you can sell them at market 24/7).
"Consol rate" is 68%, which means by and large that other game investments are expected to provide a higher return per realyear. The first year gave about 10x despite all the difficulties.
Gold and urban land have been specially guaranteed that they cannot be unilaterally taken by gamemaster actions (eg. "band of marauders"). It is unlikely that financials would, either.
Game existenceContinued existence of the game is the prerequisite of getting any return. Therefore it is good to know what it means for the game to "exist". It means that there has to be a Gamemaster who can judge the State of the World. The Gamemaster needs to be appointed by the Town Council, and that has to be appointed by the gold owners (which in very extreme cases are arbitrated by the Gamemaster, since gold is an ingame item).
A lesser concern is that it is good to have some ways to store and alter the State of the World. Many have been used already and the choice of the storage medium does not itself alter the State of the World in any way. Even in the unlikely event that all copies of the recent backups of the State of the World in mass storage media have been destroyed, the Council and Gamemaster are free (nay, obliged) to create it from memory and judge it to be master.
Purchasing gold, aside from a historically good investment, is also a stake in a better world. Ultimately, if for a reason or another a
fork happens, meaning that 2 or more large groups of gold owners cannot contact each other and no medium exists to communicate the changes to the State of the World, both may select a Town Council and decide whether to pause the game or continue, etc. When communication is restored, a unified Town Council is elected, Gamemaster appointed and State of the World decided.
DepositThe game grants licenses to operate depositories, which allow cryptocurrency to be imported into the game (and withdrawn). These depositories are not operated by the game, but by the independent contractors. Every such depository poses a large risk for operator scam, hack, theft, and government operation. Although we allow the depository shares of these to circulate in the game as a payment medium ("money", "m"), at the instant that there is irregularity in the operation or the viewable balance of the depository address differs from the number of ingame shares issued, the shares will be frozen and situation investigated. Even in the event of total loss, all the holders of such depository shares will lose all, but the game will continue as usual. (A helpful thing to understand is that the game market cap is about 10x the sum total of all the money balances, and that only 1/3 of these balances belong to "real" players, the rest being systemic hoards. So as massive an event as losing
all the deposits only represents 3-10% of the marketcap and can be remedied).
If you still want to deposit, your only choice now is BCT:saddambitcoin, who manually issues you a XMR payment address.
Outside world
Nothing that the outside world does, has any effect in the game. Since the game has no presence in the outside world, we cannot return correspondence. In important matters outside world may incorporate themselves in the game and play according to the same rules as everyone else. (
Remember: We also were outside world, once.) Playing under the influence of outside world is strictly prohibited. If outside world pressures you regarding game matters, stop playing (or caring about outside world).
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