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

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: shren [mailto:shren at io.com]
> On Thu, 20 Jun 2002, Vincent Archer wrote:
 
>> Even without the linking of modules together in an unified
>> universe, accepting characters from the Vault meant adhering to a
>> community of similar characters.

> Very, very similar, since you can't make an item rare.  Or
> anything rare, on a vault character.

How about handling all xp allocation and loot generation/transfer
etc through a central server that has a lot of sanity checks. Sure
it will allow people to cheat, but it could be throttled.

So if you were writing a module, and you wanted to assign some loot
to a certain boss, you would tag it as dropping something level
appropriate, and possibly some hints so that the server could
contextualise what it generates into your module. After all, the
AD&D manuals used to have reams of stuff on assigning loot to
monsters, and one could certainly embelish the process.

Maybe there is an obvious loophole here, but I can't see it at the
moment.  The only real issue I see is the cost of maintaining the
central server as it would have a certain amount of bandwidth
consumption and managed storage costs. Perhaps they could attach a
pricing model to having a vault character though, and make it a
value add.

Dan

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