There’s an article at KTR that asks the question: Should thief characters in MMORPGs be allowed to steal?
The answer, quite simply, is YES. By definition, a thief is “one who carries out theft; a robber; a pickpocket.” Without the ability to steal, he is no longer a thief. On the other hand, a rogue is “a scoundrel, rascal or unprincipled, deceitful, and unreliable person; a mischievous scamp.” While the two have become synonymous as of late, they are not the same. A thief can be a rogue, but a rogue cannot be a thief without the ability to steal.
In real life, thievery is horrible. I had my car broken into and the stereo stolen one time. It made me angry that someone couldn’t apply themselves enough to earn money honestly (by providing a service to others, for example) and buy their own car stereo, they had to take mine.
In a game, however, thievery is thrilling! Two of my fondest gaming memories are of stealing things in the old Faerun.com MUD. The first was a solo heist. There was a temple to the goddess of magic (Mystra) in the northernmost section of the largest city (Waterdeep). That goddess had a large following at the time consisting of several good-aligned high-level mages. One day, while exploring the city, I stealthily followed one of those mages to the temple. She roleplayed some things (praying, etc), then left. I had heard rumblings that there were a few new secret passageways in the game, so I thought I’d search around. Sure enough, there was a trap door in the ceiling. It was a difficult lock, but I had no problem picking it. Once inside, I found an unlocked chest. Inside were several of the game’s most unique and powerful items. First, was “The Tome of Magic”. Not “A Tome of Magic”, but “THE Tome of Magic.” Found in the largest temple of the goddess of magic…you better believe I took that. Next was “A Plate of Human Skin”. Not a dish, but platemail armor made from human skin. I assumed it was magical and confiscated from some evil warrior. I took that, too. After all, I had plenty of evil friends who would pay dearly to own it. The pièce de résistance was “The Cleaver of Mortals”. While I couldn’t use it (thanks to well-coded 2nd Edition AD&D rules), I figured what would go better with the skin armor than a huge cleaver? Well, I donated the Tome to a high-level evil mage that I was allied with. I sold the armor and cleaver to a high-level evil dwarf warrior that I was friends with. The money went into the bank where it drew enough interest to allow me to build Shadow Manor, the largest private home in the largest city in the game (complete with my own secret doors).
My second favorite steal came during the first “Tyr vs. Cyric” war, where the followers of Tyr (the god of justice) battled the followers of Cyric (the god of…just about everything evil). There were several mini-games that helped determine the outcome. First was a pure PvP war: when a follower of one god killed a follower of the other, that team would get a point. You could only be killed once for a point, and once you were killed, you could no longer kill others for points. Next was a sort of capture-the-flag/king-of-the-hill game: there was a golden statuette and the team who held it when time was up won. If you had the statuette, you couldn’t fight, it weighed a ton, so you couldn’t move very fast or very far (without resting), you couldn’t drop it unless you were killed or it was stolen, and you couldn’t log out while holding it. The game lasted several days. In the twilight hours, our side (the evildoers) hatched a nefarious plan. We tracked the statuette to a room in the inn, where it was being guarded by a couple of players as well as guard wolves (notorious for tearing thieves to shreds). It was being held by one of the highest level rangers in the game. The plan was for the mage to cloudkill the inn (to take care of the wolves and as many player guards as possible), pick the lock to the room, and steal the statue in the chaos. I happened to have stolen the room key from the owner a few days before, so the plan went as planned. The ranger survived the gas, I stole the statue, and the mage and I ran to a small, dead-end alley that was only large enough for two people. Since nobody could enter the alley while we were there, we just waited out the timer and won the game for our side.
With stealing, however, should come deterrents. The guard wolves I mentioned were some of the nastiest beasts in the game. Players could purchase them and place them in their rented or owned rooms. They trained them to attack anyone except who was on the “friends” list. A decent thief could handle a single wolf. A great thief could even handle two. But when the rich player bought a pack of wolves, there was hardly any chance of survival. Cloudkill worked wonders, though. Soon, you would see thieves running around with mages robbing people. That is, until it was deemed illegal by the administrators.
Another deterrent was NPC AI. Whenever a failed steal attempt was made, the target would scream for the guards, who would come running. At first, it was possible to evade capture by running away and hiding for a while until the guards cooled off. Later, thanks to the anti-thief administration, a single failed attempt would place you on the ban list and cause guards to attack on sight. When that happened, they took all of your belongings and slaughtered you.
In modern MMORPGs, stealing could be implemented in a way that benefits the thief and causes less irritation to the target. It could be based on a PvP flag, limited to realistic rules (e.g. can’t take armor off your back), or limited to artificial rules (e.g. can only take one item from one person per day). The best implementation should be based on realistic rules, but should be a risky venture for the thief (e.g. guards, jail time, etc). It seems that developers are willing to ignore the thief class in order to please the others. By doing so, they are removing part of the fun from roleplaying and concentrating on combat. You might as well start calling the genre MMOCG: massively multiplayer online combat game.