MMORPG Evolution

1up.com has a piece looking at how Massively Multiplayer Online Games have evolved from the days of UO and Meridian 59. From the article: "As far as the genre has come, though, MMO gaming has still only barely grown out of its infancy. Blizzard crows that 4 million users globally are hooked to World of WarCraft-but that leaves 6-billion-plus people on Earth yet to be reached. Are MMOs doomed to continue fishing from the same pond of players over and over? Major publishers are asking themselves that very question right now. So are we. Developers must do six very real things to make MMO games reach out to even more people: rethink monthly fees, manage in-game economies in new ways, explore new worlds and themes, use new technology to change the way people access games, weigh the balance between structured storytelling and open worlds, and foster a better sense of community among players."

Comments

Where is the open source?

[fatalexe]

It seems like OpenMetaverse would get some more developers with the popularity of this stuff. I never found a server that worked.