Waxing nostalgic for times gone by aside, what should we be doing? I played extensively in the "good ol' days", participating in castle raids; taking over enemy castles; murderous streaks and the like (with the former two being much less likely for me than the latter... but that's neither here nor there), and what I remember of it is that once equipment was made to work people began complaining of the mud's wussification.

Since that time it's been going down hill. I haven't been particularly outspoken against any of it because I'm getting old and soft, but there is something to be said for a mud which has danger as a side effect of living. So what are our outs in this situation? Putting things "back the way they used to be" is going backward, and while it's the knee-jerk response, it's not at all useful to the growth of the mud as a whole.

I propose we take these things as given:
1) Eq loss is the most painful thing a character experiences
b) As risk goes up, so too should reward

So, to return to the original topic, castle looting has a high risk (mostly from being caught and hunted down eternally) with low reward (notably that the target won't lose their primary eq, nor will they log on to find themselves in the unenviable position of fighting a room full of pets they don't own on a rune that hates them without any chance of survival). I personally believe the risk is right - there should be a substantial difficulty associated with entering another's well defended domain - but that the reward should be increased.

Just as an initial thought, could we modify save on body to the old "protect" style (note: style, not functionality!) For those of us who aren't old enough to remember the protect command, you could save a number of items on your body as your entire inventory does currently (I believe the number was four) and log on with them as we are used to. While this would drastically increase the potential reward, with items like backpacks to keep the rest of essential gear hidden, it wouldn't hobble players who don't have easily accessable save rooms too terribly. Also, it would provide for another route to harm a player logging into what they thought was a safe area - namely, they'd have to spend at least one round to unpackage and equip their gear.

In the same vein, the fact that characters regularly carry unlimited amounts of money on their persons is pretty rediculous. If characters were limited to carrying 5,000 coins in their pockets, and required to carry strong boxes or safes, or other as-of-now-obsolete items to pay for big ticket items, there would be the opportunity to rob those same items of money.

I'd like to hear everyone else's feelings on these thoughts. It would be more useful if we avoided the tales of times gone by and focused on theories dealing with what the real "problem" is, and potential solutions... Or at least change for the sake of change.