[MUD-Dev2] [Design] Dinosaurs evolve to chickens, MMOs evolveto massively single-player games

[Dana V. Baldwin]

cruise wrote:
> Mike Rozak wrote:
>   
>> But then I play a typical MMO and all I see are parties or individual 
>> players running around and not interacting with anyone outside their party. 
>> As the mice in Hitchhiker's Guide wanted to replace Aurthur Dent with a 
>> robot that just complained about the tea (and no-one would notice the 
>> difference - except Aurthur Dent), I could replace most MMO players with 
>> NPCs that did pathfinding from point A to point B, occasionally killed a 
>> monster, and no-one would notice the difference.
>>     
>
> Knowing there is a real-life player behind it does make a difference -
> there's an indefinable quality that makes the presence of a genuine
> living person behind the avatar something important.
>
> Not to everyone, and not necessarily much, or conciously, but
> sufficiently so that it's effect cannto be discounted.
>
>   
I always liken i to walking down the street in New York City. There are 
lots of people there and very little interaction but it is still more 
exciting than walking down the street in Dallas.

A better example might be to co-opt Damion's casino. The casino is 
filled with AI slot machines and I spend most of my time interacting 
with them solo when I could be sitting in a group interacting with the 
dealer AI content instead. Yet, I have much more fun in a casino that is 
filled with people that I do in a casino that is barren.

Real people make for a compelling shared experience even when I don;t 
interact ro share with them...

However you can indeed replace them with AI and it is also great. Vice 
City and City of Heroes both got it right with pedestrians filling the 
spaces. I've often thought that to make an MMO where players are the 
hero you really need to fill the world with the thousands of janitors 
and schoolteachers and shop keepers and dog walkers that fill the 
universe. Probably best at a ratio of several thousand for each hero. 
Then all your players can be the Jedi and the universe is filled enough 
that they are still rare.