[MUD-Dev] Complexities of MMOG Servers WAS Retention Without Addiction

[Damion Schubert]

From: Derek Licciardi
 
> David Loeser and I were chatting about this last night.  It seems
> more likely that because of the garage-developed roots of the game
> industry, there is a less likely chance that you will find a
> developer that knows much about distributed programming.  We
> acknowledge that we have met only a handful of people capable of
> programming like that even in the business world.  Its no wonder
> MMOs fall when they are first released.  Unless you have a gem (If
> you do keep him/her like the Giants kept Barry Bonds), your more
> than likely learning while you build.

In the defense of server leads:

  Of my last three server leads, two of them graduated from near the
  top of their class at MIT, and the third came directly from a
  namebrand database company, developing database integrations used
  by 'the real world' (i.e. banks and the like.  Are they 'Barry
  Bonds' level programmers? I suspect any of them would have been
  earning well into six figures if they had been willing to abandon
  their passion.

  All of them also have stories about how their traditional
  solutions fell apart under the pressures of a massively
  multiplayer game.  The problems are different, and the subtleties
  have to be experienced to be learned.

Saying it's easy to write an MMP server because all the solutions
are there is like saying it's easy to write a web browser.  Hey,
it's just a basic network connection and drawing a few images,
right?  Yet, still, Netscape and Microsoft have multimillion dollar
budgets for them, and (as Netscape found out with NN4, I believe),
writing one from scratch is an enormously difficult task, even if
you've done it before.

--d

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