[MUD-Dev] Blog about GDC implies changes to MMORPG population

[cruise]

Paul McInnes spake thusly...

> Can it be done for a large-scale, "mainstream" commercial MMO?
> Quite possibly, but it will take some artful design and careful
> social engineering to create groups with meaningful shared
> interests, shared destiny, regular associations between members
> and a strong sense of corporate identity (in the anthropological
> sense of "corporate").

I've been wondering this for a while. After reading several
discussions on the numbers of "support" NPC's (farmers, etc.) and
general population required to support the numbers of wandering
mercenaries (the role players generally seem to be fitting into) of
a large-scale MMO, plus the various known social artifacts of large
populations (as evidenced in any modern day city), I'm tending
towards the thought that any coherent, believable world with
interesting player-lead political, social and economic systems will
have to be small.

A way round perhaps is to have small self-contained sub-communities
(village/space station/outpost) which are more self-contained than
the current "go anywhere in the world" landscapes we currently have.

--
[ cruise / casual-tempest.net / transference.org ]
   "quantam sufficit"
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