[MUD-Dev] Requirements for MM (was Complexities of MMOG Servers)

[Jessica Mulligan]

At 12:26 AM 12/15/2002 -0800, Martin Bassie wrote:
>>> On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 02:12:20AM -0700, Christopher Kohnert wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 2002-12-13 at 16:05, Amanda Walker wrote:

>>>> I wouldn't call a single-system server an MMOG, just an MOG.

>>> Out of curiosity, what is the general consensus on the minimum
>>> requirements to get that lovely double-M? Is there one?

>> Personally, I'd think the second M refers to the number of
>> players supported by or playing the game (in a shared realm),
>> rather than the number of systems required to successfully run
>> the game servers. As to what the minimum number of players would
>> _make_ a "Massive" MOG, I'm not sure it's ever been defined. It's
>> probably a shady area between 500 and 10,000.

We went through this same discussion last year on the panel to
select finalists for the AIAS Massively Multiplayer/Persistent World
game of the year.  We didn't gauge it by number of server
clusters/shards/servers.  Part of the definition we came up with
then was the capability to support a minimum of 125 simultaneous
players in the same world instance (server).  It was done that way
to separate the field from Retail Hybrids such as Counterstrike,
Quake, et al, which have online play but can generally support less
than 64 simultaneous players on a server.  Even then, the overall
definitions were murky enough to allow Phantasy Star Online to be
considered in the MMOG category.

This year there less problem with such definitions, as there are
separate categories for Online Games/Persistent Worlds and Online
Game Play, which makes a bit more sense to me; games which don't
necessarily fit into either the Persistent World or Hybrid category
can still be considered in the Online Game Play category.

-Jess



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