[MUD-Dev] Re: The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd)

[shren]

On Tue, 18 Jun 2002, Vincent Archer wrote:
> According to shren:
 
>> Last I heard, the concept of a central vault is gone.  Each
>> server can have it's own vault which stores characters.

> If that is so, then the central paradigm of NWN is dead. NWN's
> main attraction was that Vault characters (i.e. those located on
> the central vault) would be the mainsteam way of wandering between
> the various "shared universe" servers that were popping here and
> there.

> Without the Vault, most of these will close themselves; you will
> need a character on each, as no "serious" server will ever accept
> an outside character.

I've had this discussion with about a dozen different people in a
dozen different forums.  What *you* think is the central paradigm of
NWN is dead.  The shared universe bit, while entirely possible, has
never been a) the primary focus of the game, b) secure, or c)
remotely practical.

Security first.  

  One corrupt admin in a closed universe can break the balance of a
  shared universe - the open universe, wandering between games with
  vast links, was never secure to begin with.

Remotely practical:

  Any part of the universe that's well-detailed enough to draw
  people is probably going to be crowded enough to be overloaded -
  thus, any popular area is going to often be so laggy as to be
  unplayable.  MMORPGs have had to deal with congestion since the
  very first one - NWN solves it by leaving it as an excercise to
  the user.

  Also, server dumps (state saves) become incompatible if you alter
  the module you are saving the state of.  In a nutshell, if you
  save your NWN mudlet state, then change the NWN mudlet, you lose
  all of the saved state data.  I guess persistance is also an
  exercise left to the user.

Purpose of the game:

  You might think at this point that I hate NWN.  I don't.  I am
  hovering vulture-like over the store waiting for it.

  NWN, as a strongly-network enabled game, can be used to attempt to
  make a MMORPG/MUD like setting.  You can also do lots of other
  things with it:

    Play through the single player plot.
    Play through the single player plot with friends over the net.
    Write your own plot like the boxed single player plot.
    Play a user written plot alone.
    Play a user written plot with friends over the net.
    Write a more diablo-esque hack and slash module for lan parties.
    Experiment with programming and scripting.
    Run an AD&D module inside the NWN engine, as DM.
    Participate in one of the above.
    Write a counter-strikeish pvp module that resets.
    ... and a whole lot more.

To me, almost every single one of the above applications are more
interesting than trying to patch together a persistant world.  Can
you use NWN as a MMORPG builder?  Yes, but this application of NWN
is probably one of the most difficult and least fruitful
possibilities.  Why does it get all the press?  Because a
significant minority of persistant world online gamers think the
worst of those who run the games and are sure they can do it better,
in thier spare time, with the spare CPU cycles on thier home box and
the part of thier bandwidth that isn't being devoured by Kaaza.

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