Questions, Questions...

Continuing the theme of asking Terra Nova readers questions that journalists ask me, recently I was interviewed by the Guardian's game blog and asked this:

If you could take over control of one major MMORPG - which would you choose and what would you do with it?

My answer didn't exactly endear me to 8.5m World of Warcraft players, but never mind what I would do, what would you do?

Comments

[Syntheticist]

I'd do exactly what you did, Richard.

If I was not to follow in your illustrious footsteps, I'd get Star Wars: Galaxies fixed. Not in the roll-back the NGE sense, but in just taking the universe, taking out the good bits, and making it just plain better. Player government, guild cities, the Star Wars universe... combined with a quest system that doesn't suck.

I would make millions.

[Shalkis]

I'd choose WoW and order my developers to implement the 32-point list (http://www.digitalalloy.com/da/moralrust/) and let them worry about implementation details. I'm sure that minor stuff like balancing the game cannot take more than a week or two.

[Richard Bartle]

Gosh, those spambots don't waste time, do they?

Richard

[Ren Reynolds]

Neither do I.

[Krista-Lee Malone]

I would take over WoW and FFXI and smash them together. The play style of FFXI would be reserved for higher levels only (as it can be harder) and the WoW style for the earlier levels. I would lean more towards the artwork of FFXI, but work the playful look of WoW into it a little more. I would also keep the out door raid bosses of FFXI and the instanced dungeons of WoW in order to give a wider spectrum of choices for differing play styles. I would also keep the quest style of leveling as a stronger component (like in WoW) thus alleviating the grind found in FFXI. I would also keep the server style of FFXI, i.e. not having separate servers for different regions so that players have more opportunity to interact with people from all over the world.

[Makaze]

I'd take a single months revenue from WOW and go make a new MMO. Because making an MMO is more fun than running one.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

My SO would never touch a MMORPG, but she asked me to install Google Earth, so I guess that would be the most promising platform to evolve. Turn Google Earth more world-like with more social features.

[Verilazic]

When I saw the title of the article, I expected something more... contriversial, for the reason to close WoW. Sensationalist journalism ftl. I actually like the reason you gave. Though I think I'd still prefer not to have WoW closed, just because it really puts the "massive" in mmo.

I'd probably take over WoW too, but I'd probably just toss in a huge list of changes, most notably, redo everything between lvl 20 and 50, and probably add a bunch of content there too.

[thoreau]

My 14 year old nephew wants to take over Conquer Online. He said the open pvp makes it a perfect world.

[Richard Bartle]

thoreau>My 14 year old nephew wants to take over Conquer Online. He said the open pvp makes it a perfect world.

Ah, but what would he do with it when he took it over?

Richard

[Amarilla]

I was almost to mention SL, but then i realised it's not a MMORPG but a Virtual World, a Plarform, the Web 3 and so on; and it's not major anyways.
So i'll stick to WoW : i'd took some money from it and buy an icecream , that's all . Anything else can rest the same , it works fine for me.

[Michael Chui]

Verilzac said, Though I think I'd still prefer not to have WoW closed, just because it really puts the "massive" in mmo.

"massive" is about 200 concurrent per server. =P

Original question: If you could take over control of one major MMORPG - which would you choose and what would you do with it?

I'd take over Vanguard, pretend that I'm capable of convincing people to give me money, and finish the damn thing.

[Zach Adams]

Can I get my hands on the God-knows-how-far-from-completion Marvel or DC MMOs? I have TONS of ideas to force onto those before they go into Beta...for instance, take one server and run it like the old MU*s I used to play on in the 90s, where you COULD play as Spider-Man or the Flash or whomever, but (a) you had to write a thorough application showing you understood the character, (b) you had to log in and roleplay regularly and (c) you could be "fired" and have a character seized if you failed to either stick to established character or didn't login. Commercial suicide? Probably, but nobody said we had to do something that was a GOOD idea. (NON-insipid ideas I'd like to implement on one of those games would include huge "crossover" events, with epic encounters and mission strings only available once, tying into a world-changing live event, customizable super powers and other wackiness not possible in City of Heroes)

[Richard Bartle]

Krista-Lee Malone>I would take over WoW and FFXI and smash them together.

You don't get to take over two, just one. That being the case, which of these two would you take as the model and then patch in the bits of the other you liked? And which one's endgame would you go for?

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

Shalkis>I'd choose WoW and order my developers to implement the 32-point list

Why choose WoW? Aren't there others closer to having all those points in them already, UO?

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

Michael Chui>I'd take over Vanguard, pretend that I'm capable of convincing people to give me money, and finish the damn thing.

So do you feel Vanguard is basically sound yet incomplete (as was, say, the original SW:G)? Or would some of that money be spent on undoing some already-implemented design decisions?

Richard

[Hellinar]

I’d take over Lord of the Rings Online and turn it into a “casual only” game. The lore is well suited to it. Soft cap experience and loot gain so it is only worth gaming 10 hrs a week. After that, people can do more social stuff.

Then I would get out the Un-nerf bat. Give each class some abilities that are balanced for fun. Give rogues a real pick pocket skill, with experience gain. Give mages some really massive damage spells, but on long timers. All the fun stuff that was removed to prevent the hardcore from leveling to 50 in a month. And I would happily wave goodbye to the gold farmers.

[thoreau]

thoreau>My 14 year old nephew wants to take over Conquer Online. He said the open pvp makes it a perfect world.

Richard>Ah, but what would he do with it when he took it over?

His response was, 'I'd ask the players.'

CO went through an economic change recently with the devs adding a new revenue element. Previously Dragonballs (used to upgrade items) could be purchased with real world dollars from the devs or from other players using in game currency. The player trade value was about 5 million silver. Dragonballs are also a rarely looted item.

The price has risen to around 40-60 million silver(depending on server) due to the addition of ingame malls that sell unique/elite items for Conquer Points. These points are earned by trading in Dragonballs. The result is that players who can afford to buy DBs with dollars have a decided advantage.

I think it's interesting that my nephew's first response was 'ask the players.' Perhaps without knowing he believes in the collective intelligence of groups.

[Shalkis]

Richard>Why choose WoW? Aren't there others closer to having all those points in them already, UO?
There are, but that's not the point. It's easy to make wishlists, but implementing them is a whole different matter. I chose WoW, because Blizzard is currently the market leader in MMORPGs and thus have the largest pool of resources. Even they struggle with such "trivial" things like class balance.

What Blizzard has done well is making the game fun. Even the most tedious grinds in WoW are pure bliss when compared to other games. Sure, being able to create a whole player-driven economy might sound good on paper. I'd imagine it would be great fun to play an admiral commanding a fleet managed by player characters and built from player-gathered and player-refined materials. But who would ever want to play the poor lumberjack who has to grind 100 000 trees to build all that?

Making the perfect MMORPG is pointless if it's not fun to play.

[Krista-Lee Malone]

Sigh, ok, I would take over WoW, as it is overall a more enjoyable game to play, but then take some of the visuals from FFXI as well as the server/player make-up (i.e. non-regional). I would also take the sub-job idea and multiple classes for one character from FFXI as I think that might make leveling interesting in the WoW format and also because I think it might effect player identification with the avatar.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

Here's another one. Rollback AO by removing all fantasy references that was added later, adding the kind of social simulation features Midgard was supposed to have and turn it into a hard-core roleplay environment that is a true continuation of the background novel. Not cheap, but eh...

[dmx]

I wouldnt close wow. I'd instead grow obscenely rich off it.

However thinking a bit more rhetorically, If I could control one game?

I'd take EVE , make me a titan blob and kill BOB. *shrug* Im just a gamer really.

[dmx]

On second thoughts its not a verry useful post I just made there..... lol. :)

[Richard Bartle]

Me>Ah, but what would he do with it when he took it over?

thoreau>His response was, 'I'd ask the players.'

Well, this is certainly a refreshing idea on his part - it's more than most designers would consider doing.

The thing is, though, "the players" don't all have the same opinions as each other. When he says he'd ask "the players", what would he do if they told him they wanted several contradictory things?

>I think it's interesting that my nephew's first response was 'ask the players.'

Yes, so do I - it's actually quite astute.

>Perhaps without knowing he believes in the collective intelligence of groups.

Perhaps he does, although in practice groups don't stack up well against individual experts except in wisdom of crowds situations.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

Krista-Lee Malone>as well as the server/player make-up (i.e. non-regional).

WoW had some non-regional servers in Europe. One of my students played on the Greek/Italian server, and found it to be split along national lines in a very unpleasant manner. I don't know what it's like now, but it wasn't a whole bundle of fun at the time.

Is there something about FF XI that makes it more conducive to non-regional play than other virtual worlds? Or do you think the Greek/Italian WoW server was a result of bad management rather than WoW's design?

Richard

[Lavant]

Thoreau said, "I think it's interesting that my nephew's first response was 'ask the players.' Perhaps without knowing he believes in the collective intelligence of groups."

And Richard responds, "The thing is, though, "the players" don't all have the same opinions as each other. When he says he'd ask "the players", what would he do if they told him they wanted several contradictory things?" Almost as if to resist the idea as impracticle and impossible to achieve. Richard, is this what you meant? But aren't players the ones "playing" the game and thus determine success and failure and this innocent remark to ask the players seems to highlight a potential means to offer a truely interactive and down right fun experience by eliminating the frustration of varying expectations.

I think a certain amount of disagreement is inevitable. But as Richard has said countless times in the past games are about rules. Malaby will be quick to point out that a game is a semi-bounded system of unpredictability, an area where a lot of these comments point. The thing is MMOs traditionally offer a limited set of alternatives. Wow has over 100 North American servers and only 3 basic rule variants. It seems the future of virtual worlds lies in developers' ability to offer a multiplicity of gaming environments that are simultaneously seperate and together. Paradox lost: contraditions define the synthetic frontier. Its time developers embrace it. That said, I would choose WoW and integrate Warcraft 3 and dota heavily into the game, restoring the legendary content that Blizzard exiles fought so hard to protect.

[Mike Rozak]

His response was, 'I'd ask the players.'

So when the players disagree, you choose the feature that the majority likes. Ad infinitum.

Historically, this has tended to produce niche genres, as Raph Koster has pointed out. A game starts out simple, but gradually becomes more and more complex and in-bred until it has a very small but extremely vocal/loyal population... who eventually die of old age.

One example that Raph uses is Wargames.

Another non-game example is Star Trek, with huge amounts of lore that thrills the Trekkies, but ends up scaring most other people away.

The fundamental problem is that you're polling an audience from a self-selected population, who repeatedly self-select after every poll-induced change.

AI often encounters this problem. To create a speech recognition system, you first have a few people record a hundred sentences each. You then manually identify where all the phonemes start and stop. (Many hours of work.) These are used to train your initial model for what the phonemes sound like.

Next, you get several thousand people to record 100 sentences. Using the training from the hand-labelled phonemes, you figure out the phoneme start/stop for the 100,000 sentences. This produces a new model for what phonemes sound like.

If you use that new model, and re-identify the phoneme start/stop of the 100,000 sentences, your speech recognition system improves. However, if you repeat the process a few more times, you'll (usually) find that speech recogntion gets worse.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

So when the players disagree, you choose the feature that the majority likes. Ad infinitum.

Hardly, if designers did that they would have no grind and no players. Kids want to eat sweets, non-stop.

(I think niche-games arise because designers design the games they would like to play themselves.)

[Richard Bartle]

Lavant>When he says he'd ask "the players", what would he do if they told him they wanted several contradictory things?" Almost as if to resist the idea as impracticle and impossible to achieve. Richard, is this what you meant?

Not at all, I think designers should listen to players. That's not the end of the story, though, because having listened to the players you have to decide what to do about it. You can't simply do what the players say, because they say different things. They also ask for things you can't deliver because it costs too much (or indeed might be impossible whatever your resources - actual time travel is a common one, for example). Thus, even if you were committed to being merely an implementer of player ideas, you still have to go through an editing process to decide which of these ideas to implement.

>But aren't players the ones "playing" the game and thus determine success and failure

They are the ones playing it, yes. However, they're playing it because they're players, not because they're designers.

The last Harry Potter novel just came out (thank goodness!). JK Rowling has herself said that she looks at fan sites to see what it is her readers think will happen next, so she can be said to listen to her readers. It's possible that some of the suggestions that she read might have made it to the actual books, because she liked them and they fit in with her vision. However, there's no way on Earth that she would change her vision, her plots, her characters or anything else on the basis of what the readers say. "But aren't readers the ones 'reading' the books and thus determine success and failure?".

>It seems the future of virtual worlds lies in developers' ability to offer a multiplicity of gaming environments that are simultaneously seperate and together.

This would be a lot easier if they could guarantee they'd have a large number of servers, but they can't. A new game world may launch with 10 different versions on 10 different servers, only to find they attract insufficient players to fill any of them. Only the ones with a lot of money to spend have a hope of being able to do this, and even they can have problems if critical reception is bad.

What I personally would like to see are virtual worlds that start off the same but change because of what the players do in them. If players can shape the virtual environment and the virtual society through in-context play (building houses and shops, for example) then server X and server Y could be markedly different, even though they're both running the same code from the same starting point. That would be interesting, and would (hopefully) allow players with particular styles to find a server that fitted how they wanted to play.

Richard

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

If players can shape the virtual environment and the virtual society through in-context play

That's not very different from MUDs that allow users to build.

[Krista-Lee Malone]

Richard,
I did not know that WoW had done that in Europe. I don't know that FFXI was more conducive to non-regional play. There were some perceived "problems" that people had with sharing servers (it was mostly split between Americans and Japanese) but it did not seem to me like a major issue. I could be viewing this from an outside of normal perspective however, as I was studying Japanese in school at the time and I did not find it difficult to negotiate my way through groups of American or Japanese players. My reasoning for preferring shared servers is because I enjoyed the cross cultural exchange of ideas and information I had access to too by simply chatting with people from the other side of the world while in town or in groups together. My question would be why did the Italians and Greeks not get along? Is there something about WoW or are we perhaps seeing differing play styles evolving out of the different cultures (as was the case for some of the issues I saw in FFXI)?

[Thomas]

The Italian/Greek server problem was probably because very few greeks speak english, and very very few italians do.

Needless to say, it's also rare that greeks speak italian and vice versa.

So how can you expect a server population to mix if it doesnt share a language?

[randolfe_]

I'd have to take over Linden Research in order to take over Second Life. First off I'd fire most of top management. They had their chance. Then I'd firewall off the existing mess game thingy and let it run as-is for a short while (even including the ill conceived unidirectionally floating pretend money). I'd bring on some folks I know in upper-market, high fashion retail apparel and reorient the platform as a virtual mall, complete with all the immersion and social networks, but taking away most "player created" control, except under very closely monitored situations in regulated sandbox areas. Like a real mall, the riff-raff would be tossed out so as to create an environment conducive to retail commerce.

Then I'd license the laser measurement fitting equipment from Zara and integrate that with avatars so as to allow people to create specifically accurate avatars, with which they could actually attempt to shop, try on, and experience different clothing & accessories.

I'd bring across anyone with skills and maturity who wanted to make real money from the old "Second Life"; mainly designers and artists. Note, I'd replace the existing LSL and custom graphics tools with those more common in the graphics and apparel design industries. LSL would become irrelevant except during the legacy transition. I won't go into my concepts for architectural changes, but suffices to say the goal is an order of magnitude faster delivery of content to client with lots less micro-scripting and lots more cached/pre-delivered content.

I'd support microtransactions for cutesy toys, but all "credits" whatever they'd be called would be in fixed real-world denominations. Most transactions wouldn't be micro anyway as the goal is augmenting real-world commerce.

Over time I'd just spin out the original Second Life as an open source server-project, and I'd unburden the company from the operational costs. My company would still drive some of the standards processes, but I'd expect the OSS codebase to rapidly fragment into a "we liked it the old way" group of pseudo-libertarians and a larger group of "let's establish some general rules for Web3.0 protocols". The latter would be motivated by real world financial opportunities, which would at first be in applying what I described above to appropriate internet retail web commerce.

Seriously, someone should approach the syndicate and offer to buy out Linden. I'm sure the investors are starting to think exit, and LL is in a deceleration mode, so it's ripe. I'd be pursing something like this but I got pulled into the world of CO2e offsets...

[Matt Mihaly]

Linden will ask for an unreasonably high price, since they drink their own kool-aid, and if you're going to disallow most user-created content why bother with the clunky SL platform?

It'd be cheaper to just roll your own solution to the market needs you're talking about.

--matt

[Steve Wade]

Thoreau’s 14 year old nephew is the future of gaming!

Well, maybe not exactly though it’s not far off. I recently read an interview with Guy Kawasaki and Scott Berkun, speaking of innovation.

“Innovation is difficult, risky work, and the older you are, the greater the odds you’ll realize this is the case. That explanation works best. Beethoven didn’t write his nineth symphony until late in his life, so we know many creatives stay creative no matter how old they are. But their willingness to endure all the stresses and challenges of bringing an idea to the world diminishes. They understand the costs better from the life experience. The young don’t know what their is to fear, have stronger urges to prove themselves, and have fewer commitments—for example, children and mortgages. These factors that make it easier to try crazy things.”

The 14 year olds quick answer “I’d ask the players” is great in its simplicity. Most of us here know the tug of war between the player community and developers. And as thrilling at is, we know people disagree and the developers can’t change their “vision”. That actually reminds me of an old George Carlin joke about praying and God’s divine plan…

The reason I am stuck on this topic is not just because I tend to hire guys under the age of 25, but I think “asking” the player community goes a little more then just talking to them, but data mining would also fall under this category. Since Thoreau’s nephew was talking about the Free to Play game Conquer Online I can give a very good example about “asking the players” in data mining. He mentioned Item Malls. These are essential the life blood of the games. With data mining we can peer into the world of numbers and watch what players actually do in game and not just the vocal minority on our forums. For instance one free to play community of a game I was consulting for was actively fighting over many things like PvP systems, New Quest, new maps , etc. We read the forums and emails and brained stormed how we could change the systems and add new features and what would solve the complaints the quickest so we could make a profit.

We turned to the analytics tools and looked at what players where actually doing in game. We noticed many players trying to upgrade their armor through the crafting system and failing. It seemed to be a small fix, and as low hanging fruits are sometimes the best we decided to ad a solution to the games item mall. That little fix upped sells by 50% and player retention by 10% for a few months after.

Original Question:
If you could take over control of one major MMORPG - which would you choose and what would you do with it?

I would take Everquest II. Keep in mind I have never played EQ1 or EQ2. I would change the games business model to Free to Play. I would add both premium subscriptions and an item mall to generate revenue. I would then have Andrew Tepper in charge of the game’s “vision” as well as allow players to create content ( e.i , they can create their own custom armors) and then I would allow them to sell them inside of the games item mall and I would take a 90% cut.

[Steve Wade]

Krista-Lee Malone,

I like your idea; I would make a small interjection to its possibility.

I have a similar story, as I was studying Japanese and playing on an Ultima Online free shard. It was fantastic to be able to practice my language skills and play games with kids from Chiba.

On the free Shard, the Asian kids hung out in the city of Skara Brae. Whenever I wanted to practice my Japanese or find a partner for 2v2 duels I’d go there.

What I think would be a cool idea for a MassiveMO would be to have islands, and the players IP address would designate what islands they started on. Chinese IP’s would start on the island of “Lu” where American IP’s start on the island of “Smith”.

The islands or continents could allow the players to explore and grow without needing to travel to another island, but the option would be there.

Technically, I’m sure it will be possible in the future to create massive worlds like this. It might already be.

[Verilazic]

>"massive" is about 200 concurrent per server. =P

Ah, but that changes the minute I enter battlegrounds, I may still be only in a match of 20-80 people, but it's rarely the same people every time, and after dwelling in the right forums, I can start connecting with a community of people spread across more than just one server.

[Richard Bartle]

Ola Fosheim Grøstad>That's not very different from MUDs that allow users to build.

Right, but it's different from MOOs that do, which is what I was trying to say. Letting ordinary players hire workers to build a castle to an architectural plan is different to letting them build a zepellin made of ferns. The former works in game-like worlds, but the latter only really works for social worlds.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

Krista-Lee Malone>My question would be why did the Italians and Greeks not get along?

Unless Greeks and Italians hold grudges for 2,000 years, there's no traditional enmity between the two.

There might have been less of a problem if one group constituted a much smaller proportion of the player population than the other, say <10%, but they were pretty evenly balanced.

I agree with Thomas: a lot of the problem was that neither side much shared a common language. They were supposed to talk in English, but they soon reverted to their own languages. This inevitably caused friction, but nevertheless it doesn't explain why it turned into attack-on-sight. They could, presumably, have gone their separate ways and barely interacted a all, rather than interacted through conflict.

>Is there something about WoW or are we perhaps seeing differing play styles evolving out of the different cultures

This is a question to which I don't have an answer. I suspect that it's both. Firstly, it's perfectly possible to create a virtual world that would not implement conflict between players, and therefore the design must play a part. Secondly, there are other games in which different populations have behaved differently. I seem to recall that Shadowbane had servers that could be accessed by Americans and Chinese, and whereas the American attitude was "you're from China, cool!", the Chinese attitude was "you're not from China, MUAHAHAHA!".

EVE has a single server world which draws its populations from across the globe, and some groups organise themselves along national or linguistic lines. It seems to be big enough for everyone, though.

Richard

[Ace Albion]

I'd take over WoW.

Then I'd sack everyone involved in the decision that led to me having to buy a US copy of the game and register a US account to play with a particular friend, which then stopped me from playing with any of my other friends back here in the UK. Such a spiteful piece of business.

Then I'd put some more stuff in to break down the tedious horde/alliance guff.

[LEKO]

I would start a fresh Open-Source MMORPG based on Peer2Peer networking. No need to massive central servers. Server load would be shared between clients and a central infrastructure would contain databases, basic synchronisation and stuff like that...

This would be the way to go!

[Rory]

I would take over Club Penguin relaunch it with high-level igloo raids and epic sleds.

[JuJutsu]

I'd take over Areae. I'd let Raph Koster & company finish whatever it is they're working on but since it's mine I'd be sure to get in the closed beta.

[thiago falcao]

i'd convince hasbro on releasing a MMO based on the d&d campaign setting of forgotten realms. it'd crush wow in a few weeks, i'm pretty sure.

[dmx]

One thing I think would be good would be to take over second life, wait for it.......

Ban RMT's , and introduce a $10month fee but have unlimited copy rights. Remove the copy protection bullshit, and finally allow Second life to flourish

For those unhappy with that, I'd produce a tool to get the 'creations' off the server into autocad (or whatever) format then remind them that goldfarmers are not welcome and get the hell out.

Finally the game would see the explosion of creativity its always promised but never been able to achieve.

Games are for gamers , not pricks trying to monetise our fun.

[Bart Stewart]

If you could take over control of one major MMORPG - which would you choose and what would you do with it?

Two options:

1. Take over ProgressQuest, rename it, add marketing that sounds completely serious. Collect millions. Retire.

2. (with respect to Mike Rozak) Take over the currently in-development Star Trek Online, use the lore to justify a design that offers story-driven combat/exploration/roleplay content in about a 25/40/35 percentage distribution, rather than the adrenaline-driven 75/10/15 distribution of flippin' near every MMORPG currently or imminently available. Now that games based on the Star Wars and LoTR licenses are set in stone, the Star Trek license is the last best hope for gamers looking for a major mass-market alternative to "kill it before it dies and take its stuff."

What I personally would like to see are virtual worlds that start off the same but change because of what the players do in them. ... That would be interesting, and would (hopefully) allow players with particular styles to find a server that fitted how they wanted to play.

I've been wishing for a while that someone would try a design like this. (Would "dynamically adaptive gameplay" be an acceptable name for this? Must have a name, preferably one that can be smushed into a pronounceable acronym....)

I remember suggesting something like this some months back. The corollary, as I recall, was that when deciding which server to create a new character on, you'd see the most prominent style of gameplay on each server. That way you'd be able to choose the server with the gameplay you like.

The main problem I've imagined with a design like this is the crystallization effect. Suppose that a game server opens with fundamental/generic rules in place that favor no particular style. As soon as it opens, presuming the game is marginally popular there'd be a land rush. Once enough people have played for long enough, the server would "decide" which style of gameplay rules is most prominent and start listing that style on the character creation screen... at which point that server's gameplay would crystallize; it would be unlikely to change. Adaptation stops, at which point the concept of dynamically adaptive gameplay effectively ceases to exist.

Further, what happens if the first people to rush onto every new server are the same type of player? How could this system insure that all designated styles have at least one server that's "theirs?" You could launch with N + X servers, where each of the N servers is predetermined to one of your designated styles and all X servers are free-form until they crystallize -- but wouldn't offering predetermined servers undermine somewhat the idea of dynamically adaptive gameplay?

Finally, I'd note that even a "crystallized" server would theoretically still be free to change its published "most popular style." This could happen if the player population were to change in some radical way so that adaptation once again kicked in. The thing is, what if a server did significantly change its gameplay? The new players would be happy, but what would be the likely reaction of those players whose preferred gamestyle is no longer the most favored on that server? Would a free character transfer utility be a requirement for a game like this where the very nature of the world in which one has invested one's time and care could change?

More questions, questions....

--Bart

[randolfe_]

@Matt

Linden will ask for an unreasonably high price, since they drink their own kool-aid, and if you're going to disallow most user-created content why bother with the clunky SL platform?

It'd be cheaper to just roll your own solution to the market needs you're talking about.

Two reasons:

1. Maybe "The Lindens" drank their own poison punch, but the investors are just playacting. They will sell for a reasonable exit. I don't know Linden's cap table, of course, but even a significant minority stake by Benchmark, Globespan, et. al. can force them to sell. VCs don't drink Kool-Aid, they market it.

2. It is very hard to convince VCs to fund development like this. So even the klunky client and poor architectural decisions are easier to sell than a blue-sky new project.

Further, there is real value in Second Life's "player generated content system". Buy opening up to more standard, non-proprietary design tools and layering very tight security and authorizations it should be possible to leverage "player generated" for "consultant generated/ad agency generated/design studio generated" ecosystem not unlike the current Web 1.5 e-commerce sphere.

Anyone can create an AJAX web site. But only people The Gap permits can implement what they create on their site. That model should extend to Web 3.0.

The smallest worry in all this is whatever LL's current management wants. The danger of drinking Kool Aid is that if and when goals change, so do the Kool Aid drinkers. I'd guess very few would make the transition.

Hey, just my $0.02USD, nominal (but still backed by a sovereign power).

[Lavant]

Ace Albion says, "Then I'd sack everyone involved in the decision that led to me having to buy a US copy of the game and register a US account to play with a particular friend, which then stopped me from playing with any of my other friends back here in the UK. Such a spiteful piece of business."

Know how you feel. Having to own a Euro copy bought off of ebay and figuring out how to get it shipped here and then paying double subscriptions just to be able to play in German, French, Spansish and English x2 is one pain in the pocket book, not to mention the characters that get spread thin...In light of this I would take over wow and integrate instancing as they have already done for Battlegrounds, make PVP a zero sum game as they have done for the arena and make a global chat channel. As was said above 200 concurrent users is hardly massive. Lets see truely MMORPGS. 8.5 million and only a small fraction of people to find.

[Richard Bartle]

LEKO>I would start a fresh Open-Source MMORPG based on Peer2Peer networking.

So your answer to the question "If you could take over control of one major MMORPG - which would you choose and what would you do with it?" is that you would start your own P2P world?

>This would be the way to go!

It may well be, but that wasn't the question.

thiago falcao>i'd convince hasbro on releasing a MMO based on the d&d campaign setting of forgotten realms. it'd crush wow in a few weeks, i'm pretty sure.

Again, you may have a point there (if the design, development and operation of Forgotten Realms Online were good enough), but it doesn't answer the question.

Are you both saying that the original question is unanswerable in your cases? You wouldn't take over any worlds and do anything with them? I can see this point of view - I'd rather design my own worlds than redesign someone else's - but I still answered the question when asked.

Richard

[Andy Havens]

Like randolfe, I'd take SL. But I'd do some different stuff with it.

We've seen from Google (and others) that advertising is a great way to monetize a discovery platform. If Google charged its public users to search, they'd be dead. If they charged advertisers to put Google ads on their sites, they'd be dead. You enable a transaction, make transparent money on the fly-by, and get out of the way.

I (like randolfe) would get rid of the $LD. We have money; don't need fake money if you're actually going to translate it back. If there is a need for micro-transactions, you just horde them until you get to a point of reasonable transfer.

I'd stop charging for land in terms of dollars, but make people earn it in terms of participatory activities. Free to play, free to build, free to expand... as long as you're doing stuff that adds value. Everybody gets a starter chunk of land, even for free. Enough for a house. Fine. If you want a bigger chunk of land... you have to participate. That could be anything from engaging in conversations and getting good ratings from others, to hosting events, to creating new prims/textures/animations, to importing new music, etc. etc. Anything that adds to the collective creation, that's rewarded with more space. Groups/guilds that want to combine and add their collective juju... great. At that point, you end up with the beginnings of real government (or at least guilderment), because if I'm going to contribute my creative earnings to an establishment, I'm going to want a say in how they're used to expand the domain.

Same should be true for commercial ventures. If you're a Gap or Old Navy... you start with a house, just like everybody. Want a "Gap Island?" Earn it in creative levels like everyone else.

Creativity and contribution, in a space like SL, should be the prime determinants of visibility and land availability. If you're doing interesting stuff that makes the space more compelling for others, you get more of it. If you're boring (or if you just want to consume), you don't deserve (or need) space.

Power to the crafters! Power to the writers, musicians, event organizers, conversationalists and painters! Power to the people who improve the experience, not to those who can afford the rent.