When I played the game as a kid I remember throwing money in and wondering what effect the message had on gameplay. When it said that I would have “big trouble” I would keep throwing money in until I got a more favorable prediction. Yet I never noticed anything different in the gameplay, so eventually I stopped spending money.

It wasn’t until I read the player’s guide that I discovered that if you keep throwing in money eventually a fairy will emerge and give you a significant power-up. So in regards to your question, the vague insinuation of a benefit without any tangible proof was not enough for me to donate more than a few times. But I’m sure there were some players who continued to donate and eventually were surprised to find that there was an actual reward for their investment.

If you say it does not show, it simply happens.. I guess you have few that will try it out few times, but generally if there is no change in stats, it’s obviously broken.

If you show an increase in stats, claim that it affects certain probabilities and then it does not, it is simply a lie by the game creator. It’s just cruel and pointless and goes against their credibility, not making fun of idiots who believe unfounded claims. So good idea, but not very well implementable, if you want to sustain some sort of overview of player stats and tell your players that it reflects something reliable.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JackassGenie

The documentation for that command reads:

Help on Prayer:
———————————-
At any time, you can pray to , then enter a single line to beseech the god of your choice with an annoying request.

We do not recommend this. At all.

Seriously. It’s just like real life — never pray. You don’t know WHAT MIGHT BE LISTENING. Or what they’re going to do to you. Sure, you might get what you asked for. Or you might get it in a form you never intended, twisted into a terrible curse. Or you might get randomly hurled into low earth orbit. Or catch fire. Or be struck by lightning. Or nothing might happen at all.

Whatever the result, you were probably better off solving your problems on your own.

Cindy Dalfovo: Like I said, the way you put it, I can’t imagine how it would work.Let’s imagine they implement it on WoW.If it’s a too small percent and a too small value to pay, it just doesn’t matter – the player just won’t really care if it works or not.So, let’s imagine there is a decent percent and a decent value, so they CARE.MMO players can be scary. The moment they think “hey, this is odd, I don’t think this is working”, they would just… test it. And since you can write add-ons for WoW, this probably could be done in a semi automated way.And then let’s say eventually players DO discover the trick.Would this make them think about religion? About what a neat trick this is?No, they would be just awfully angry – perhaps even leaving the game. No player likes to feel tricked by a game. Taking this in consideration, I don’t think any developer would feel like implementing this in a game.iko proposed an interesting alternative – if churches are run solely by players, the tricks and corruption are the player’s fault, not the game developer’s. Perhaps this is a more interesting – and more realistic – way of having religion in a MMO.But take in consideration this is a MUD – its players are probably much more used to complex player interactions than the usual MMO player…

You missed his point. He doesn’t want to show that organized religion is “corrupted”. We are pretty much sure of that.

He basically said:

– Real life religion has no observable benefits
– Religion in video game are biased because most of the time they DO bring concrete immediate advantages
– MMO player tend to be very pragmatic and reward oriented
– What would happen if they were faced with religions bringing “fake” rewards ?

Faith, belief, religion are very sensitive subject IRL.
Creating a blatantly false religion in a MMO to see how people cognitive biais lead them to believe it anyway is quite interesting.

I wouldn’t be so sure the trick could be reviled this easily: talents broken for months, items and bonus bringing no effects are a common thing but sometimes nobody notice.
Many times in my gamer’s life, I talked with a friend and realize he or I had the wrong idea about a game mechanism. As we were both “dead sure” of our interpretation we had to test it out. Except that sometime you can’t test empirically because you don’t have the formulas nor receive numeric results.

Let’s say a 1% increase to rare drop rate for a donation to the virtual church. How are you going to prove the 1% bonus is a fake ? (Spoiler: you can’t)

Let’s imagine they implement it on WoW.

If it’s a too small percent and a too small value to pay, it just doesn’t matter – the player just won’t really care if it works or not.

So, let’s imagine there is a decent percent and a decent value, so they CARE.

MMO players can be scary. The moment they think “hey, this is odd, I don’t think this is working”, they would just… test it. And since you can write add-ons for WoW, this probably could be done in a semi automated way.

And then let’s say eventually players DO discover the trick. Would this make them think about religion? About what a neat trick this is?

No, they would be just awfully angry – perhaps even leaving the game. No player likes to feel tricked by a game. Taking this in consideration, I don’t think any developer would feel like implementing this in a game.

iko proposed an interesting alternative – if churches are run solely by players, the tricks and corruption are the player’s fault, not the game developer’s. Perhaps this is a more interesting – and more realistic – way of having religion in a MMO.

But take in consideration this is a MUD – its players are probably much more used to complex player interactions than the usual MMO player…