[MUD-Dev] Community?

[Scott Jennings]

Erik Bethke wrote:

> The question is something about how future MMO game design
> interacts with user counts and whether or not instancing is a
> "valid" strategy going forward or whether or not everyone needs to
> be in the same world for the MMO to truly earn its name.  Right?
> Is that the question?

Not really. I think we're getting hung up here on engineering
vs. game design.

Instancing is an engineering solution. We have limited content and
unlimited consumers. Thus creating bottlenecks. You can see those as
opportunities ("Look! Conflict! Shared experiences!") or as problems
("OK, let's clone this area for everyone so that no one has to fight
over it!")

The problem, that I think you've hit upon, is that no amount of
engineering will make up for poor design. If you have a really
moronic quest involving taking 3 carrots and running halfway across
the world to carry them to the Carrot God, no matter how shiny the
model for the Carrot God is and how slick your game server is in
creating individual copies of the Carrot God on demand is, the quest
is still going to be bad because, frankly, fed-ex quests were old
ten years ago. Sure, it will be LESS painful than if, in addition to
being a really moronic quest, it also forced you to wait two hours
for everyone ahead of you to prostrate themselves before the Carrot
God. But at its maximum level of engineering... you're still running
carrots.

The bottom line is that there needs to be an idea for a game that
isn't D&D version 14. For some reason, I'm pretty sure everyone
reading this has one, too!

---
Scott Jennings
Programmer
Mythic Entertainment
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