[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] OnLive might make MMOs much easier

[Matt Cruikshank]

Have you all seen the news about OnLive?

http://www.onlive.com/

The rough story is that they have servers that they run the games on,
and they just stream the video to you at home.  It'll be interesting
to see if they survive!

Well, if they do - they bring "trusted computing" to the MMO client.

As I understand MMO development, one of the real drags is that you
can't trust anything the client sends to the MMO servers, because it
might have been faked, spoofed, modified along the way.  You even have
to be careful about what you send to the client, because it could be
snooped.  In short - cheating is a major problem.

Well, if the MMO client is running on a trusted computer, where it's
impossible for the end-user to fake, spoof, modify, snoop, doesn't it
make MMO development a *ton* easier?  Users can't explore unchartered
land in your MMO simply by opening Map4307.png.

The MMO client can talk directly to your database, if it comes to it.

I'm just wondering how much of the *cost* of MMO development is in
semi-trusting the data from the client, and limiting the information
sent to the client.  It seems to me from the outside that it's a lot.
If the client is a trusted friend, it seems like the communication
between client and server can be much more honest, frank, open, pure,
simpler, using the data objects you really want to use, doing the
computation much more where it's most practical.

The client can tell the server whether or not the character hit the
orc.  Hell, the client can keep track of the orc's hit points, and
tell the server to give the character the appropriate experience
points if he kills it...  When a party goes on a raid, the client
computers can be totally in charge of everything that happens.  It's
like a LAN party, where you know no one will cheat.  Each computer is
running not just the character, but a portion of the enemies - say for
instance the ones he is in melee combat with.  His computer informs
the other client computers what those specific enemies are doing.

What, in this situation, does the MMO server really do?  Record the
character's inventory changes and the experience points gained.  What
else?  It's a database - it might not do hardly ANY game physics or
simulation, any more...  Wouldn't that dramatically decrease the cost
of running an MMO?

Or am I over-inflating the costs of security, and the benefits of more
TRUSTED computing horsepower right at the game client?

-Matt Cruikshank