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I remember reading about someone licensing a Multiverse engine and the Firefly property about 4 years back, and then never hearing about it again, but then tons and tons of MMOs were canceled in droves around that time.

http://www.multiverse.net/press/pr20080902buffy.jsp?cid=6&scid=9

According to that fairly recent press release, Firefly is "delayed".

• Licensing: Second Life has released its client under the GPL, and has claimed that it will release its server code under the GPL as well. This means I can host my own private 3D world on my own server. Metaplace claims its clients will be open source, but remains silent on its server. Multiverse's client and server are proprietary. The client is gratis, but the server is only gratis for non-commercial use. Commercial use can be licensed flat-fee or through revenue sharing.
  
• Geography: Second Life has one world map (at least until the server source is released), whereas Metaplace and Multiverse are designed to allow users to create spatially separate environments (though SL approximates this with "private islands"). Metaplace and SL allows users to connect spaces with portals.
  
• Hosting: Second Life charges users at least US$10/mo to "own" "land" they host, in addition to market prices for particular parcels. Metaplace encourages users to create their own spaces free of charge until traffic exceeds a certain threshold, at which they begin charging hosting fees. Multiverse allows users to host their own worlds on their own hardware and networks using their proprietary server software.

NWN2 is alive and kicking. The problem it had was something else entirely. Firstly - It simply takes forever and a day to build a high quality area in the NWN2 toolset. In NWN1, you could slap a reasonably decent area together in 15 minutes and within an hour it was polished. NWN2 is at least an order of magnitude more time consuming to do level design for. A lot of NWN1 RP worlds that are migrating to NWN2 are still not yet in beta. Players, by and large, are impatient and wandered off. They'll be back when the expansion comes out and the worlds will be ready fro them. NWN2 suffered (and still does) from some multiplayer related bugginess. If it will succeed at all as a PW platform, that needs to be taken care of before the expansion hits the streets.

In 2007, there are also other options for teams building the kind of hardcore RP worlds that can only thrive in a non-commercial environment. There is an MMO kit for the Torque engine in development ( http://www.mmoworkshop.com/ ) that looks promising and Multiverse ( http://www.multiverse.net/ ), while still not yet ready for prime time, also has the potential for supporting a large number of community worlds.

It's an MMO engine under development built on top Ogre and a number of other packages. Price is free with Multiverse taking a cut if you charge for your game.

It's a little rough around the edges but it's a diamond in the rough with a lot of potential. The people behind it are top notch and a great bunch. Case in point at GDC this year, they filled their booth with 3d party teams developing games for their engine, and let them just talk. No scripts or minders, just saying what they thought.

Website is at http://multiverse.net/

You mean like Multiverse? http://www.multiverse.net/licensing/index.jsp?cid= 4&scid=3

they are standardizing the tools for building MMOs. they actually aren't deving the MMO themselves. the part that bothers me is that the multiverse MMO tools and engine are years from being production worthy so the firefly MMO is probably 5-7 years away. the other thing that bothers me is that according to this thread in the multiverse forums. http://update.multiverse.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t =34&highlight=quad&theme=multiverse it is not a very good engine for a space based MMO so it is probably going to another SWG with all planetside gameplay. bleh

Before anyone freaks out (in a good way), Multiverse has yet to ship a product. MMOGs take a lot of time, and a lot of money to produce. While I'm cautiously optimistic about this announcement, it's going to be a while before Serenity flies again.

That, and judging by the screenshots and terrible marketspeak on the site, the platform it will be built on looks pretty crappy.

It has all the makings of a debacle, which is too bad, because Firefly was a superb show.

Ryzom is rough, the graphics could use a touch of work, and it's nonetheless a bit quirky in the movement. All the downsides considered, Ryzom has interesting features like stanzas, supposed always moving roots in the sky, and a pretty decent looking enviroment. Open source doesn't always mean free however, and providing the means for thousands of people to connect and play would be a problem. However, it seems like enough people not unlike myself would be happy to host a server for a few hundred people minimum, or more for no charge. For being crowded in the fantasy mmorpg sector, http://multiverse.net/ is gonna have some problems unless some really new games hit the market.

Odd that the author didn't mention Active Worlds http://activeworlds.com/ that already has the features claimed for Multiverse. In fact, the two look remarkably alike. The only significant difference I see is that Multiverse http://multiverse.net/ seems to use higher-resolution graphics.

Active Worlds has one advantage in that you can download the client and visit all the worlds as a "tourist" without registering or paying any fees. This makes it more like the original Netscape than Metaverse, which requires registration and even then limits your travel to a "demo world".

By the way, I just discovered this thread which touches on P2P and custom content.

Remember, we had the Mosaic browser because it was sponsored by the NCSA; actually, we had the Internet because it was sponsored by the NCSA (and similar foundations in other countries...). So "taxpayers paid for it". The Web's genesis was a pretty unusual one: from academia to students/researchers first. People with lot of free time, lots of information to pass among themselves, lots of free access to resources they didn't pay for. Also, when finally the companies started to use the Web actively (ie promoting services and offering services for sale online), things like micro-payments never worked well, globally -- just on isolated cases. With some exceptions, the concept that you pay for content, or for ads, did not last beyond the Internet Bubble Bursting. The biggest exception being, of course, Google Adsense... and local ads on the major portal sites.

Do you suggest that the same visionary thinking of having governments and investing taxpayers' money should also apply to Linden Lab/the Metaverse/virtual realities? Perhaps people should then start to put some pressure on their respective governments and demand them to push forward the effort towards virtual realities now? I guess that's a very interesting idea. My personal experience so far with the government of my country is that they're a bit "burned" with virtual realities, after spending some hunderds of thousands of Euros on isolated (ie. not interconnected) projects which were abandoned few months after completion. They're now looking towards things that are cheap, require no investment, are easy to deploy, and can be re-used even after the projects are finished. Thus, Second Life fits in nicely. The major issues with the platform are technological ones, overcoming major issues like the lack of in-world HTML, an un-integrated IM system, etc. All these are being addressed -- although very, very, very slowly. The lack of better integration with existing application servers (ie. through web services that work or APIs for plug-ins, either client-side or server-side (?) has also been mentioned as not being addressed "fast enough".

Speaking for myself, I'd be willing to try to put that "pressure" on them :) So far, the lack of acceptance by the current local state universities has been not too encouraging; they prefer to "invest" in having students using proven technology that is low (or no) cost these days, instead of developing their own from scratch. They seem to be wiser now.

Mind you, Second Life will be open source one day, that is not the issue; Linden Lab's CEO has repeatedly said so. The difficulty, at the moment, is to make all those critical issues working. And do it fast enough before someone else does it, is able to go open source, and focus on developing added value services to sponsor the costs. So far, I've seen just a few groups on the "race": the ultimate vapourware OpenCroquet and the yet-to-be-deployed Multiverse. On the "paid", licensed, side of things there is stil lActiveWorlds and tiny things like Virtual Universes -- all available for a fee. Beyond that... you've got literally dozens of half-finished products on Sourceforge and the like. All incompatible, all different, all with people working on them sporadically and without talking to each other. But many with some good ideas here and there. Still, they see themselves more like "software for developing your own MMOG", not really a platform for things like deployment of creative content, virtual economy, and socializing/networking.

I certainly agree that bandwidth is an issue today, but it won't be in 10 years (unless you wish photorealism by then :) ). But well, one shouldn't minimize the need for implementing things like protecting intellectual property. "Get a lawyer" is not easy to do when you're a

A Mac client is on our roadmap. We'll be building the Windows client first, as we're a small company, but our long-term strategy is absolutely cross-plaform. Our Multiverse site will soon be more obvious about making this point. Our Kothuria site, where our initial game lives, will probably always be a little more focussed on the near-term features for that game. (So if it's more than a couple quarters out, you probably won't see us mention it at Kothuria.com, while people expect and deserve to know more of our long-term vision at the multiverse.net site.)

We all worked at Netscape (if you've read my other posts, you're getting sick of reading that, I'm sure), so we've got a reasonable track record of delivering cross-platform products. Back then, we didn't always release the products on all the platforms on the same day, but we did a fair job. As I say, we're a small company, so the other clients are a ways off, but we're planning for them now.

--Corey

Corey Bridges
Exec Producer, Multiverse
http://www.multiverse.net/

Yup. We use Ogre. Axiom, actually, as the XP client is written in C#. We'll post more at our site soon about what we're doing with protocols.

And seeing how you mentioned Stephenson's Metaverse, our goal is to build the framework where *other people* can take up that charge. Too many companies have burned through too much money, thinking they can just build the Metaverse themselves. It can't be forced. It has to grow organically. (I'd say that we just want to be the garden, but that's too easy a setup for fertilizer jokes.)

--Corey

Corey Bridges
Exec Producer, Multiverse
http://www.multiverse.net/

Our server software is written in Java, so that gives you some flexibility with your server OS.

And as I mentioned in a different thread, the client that's in beta right is WinXP, but other platforms are on the roadmap. We are a bunch of early-days Netscape folks, so we've been pretty committed to the cross-platform thing for a decade or so.

We'll be posting more info on our tech specs at our site in coming weeks and months. You won't have to be an early developer on our beta platform to find out the important details.

--Corey

Corey Bridges
Exec Producer, Multiverse
http://www.multiverse.net/

We do indeed plan on developing the client on multiple platforms. First comes Windows, but Linux and Mac are on the roadmap, as are other platforms. We aren't just former Netscape developers--we are current cross-platform zealots. (Some religions you pick up and you just can't shake.)

Our own game in beta-testing, Kothuria, is available on Windows only right now, but you can be sure that we'll be testing any new client tech with that game first.

--Corey

Corey Bridges
Exec Producer, Multiverse
http://www.multiverse.net/

> I wonder if anyone will ever get around to making a distributed MMORPG. Something
> where different parts of the game world would be hosted by different operators.

That's actually one of the more interesting things that we hope to enable. Here's a likely scenario:

How about instead of each indie dev team building a separate world, you have three dev teams who DIVIDE a world: "You guys make North America, you other guys make South America, and our team will make Australia." And then ALL of the teams share a common character database, ruleset plug-in, combat plug-in, et cetera, et cetera...

--Corey

Corey Bridges
Exec Producer, Multiverse
http://www.multiverse.net/