[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] How big is enough?

[Mike Rozak]

Ian Hess wrote:

> I've been thinking about a world size in terms of howlong it could take
> a determined character to walk fromone side to the other.  I was curious
> if there are othermetrics that might be better used to determine a
> maximumscale to plan for.

You first need to answer (at least) two questions:

(a) How many players will occupy a shard at one time?

(b) How many hours of content will there be? (Or, how many hours of play 
before most players get bored and go elsewhere.)


Here's how the numbers fit together:

Player density is important. If you have too many players in an area, the 
game feels more like disneyland, waiting in line. If there are too few, it 
feels like a poorly written single-player game. When I played WoW (a few 
years ago now) it felt like a good player density. If I stopped at a quest 
site and waited, another player (doing the same quest) would come along 
every 6-10 minutes. Inverting that: you need 6-10 players per hour of 
gameplay in each shard. What that means is that if I have a game with 500 
hours of content, I need a world with 3000-5000 players.

How many hours of content is important depending upon what market you're 
going after. Game playing time (even for non-MMORPGs) has gotten shorter 
over the past few decades because players are less-and-less hardcore. Fable 
1 was about 15-20 hours. Mass Effect about 20. Fallout 3'd main quest around 
30(?). Baldur's Gate was... immense, 50-100 hours(?).

So, if you want a game that can actually be finished by a majority of 
today's players, it needs no more than 20 hours of content. x 6-10 players 
per hour => 120 - 200 players in a shard. How large does your world need to 
be so that 120-200 people fit it in comfortably? Not that large.

If you target your game at hardcore players who can commit 500 hours, then 
you need 3000-5000 people in a shard, and a much larger world.