[MUD-Dev2] Meaningful Conseqences

[Matt Owen]

On Thu 21/01/10 07:34, Damion Schubert wrote:

> > > For example, coming out of the mountains and finding a set of villages
> > > that will make horses available.  Now everyone has access to
> > > horses and starts playing the mounted game.  New skills can be
> > > introduced, as can things like new consumables, etc.

> > SO what happens when the horse village is passed by? Do horses stay, or are
> > the designers obliged to conveniently write in a similar horse village just
> > over the next horizon.

> Civilization advances, of course.  Whoever logs in will find horses at the
> horse trainer.  Old timers will talk about how they had to use to walk
> everywhere.
> It's an idea I've considered many times.  It'd be one hell of a compelling
> design document, but it also would likely be a content nightmare, and a
> beast to balance and maintain.

A lot of people (myself included) tend to be 'put off' if they've missed a significant portion of content. I held off playing WoW for a long time, until I was sure that joining it over 2 years after launch wasn't going to diminish my experience. I was worried that all the good stuff had already been 'done' and more importantly, the game would be full up with experienced players and I'd be the only noob. Obivously with WoW I needn't have worried, as there's so much content, and new players that you never feel like the only low level in Azeroth, however I understand that Eve Online has this problem, and the game is pretty much controlled by the long term players, with new players having less opportunities to thrive.

Going back to the horse issue above, this could be easily resolved by bringing new servers online every 3 months or so (following a real life business plan of expansion based on player volumes). Each new server would start at GameYear #1, ie the first bit of the rolling content. New players would then be able to experience the world from the beginning and older players could re-experience or re-do parts they've missed. 

It's even possible for the 'history' of each server to be unique in it's own way. Village #2 on Server #A was sacked by the XYA guild, but Village #2 on Server #B three months later, survived the attack and various minor resources were never released into the world.

All things come to an end, so worlds that have had rolling content for say, 3 real-world years, suffer apocalyptic events that effectively re-roll the world, back at GameYear #1.

-Jar