MMO Communities (was RE: [MUD-Dev] MMORPG Cancellations:Theskyisfalling?)

[Douglas Goodall]

Byron Ellacott wrote:

> Until the creation of such quests is a sufficiently small amount
> of work that it's OK to have only one person able to consume that
> work, it's impractical to have the solving of a quest affect the
> game world.  If you have around two thousand players per shard,
> that means you'd need to put in two thousand times as much effort
> to get the same number of quests for each player as you would when
> quests can be repeated by others.

The only on-line games I worked on did not make it to
retail... However, I did write most of the quests for Morrowind. I
managed to do over 100 quests one month (including scripting, NPCs,
unique items, level alteration, etc), though 50 a month was more
typical. It still wasn't fast enough to stay on schedule, though I
suspect I could have done it even faster if the documentation method
was different (Ken always wanted documentation first--I prefer "see
what I can do with the editor and then write down what I did" which
prevents re-writing when I planned the impossible). I only did first
pass testing, and the quests were mostly "pony express" or "murder
with flimsy justifications," but no on-line game even approaches
this rate (and, if I may be permitted some Ego, quests in on-line
games don't make up for it with higher quality).

Testing and QA would take longer for an on-line game, but I suspect
the problem is primarily Tools. The Elder Scrolls Construction Set
was extremely easy to use and very well supported by the
programmers. If there's one thing the team did right, it was the
editor. I'm a mediocre programmer and a worse writer, but with such
a simple tool I managed to be very productive. With an even better
tool, and a better designer at the helm, I don't think 2000 a month
is impossible.
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