Designing a 'Single Server' MMORPG

[JWPlatt]

Marten passed on this interesting article to me. It's long, but take a look:

[quote="GameSetWatch.com""]In a new opinion piece, designer and Divide by Zero Games founder James Portnow looks at design approaches to unsharding MMOs, in order to create more immersive, integrated game worlds. James Portnow is a game designer, formerly of Activision, and now at Divide by Zero Games, where he is also the founder and CCO. He received his master's degree in Entertainment Technology from Carnegie Mellon University.[/quote]
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/05/opi ... le_ser.php

I'd be initially interested, of course, about analogous things in Uru. What terms would you replace in the article to make it familiar to the Uru community? Some are fairly obvious. What does Uru already have? What's missing, according to the author? Procedural content is one major item. If you want to maintain the kind of stunning visuals for which Cyan Worlds is known, it would be difficult. Or impossible? But if you want ages consistent with Cyan quality, well, there's a reason the author uses the word 'bankrupt' twice in his article.

Uru may already be scalable to the single shard the author desires, and he supports instancing whereas at least one commenter does not. But Uru does not, despite the improvements during MOUL, handle nearly as many avatars as he wants or implies.

One wishes Cyan saw just how predictably important User Created Content (UCC) really would have been to the success of Uru Live. And by Cyan, I mean Cyan and investors like Ubisoft, et al, who were driving the show. Cyan did want UCC because they (well, Rand) were talking about it even then. But maybe they should have seen it as important enough to divert sufficient resources into producing something workable at the outset of Uru Live. The author talks about much more than the illusion of player effect that was delivered in Uru Live. If diverting those resources would have meant early abandonment of the project because it would have been done right or not at all, would they be better off now? One wonders...

Some of you may well know that I do not appreciate leanings toward PVP in Uru (see my avatar here - "Manufactured Divisions," anyone?). As his article is modeled on WoW, it's an acceptable model, but I firmly believe such a community-oriented game like Uru should be PVE at the most. Although the guild politics within themselves and on out to people who have sworn off guilds forever have a history - perceived or not - of strife, that's not really PVP because if we work it right, the guilds are not specifically built to pit people against each other. It's an opportunity to work together. In other words, it's the people who make it PVP, not the game, and that's fair because it is within our power to change how we experience the game together. The game itself is the E of PVE and it's our own failure if we can't change ourselves under our own rules - not the game's.

Much of the article talks about things which would require algorithmic development of elements like resources, value, nodes, and paths, etc. I would like to have seen him go into detail on that!

So there's some food for thought.

[Tweek]

User Created Content could have started off small too, being able to form in game journals (books not KI) and place them in a location for others to read would have been a great start.

Options for importing KI images into the game ala late MOUL would have been good for back in Prologue.

[Nalates]

Thend tried an experiment in The Forest with player journals. There were several aspects to it and it is difficult to draw solid conclusions. In general, I would say it was a popular idea. It is certainly an aspect of Uru that is consistent with the story and provides an interesting activity for players. It is also an easy addition to the game.

If one reads the Portnow article and substitutes archetypes for his items, the information certainly applies.

I see the 'building' aspect of Uru as its single biggest impediment to success. The game as conceived by Cyan and how the MMO world has changed since, I think, leave Uru with several serious disadvantages.

The most serious being how to unify the changes players make to the story line being the most complex and serious. Player journals might help in several ways. But the 'Lightning the Lake' issues are important too.

In a blog post I ramble about while the builders are fans, the building really takes place outside the game and story line. This turns those fans into 'developers.' So, content creation is simply moving from one group of developers to another. Technically they are fans doing the building. I think that is missleading many to think content will no longer be a problem because 'fans' are creating content. But it is not the larger fan base that is building in-game. It is a small group once again that is building content. So, I do not see the 'content' problem as solved.

[Kneb]

I think It's important that new content has some kind of storyline that people can refer to. This is a suggestion about how to manage that. I have read the Myst reader books with great pleasure, the book of Atrus, Ti'Ana and D'ni. Why not use them as a reference guide when creating new content for MORE? There is a lot of areas in the cavern described in the books, and only a limited number of areas were open for the explorers in MOUL. Some of that has already been done in SL by Anartha and Colorado, they created the Guild Hall, and the Concert Hall in the Eder Gira city. Expanding the city by opening up new areas could be a way to start.

Kneb