Nice post, with some valid comments/questions.
My questions are:
Are you just a Microsoft fanboi or do you REALLY just hate misrepresentation and duplicity in the business/advertising world (as do I)?
Why post anon?
Wow...
You are 100% correct.
Thanks for suscinctly stating in two paragraphs what took me 6 to blather on about. http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=655129&cid=24741755
And since EVE Online is obviously a financial success, this model works. But the devs at Red 5 make it sound like they are going to miraculously merge this model with a traditional model. It would be like trying to merge a car and a horse. Both completely viable transportation options on their own...but together? And bloody, ugly mess.
Unless I'm missing something, Red 5 and most of the commenters here are living in fantasy land. EVE may be a persistent MMO but it's only got a few thousand players, really, when compared to something like WOW. Image WOW with ALL 4 million US players on ONE persistent server. Currently impossible, and that's only from a pure AVAILABLE real estate stand point. Can you imagine Goldshire with LITERALLY 2000 people standing around waiting to save that one town? And if someone did, you now have 1999 other people standing around waiting for the NEXT dynamically created quest to occur. This will NOT happen anytime soon. Unless these guys at Red 5 really have something in their heads so RADICALLY different from what ANYONE else is thinking.
Just take WOW a bit further with this idea.
1. Increase the real estate by oh, 100 fold. Im just saying that since there are about 100 US servers.
1.1 Now, travel between towns / realms has to be factored in because no one wants to LITERALLY spend days walking from one town to the next. (weee! town portals for everyone! and if you have town portals, then all that LAND you created in between is WASTED dev time.
2. Once a guild becames powerful enough (ala EVE online) the rest of us would be left with the table scraps of whatever meager content they deemed unimportant enough to conquer first. Even with dynamically created content, this would not work. Using the example of the SAVED TOWN, so UBER guild "Uber Guild" saves the town, and rescues the princess. Great. You think they are going to simply walk away and let the next player pick up the story? No, they will be just as starved for new content as the next guy. So, they hang around, wait for the server to go Bing! and proceed to mash through that new quest before any lesser guilds/people even have time to react.
3. I could go on and on, but it boils down to this.... no matter how grandeous a developers plans are to make things "bigger, better and RIGHT" you still have SO many other gameplay issues that come with regards to an MMO. Most of which, is the players. Again, I refer to WOW since it is the biggest and best[SIC] out there now. Starting town. Quest 1. Kill 10 kobalds. Sweet! Easy. Oh wait....those 20 people that were here already killed them, and 10 more are waiting around with me to do the same. So what did Blizzard do? Reduce the spawn timers on the mobs. Technically, or should I say, gameplay-wise, the problem is solved. But from a "persistent" or "lore" standpoint? It's a disaster. Where are all these Kobalds coming from and why are they appearing out of thin air? We killed all the women and children. How can there be more. Especially in 60 seconds.
I hope I made my point here. True persistence is a VERY noble goal. I would love to see it myself. But there are currently far too many other considerations to account for to make the game "playable". Land size, lore, number of players and griefers are just very minor considerations. 100 people on a server? Great. Easy. Do-able. 10,000? Not so much. Which is WHY the current solution is to instance not only dungeons but entire realms. You simply cannot create content that fast.
Thanks if you read this far and I would LOVE if someone could provide insight to how I am completely wrong here.
-BN
Slashdot Mirror
Nice post, with some valid comments/questions. My questions are: Are you just a Microsoft fanboi or do you REALLY just hate misrepresentation and duplicity in the business/advertising world (as do I)? Why post anon?
Wow... You are 100% correct. Thanks for suscinctly stating in two paragraphs what took me 6 to blather on about. http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=655129&cid=24741755 And since EVE Online is obviously a financial success, this model works. But the devs at Red 5 make it sound like they are going to miraculously merge this model with a traditional model. It would be like trying to merge a car and a horse. Both completely viable transportation options on their own...but together? And bloody, ugly mess.
Unless I'm missing something, Red 5 and most of the commenters here are living in fantasy land. EVE may be a persistent MMO but it's only got a few thousand players, really, when compared to something like WOW. Image WOW with ALL 4 million US players on ONE persistent server. Currently impossible, and that's only from a pure AVAILABLE real estate stand point. Can you imagine Goldshire with LITERALLY 2000 people standing around waiting to save that one town? And if someone did, you now have 1999 other people standing around waiting for the NEXT dynamically created quest to occur. This will NOT happen anytime soon. Unless these guys at Red 5 really have something in their heads so RADICALLY different from what ANYONE else is thinking. Just take WOW a bit further with this idea. 1. Increase the real estate by oh, 100 fold. Im just saying that since there are about 100 US servers. 1.1 Now, travel between towns / realms has to be factored in because no one wants to LITERALLY spend days walking from one town to the next. (weee! town portals for everyone! and if you have town portals, then all that LAND you created in between is WASTED dev time. 2. Once a guild becames powerful enough (ala EVE online) the rest of us would be left with the table scraps of whatever meager content they deemed unimportant enough to conquer first. Even with dynamically created content, this would not work. Using the example of the SAVED TOWN, so UBER guild "Uber Guild" saves the town, and rescues the princess. Great. You think they are going to simply walk away and let the next player pick up the story? No, they will be just as starved for new content as the next guy. So, they hang around, wait for the server to go Bing! and proceed to mash through that new quest before any lesser guilds/people even have time to react. 3. I could go on and on, but it boils down to this.... no matter how grandeous a developers plans are to make things "bigger, better and RIGHT" you still have SO many other gameplay issues that come with regards to an MMO. Most of which, is the players. Again, I refer to WOW since it is the biggest and best[SIC] out there now. Starting town. Quest 1. Kill 10 kobalds. Sweet! Easy. Oh wait....those 20 people that were here already killed them, and 10 more are waiting around with me to do the same. So what did Blizzard do? Reduce the spawn timers on the mobs. Technically, or should I say, gameplay-wise, the problem is solved. But from a "persistent" or "lore" standpoint? It's a disaster. Where are all these Kobalds coming from and why are they appearing out of thin air? We killed all the women and children. How can there be more. Especially in 60 seconds. I hope I made my point here. True persistence is a VERY noble goal. I would love to see it myself. But there are currently far too many other considerations to account for to make the game "playable". Land size, lore, number of players and griefers are just very minor considerations. 100 people on a server? Great. Easy. Do-able. 10,000? Not so much. Which is WHY the current solution is to instance not only dungeons but entire realms. You simply cannot create content that fast. Thanks if you read this far and I would LOVE if someone could provide insight to how I am completely wrong here. -BN