[MUD-Dev] Birthday Cake (or Why Large Scale Sometimes Sucks) (long)

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: J C Lawrence <claw at cp.net>
To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Wednesday, June 07, 2000 7:48 PM
Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Birthday Cake (or Why Large Scale Sometimes Sucks)
(long)


>On Wed, 07 Jun 2000 09:18:56 -0700
>Brian Green <brian at psychochild.org> wrote:
>
>> Ah, I'm quite proud of the discussions I've spawned.  Mission
>> accomplished for this week.
>
>"Cyberspace in the 21st Century: Mapping the Future of Massive Multiplayer
Games"
>  By Crosbie Fitch
>
>http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000120/fitch_pfv.htm
>
>While he doesn't address the social issues, he does hit most of the
>other high points.
>
    Either he's seriously out of touch, the article was written 3 years ago,
or he doesn't consider 2000+ per world worthy of calling "Massively
Multiplayer".  And he not only doesn't address the social issues, he doesn't
address *any* of the human factors.

    His "DIOS" concept isn't all that new, but it also isn't likely, not in
the terms he's thinking of.  The basic problem of shared data and processing
is that in them, you lose control over the integrity of your data.  For
MMOG's, "trust" is a *big* issue, and "the client is in the hands of the
enemy".  In a distributed model, the *server* is also in the hands of the
enemy, and the problem of protecting the integrity of the game world and
preventing cheating increases in difficulty by several orders of magnitude.
Since we're still struggling to prevent purely client side cheating, we
aren't close to ready to tackle that.

    Yes, from a business point of view it would be convenient if the
client/server architecture remained, but that's not why I think we'll stick
with it for a while.  He's evaluating the merits of a distributed system
purely on the technical merits.  There are a few more compelling factors
involved, like not giving individual players the power to change the game
rules at whim (for all players, yet).

    NWN and Dungeon Siege will tell the tale, if they are successful at both
making money, *and* preventing cheating on a large scale, then an evolution
towards what he describes may begin.  But it will take at least 5-10 years
to run it's course.

--Dave Rickey




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