"when people realize the endgame blows"

[Stephen Zepp]

You know.  We hear "virtual world" as a buzzword all the time.  I'm not convinced that a virtual world is even what people really want.  People want a virtual world where they are the ones that make the world change.  Given the scale of MMOG's, we'd be seeing virtual worlds controlled by catassing asshats with nothing better to do in their life than ruin it for the rest of us with significantly less play time.  I don't want to live in their world thank you very much.   

On a similar note, I do enjoy a game with a social hook.  Give me a reason to interact with other players beyond killing ubermob_8479 with 6 gajillion hit points.  A Tale in the Desert was a step in the right direction in building a virtual community.  Teppy just killed it with chores and mind-numbing click fests. 

Based on the one major foray into a "real" persistent world, the Sleeper's Tomb back in old EQ Scars of Velious days, the mass market community absolutely does not want a persistent virtual world. My personal belief is that this is because they make the most powerful zone in the game, with the most powerful items in the game the only one to be persistent, and added to this the only people that were able to positively interact with this zone, and decide to make the world changing event take place were the top of the line catasses who could get there in the first place. To the rest of the populace of the game, the only possible viewpoint of this persistent world aspect was a negative one--they could never influence it, only be screwed by it.

Now, if the concept of a persistent world (or virtual world if that's what you mean: player's actions influence the world itself over an extended time) extends to each and every player, then I think the market would adapt and eventually enjoy persistent worlds.

[Yegolev]

As I keep saying, this shit would be easier to implement if you design your game for fewer than 500 people.  When I am online, say in WoW, 98% of the other players might as well be orange DOT barrels since I don't interact with them, I just drive right by hoping I don't get any shit on my ride.  They essentially become really stupid NPCs that refuse to give me quests or lore, substituting grief and dancing emotes.  I derive absolutely zero benefit from almost every player not in my guild.  Even the Alliance dicklicks provide some "content" since I know right away they are the enemy.  The other Horde players just steal my iron nodes.

You can own an In-N-Out (or whatever you lefties eat from) in a world capped at 150 people.  You can fit 150 fuckers into a persistent San Andreas, for Marduk's sake.  Player justice comes about because it won't take long for the other 149 people to figure out that you are a turd-lipped monkeyfucker and you become the pariah that everyone loves to hate.  "Oh, look, there's that asshole Futt Bucker... watch me run him down."  SPLAT.

I'm also strongly inclined to say that the gameplay itself would be only interaction with the world.  When people start acquiring things, you get back into the loot problem.  The thing is, I'm not really sure if anyone else would like to play something where there was no material advancement that affected gameplay.  To extend the persistent San Andreas idea, I could probably buy a building and it be mine, but I should not be the only one able to buy a bazooka.  Acquiring control of a unique game area or mechanic and keeping it from other players is the kind of thing that will get FOH involved.

OK, enough ass-talking from me for now.

[Xilren's Twin]

You know.  We hear "virtual world" as a buzzword all the time.  I'm not convinced that a virtual world is even what people really want.  People want a virtual world where they are the ones that make the world change.  Given the scale of MMOG's, we'd be seeing virtual worlds controlled by catassing asshats with nothing better to do in their life than ruin it for the rest of us with significantly less play time.  I don't want to live in their world thank you very much. 

Nah, it's actually worse then that.  People want "virtual worlds" where they are the ones who decide how the world changes, strictly based on whether or not these change affect them positively (or at worst, are neutral).

Take in game economies; people are generally fine with other players selling stuff so long as a) when they want to buy, they can find the stuff others are selling, b) others aren't trying to sell the same stuff for less then they are, and/or c) the auction spam can be turned off [/i]when they dont want that part of the world to exist for them.   Same thing for PvP; they want it to exist ONLY when they actually want to utilitize it.

Everyone wants to be their own lord and master of a virtual world, they just dont think about it that way.

Xilren   

[HaemishM]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The mass market DOES NOT WANT A VIRTUAL WORLD. They just don't, no matter how much they might say they do. Which they aren't, BTW, as evidenced by the success of WoW.

They don't want a virtual world, for many of the reasons Xil just outlined. They aren't in control of it. A virtual world will have the same rules as the real world: the strong get stronger, the rest get shit. The very idea of a virtual world is antithetical to the mass market, because it implies another life, whereas the mass market just wants to be entertained for a few hours without hassle, and if they are looking at the MMO area for that entertainment, they want their friends and likeminded people to be involved.

People who want virtual worlds are not the mainstream and never will be. They are a niche. You will not design a successful virtual world that is meant to house 100,000 people. Server populations have to be under 1200 people concurrently online. The bitch of the whole thing is that to do a decent virtual world, you need mass market type money, but without hopes of mass market appeal.

[Stephen Zepp]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The mass market DOES NOT WANT A VIRTUAL WORLD. They just don't, no matter how much they might say they do. Which they aren't, BTW, as evidenced by the success of WoW.

They don't want a virtual world, for many of the reasons Xil just outlined. They aren't in control of it. A virtual world will have the same rules as the real world: the strong get stronger, the rest get shit. The very idea of a virtual world is antithetical to the mass market, because it implies another life, whereas the mass market just wants to be entertained for a few hours without hassle, and if they are looking at the MMO area for that entertainment, they want their friends and likeminded people to be involved.

People who want virtual worlds are not the mainstream and never will be. They are a niche. You will not design a successful virtual world that is meant to house 100,000 people. Server populations have to be under 1200 people concurrently online. The bitch of the whole thing is that to do a decent virtual world, you need mass market type money, but without hopes of mass market appeal.

I think that your points are pretty damned spot on...and one of the things that I love about being an indy developer (and yes, GG, falls under that definition!) is that we can still give it a whirl!

[Arnold]

Just remake UO with more shiny and less r0xx0r already.

Yes, the REAL UO, not that abomination that EA has on life support.

Or you guys could just kick some cash down to the Mount & Blade folks, withth stipulation that they make it a multiplayer game!

[Raph]

Based on the one major foray into a "real" persistent world, the Sleeper's Tomb back in old EQ Scars of Velious days...

Ooof, did you really just say that?

[Stephen Zepp]

Based on the one major foray into a "real" persistent world, the Sleeper's Tomb back in old EQ Scars of Velious days...

Ooof, did you really just say that?

I didn't say it was wrong in and of itself--just that it wasn't the best choice for introducing the concept. Myself, I think that -every- event should be "world changing", in that content like that should be both unique and dynamic. It just turned out that with the quality of the items (best in the game, especially the monk's robe, but others as well), and the difficulty getting there, it became a "race to grief", where guilds would farm the area until another guild could finally make it in...and then they would shut it off, so that other guilds couldn't ever catch up.

The quality of items didn't get matched until the upper reaches of Vex Thal, and even then were too damned hard to get into for anyone to really recover. Monks without regen robes couldn't pull most of Vex Thal for a long, long time...

[Raph]

No, I was just boggled and baffled that you cited that as the first "real" serious effort towards a persistent world. Leaving all of muds aside, what about UO, AlphaWorld, OnLive? What about Meridian 59's guildhall ownership system?

[schild]

Why are all of these persistant worlds more boring and less visceral than Trade Wars?

Maybe, MAYBE someone can answer that for me. Far as I can remember, the commcercially licensed muds and text games of the early 90s (MajorMud, TeleArena, and TradeWars) were consistant throughout. There wasn't something you could call an "EndGame." And there were true achiever type things to do. I remember camping the labyrinth entrance the night they were putting the first expansion for MajorMud in on my local BBS and was the only rogue to get the crystal Shortsword. When I left, I handed it off and as far as I know, it's not been through 6 generations of players.

Either I've gotten older, or shit like that just doesn't happen. Worlds may exist, but there's just something lacking in modern games. I'll say this though, SW:G, with it's early early early game economy was one of the best meta-products in a game. Period. Ever. I loved it, and wish that it hadn't transformed...into..well, bad.

What the hell was I saying? Oh right, Endgames, either too inconsistant or too boring. Or take too long to get there. I told a lot of people that when they got to the endgame in WoW it would break that last straw for them. For the most part I was right, a number of people did stick around longer than I thought they would, but even they're beginning to feel the complete and utter boredom of scheduled raids.

[SomeKindOfMoron]

Very interesting thread, guys. 

Virtual worlds might not be the final answer to the MMO question, but I don't think that average players would necessarily shrink away from such a game.  Yes, if you allow players and player organizations to own, control, and manage cities, then it will be the most catasstastic players who end up in these roles.  For the rest of us, we're the equivalent of the low-to-middle class.  The thing is, this is only a bad thing if it's not an enjoyable experience and if the game allows the people with power (catasses) to crap on the masses with any sense of impunity.  I don't think all players need to be in control of the entire damn world, they just need to be in control of their little sphere of enjoyment, be it exploration, conflict, or socializing.  So long as they can keep doing what they enjoy doing, I don't think most players will give a damn what the most powerful players are doing.

The idea is that, when the world at large does act upon the average player, it means a new and exciting experience (new content) that jives with how she wants to play the game.  I think players could actually enjoy having a wrench thrown into their playing, so long as its something they have a good chance at conquering/surviving and not just an unfair reaming.  There's a fine line between the two, of course, and that's where the game designers come in.

As I keep saying, this shit would be easier to implement if you design your game for fewer than 500 people.

It's certainly an appealing idea.  It's probably unlikely that we'll see a traditional commercial MMO pursue anything like this, but, as Xilren has already mentioned earlier in this thread, games like NWN offer some very promising possibilities.  NWN was of course not built with PWs in mind, but the users have taken it pretty far.  I wonder how far they might take it if a game were to genuinely provide them with tools to easily set up and operate a PW and then provide players with an easy way to find and join them.  I doubt it would ever reach a massive audience, but it might grow large enough to put a dent in the big commercial MMOs as bored players migrate to these amateur PW servers that they don't have to pay a monthly fee for.  The commercial MMOs would have to at least take notice.  I could see it functioning as a sort of indie MMO scene, outside of text-based MUDs and such.

[HaemishM]

Why are all of these persistant worlds more boring and less visceral than Trade Wars?

Because they design and build the world first, and the game/games part of it gets put in as the afterthought.

[Pococurante]

Virtual worlds are supposed to be open-ended.  The problem is not that "game" gets patched in later, it's that whatever is patched in later does not please all kinds of people all the time.  GW should never be compared to any sort of virtual world and those that do are demanding a different product or at least a mini game inside an overarching product.

My problems with early UO weren't problems inherent to a virtual world.  They were the series of incremental decisions each step of the way all attempting to please very disparate audiences.  The original vision of UO was not misguided - the fact that it is still used as a yardstick suggests it simply needs to be implemented purely to the demographic that wants virtual worlds instead of console games with transparent save features.  I marvel at how often people ask for a pure UO done in current technology and we instead keep getting EQ derivatives.

I'm immediately dubious when I hear a console fanatic (e.g. people who own multiple brands and eras of consoles) critiquing virtual worlds.  Theirs is a  highly-focused playstyle that demands instant feedback of railed gameplay with clear definitions of winning and losing players.  There is no reason why a persistent world cannot have that sort of mini-game instance going on.  I think WoW BG is a step in that direction.  A different combat engine using twitch might be more satisfactory.

But all these considerations are business and engineering oriented.  They have nothing to do with the fundamental nature of virtual worlds.

[HaemishM]

Virtual worlds are supposed to be open-ended.  The problem is not that "game" gets patched in later, it's that whatever is patched in later does not please anyone any of the time. 

Fixed it for you.

GW should never be compared to any sort of virtual world and those that do are demanding a different product or at least a mini game inside an overarching product.

My definition of what a virtual world SHOULD be (and what UO was close to being), is an open-ended world with assloads of interesting mini-games, each of which could stand on its own for people who like that sort of thing. THAT'S what a virtual world SHOULD be. If you can't pull that off, don't even fucking try. A virtual world could please most of the people most of the time, but only if its component mini-games are all good.

My problems with early UO weren't problems inherent to a virtual world.  They were the series of incremental decisions each step of the way all attempting to please very disparate audiences. 

None of which went far enough to please the audiences for "that sort of thing." The PVP didn't think the benefits/disadvantages of PVP were hard enough. The PVE people didn't think the PVE got enough work. All because each of the mini-games wasn't dealt with as a game in its own right.

I'm immediately dubious when I hear a console fanatic (e.g. people who own multiple brands and eras of consoles) critiquing virtual worlds.  Theirs is a  highly-focused playstyle that demands instant feedback of railed gameplay with clear definitions of winning and losing players. 

Grand Theft Auto defies your definition of a console fanatic. It not only defies it, it shoots your concept directly in the face, humps the corpse, beats up a hooker and drives off after doing wheelies on the corpse. Katamari Damacyl does similar things, only it rolls over them and sticks them to its snowballing body. There is nothing inherently console-y about highly-focused playstyles or railed gameplay, and nothing inherently open-ended about PC games. Stop it. Really. There is fundamentally nothing the PC can do that the X-Box cannot do when it comes to the design of a game, or an MMOG. I still believe consoles are where your first real breakthrough mass market MMOG are going to come from. No, I still don't consider WoW a mass market MMOG. Think bigger.

There is no reason why a persistent world cannot have that sort of mini-game instance going on.  I think WoW BG is a step in that direction.  A different combat engine using twitch might be more satisfactory.

Which is what I just said above. The true nature of virtual worlds is in their open-endedness. But just having a world is a MUSH. A world with interesting and full-featured mini-games is the kind of MMOG that is needed.

[Pococurante]

Grand Theft Auto defies your definition of a console fanatic. It not only defies it, it shoots your concept directly in the face, humps the corpse, beats up a hooker and drives off after doing wheelies on the corpse. Katamari Damacyl does similar things, only it rolls over them and sticks them to its snowballing body. There is nothing inherently console-y about highly-focused playstyles or railed gameplay, and nothing inherently open-ended about PC games. Stop it. Really.

Except that I didn't say PC games versus Consoles games.  I wasn't talking about hardware either.  I talked about players and preferred playstyles, like the contrast between Gabe and Tycho of PA.  And the traditional console player since Pong has been someone whose preferred playstyle is exactly as I described because for eons those kind of games sold to the widest common denominator and were doable on the hardware of each time period.

This isn't a conversation about "The Next Promised Death of PCs because soon all consoles will come standard with a keyboard and a hard drive."  If you want to opine about the future of consoles blurring the lines between playstyles start a new thread. 

While I think virtual worlds should have mini-games, that does not define them.  Not unless Xbox Live is a virtual world anyway.  People that like god games and virtual worlds are people who like the freedom to take a broad collection of simple mechanics and arrange them in complex ways unanticipated by developers and yet still get real world-like results.  UO actually did pretty good with that - had they simply had consensual PvP and decent mob spawns from day one we wouldn't still be dicking around arguing that EQ derivatives can be boring to some.

Don't ever Bruce me again or by-gawd I'll photoshop your picture off Oxenfree's old site into some truly Woodcockian Winger art and email it to your ex-girlfriend! 

[Stephen Zepp]

No, I was just boggled and baffled that you cited that as the first "real" serious effort towards a persistent world. Leaving all of muds aside, what about UO, AlphaWorld, OnLive? What about Meridian 59's guildhall ownership system?

Other than a few random muds that allowed for every player to build everywhere they want, I don't see any of the above qualifying for "persistent world" status, in the definition I use: where player's actions could fundamentally change the world view of everyone in the game (that observed the change).

The Sleeper's Tomb script when all four were killed caused permanent and irrevocable changes to the server it happened on...and that's what I mean by persistent world. Saving your characters doesn't count, and basically if a game has respawns that no matter what any player does, always happen, and/or it doesn't allow players to permanently modify common portions of the game world (at a minimum) it doesn't meet my personal bar.

[Evangolis]

the definition I use: where player's actions could fundamentally change the world view of everyone in the game (that observed the change).

The Sleeper's Tomb script when all four were killed caused permanent and irrevocable changes to the server it happened on...and that's what I mean by persistent world.

According to Jessica Mulligan, the Defense of Trinsic could have been the first event to match your definition, but failed to do so because of a failure to communicate between coder and designer.  In fact, I'd dispute that Sleeper's Tomb really fits your definition, since the outcome was inevitable.  All servers would eventually reach the same state, it was just a matter of when.

Mind, I think you are using an incorrect definition of persistant world.  I think mutable would be a better term.

[Raph]

I'll go further and say that a UO house meets the definition better than the Sleeper's Tomb does. UO, ATiTD, and a few other games are actually true "persistent worlds" in the technical sense in that they save game state as a whole, and not merely character state.

I might also point out that it wasn't "a few" text muds that had that capability, it was more than half the major codebases, accounting for around 1/2 the muds and 1/3 of the total mud population.

So I must not be understanding your definition either. It's certainly not the commonly used one.

[HaemishM]

Grand Theft Auto defies your definition of a console fanatic. It not only defies it, it shoots your concept directly in the face, humps the corpse, beats up a hooker and drives off after doing wheelies on the corpse. Katamari Damacyl does similar things, only it rolls over them and sticks them to its snowballing body. There is nothing inherently console-y about highly-focused playstyles or railed gameplay, and nothing inherently open-ended about PC games. Stop it. Really.

Except that I didn't say PC games versus Consoles games.  I wasn't talking about hardware either.  I talked about players and preferred playstyles, like the contrast between Gabe and Tycho of PA.  And the traditional console player since Pong has been someone whose preferred playstyle is exactly as I described because for eons those kind of games sold to the widest common denominator and were doable on the hardware of each time period.

And again, the success of GTA defies your description of the typical console player who doesn't like non-directed gameplay. There is nothing inherent in console games that makes them averse to non-directed gameplay.

This isn't a conversation about "The Next Promised Death of PCs because soon all consoles will come standard with a keyboard and a hard drive."  If you want to opine about the future of consoles blurring the lines between playstyles start a new thread. 

That would be a silly conversation indeed. A keyboard and a hard drive is hardly the biggest differentiation between consoles and PC's.

While I think virtual worlds should have mini-games, that does not define them.  Not unless Xbox Live is a virtual world anyway. 

And yet, if you gave yourself an avatar in X-Box Live that walked around a world space spouting "thee's" and "thou's" suddenly it's an MMOG. The only difference is that X-Box Live would have an actual world of different mini-games, while MMOG Virtual Worlds usually have 2-3 mini-games, kill the foozle, craft the shiney, and screw your fellow man in various ways.

People that like god games and virtual worlds are people who like the freedom to take a broad collection of simple mechanics and arrange them in complex ways unanticipated by developers and yet still get real world-like results.  UO actually did pretty good with that - had they simply had consensual PvP and decent mob spawns from day one we wouldn't still be dicking around arguing that EQ derivatives can be boring to some.

Don't ever Bruce me again or by-gawd I'll photoshop your picture off Oxenfree's old site into some truly Woodcockian Winger art and email it to your ex-girlfriend! 

I do believe I've never been crazy or brave enough to put my pic on Oxenfree's old site. Consider yourself Bruced.

[schild]

/* Derail */
I'd pay good money for a giant poster sized wingered Haem.I bet I could get it in the Biennial at the Hirshorn in DC. God knows the art there is tasteless.
/* Rerail */

[Pococurante]

If I were serious I'd pull the pics SPT posted of him and the snowbeast.  But really I found it much more entertaining to see Haem doing a credible Bruce imitation.  He probably even had something cool to say but the pass was so good I couldn't be bothered to parse for it...

[HaemishM]

Heh, I think I invented the term SirBrucing, just not the technique. But years of dicking about with him taught me how to properly use it.

[Shockeye]

But years of dicking about with him taught me how to properly use it.

Uhh... that is both hilarious and disturbing.

[Yegolev]

I implied but did not state that I feel the persistent world we are trying to find here would have no endgame.  Simply defining an end to your game sets you up for eventual failure.  Seems obvious to me.  Instead of putting one big game into the world, which would obviously interest only some people, put in many smaller games which as a group appeal to a larger number of people.  If someone wins one of the games, don't give a reward that allows them to break their foot off in everyone else's asshole... otherwise they "win".

[tazelbain]

I implied but did not state that I feel the persistent world we are trying to find here would have no endgame.  Simply defining an end to your game sets you up for eventual failure.  Seems obvious to me.  Instead of putting one big game into the world, which would obviously interest only some people, put in many smaller games which as a group appeal to a larger number of people.  If someone wins one of the games, don't give a reward that allows them to break their foot off in everyone else's asshole... otherwise they "win".

Well in the RL, you don't need an end game because there a new things to invent and viseral experiances to have.  A MMOG by its natures have very little of these.  The whole thing is limited by the designers talent and budget.  So, an end game is a codename for Designer's plan to handle the player's infinite desire for interesting stuff to do with the Designer's finite talent and resources.  No end game means you have no plan (like CoH).  Your end game is "a bunch of small sub-games that interest a wide variety of players."

[Yegolev]

So, an end game is a codename for Designer's plan to handle the player's infinite desire for interesting stuff to do with the Designer's finite talent and resources.  No end game means you have no plan (like CoH).  Your end game is "a bunch of small sub-games that interest a wide variety of players."

Stated better than I managed to.

[Azazel]

The whole idea is a little weird:  you play one game to advance, and once you've maxed out your advancement, you play an entirely different game. If the advancement isn't fun, why not let the players play the "endgame" from the start?  The sad answer is that it's easier to design a grind than to design something that's fun for long periods. 

I think PvP is a valid answer: look at games like CS.  That game is equivalent in many ways to a MMOG endgame minus the grind, and people play it over and over for years and years.  In AC1 I hear many people have migrated to PvP servers as the game matured and advancement became more trivial.

The funny thing is that I agree with your overall point, but from the opposite perspective.

I enjoyed levelling in WoW, but once I got (almost to) the level cap, I realised there was no point continuing past 57 to 60, since all that they have left to do is raid. And if I'd wanted to raid, I'd never have stopped playing EQ1 where I was max level in a raid guild.

If WoW had some forms of non-raid character progression akin to EQ1's AA that you could use experience for (Talents), and items you could gain "points" for and save up, akin to EQ1's LDoN expansion (I believe the DoN expansion has the same kind of thing) then my friends and I would have stayed on, as a casual soloer/D&D style group.

Since all that was left was the raid game, I lost interest.

And virtual world are the last bloody thing I want. I want to play a game, not timesink in a virtual world. I've got the real one for that.

[Sairon]

The only key to end game as I see it is player generated. As for example Shadowbane, the end game as I saw it was to build the greatest empire with your guild. Sure, they failed, but you got a little glimpse of how cool it could've been.

Big guilds controlls a lot of land, gets a bit cocky and just happend to piss of just about more smaller guilds than they can handle. Smaller guilds create an alliance and crush uber big guild. Smaller guilds gets pissed at each other because one got 1 m^2 more land, and so right there starts another war. Okay so you might not like this political game which is created, then just don't be a guild leader and just tag along for the ride. Smaller "peaceful" guilds could control and hang out in the areas which are slightly less wanted, and hopefuly be left alone because of the lack of intrest in that area by larger guilds. It will probably be hard to pull of perfectly but there's loads of potential here for an awesome end game which doesn't bore you to death.

[Hoax]

Shadowbane + actual crazy good player economy + a little bit smaller dose of crush, and much less ninja 3am crushing + MUCH LESS GOLD FARMING + using the lore server rules of the bat and balancing the game accordingly?  = the win.

[JoeTF]

Only way to create end game is by virtual, player run world. Players are ony ones capable of creating content at same pace as the need it.

Alternative is WoW grindfest.

And for all the bad things* you can say about EVE, it does have an endgame. I got my battleship** in 40 days of playing, but I stayed for over 2 years. I found a nice guild in nice alliance and we created the history. Amount of player content in EVE is incredible. You can spend your live climbing alliance leadership ladder, you can become fromidable pirate, or zealous bountyhunter. You can crush alliances. You can create trade empires.


The idea I had for EVE was player started war campaigns. Players create incident (say blowing up npc station), NPC will create misson (and transport players, ofc) for other players to investigate and counter the attack. If it would come to a fight, other NPC faction would try to 'use incident for it's own gain' and create mission to reinforce orginal attackers. and so on and so on, with final result being system (not)changing sovereignty. Players start and participate in the damn thing, but it's the system that tosses the cards and have control over the strategy. EVE universe is perfectly suited for it: there are titans can provide means of teleportations and open space is big enought to provide uninterrupted combat for infinite number of players. Unfortunately, writing good scenarios is way over CCP capabilities.



*it's a niche game for hardcore ELITE fans. there are people who enjoy being miner in god's forgotten space colony. For everyone else, there is trade, freight, PvE, missions...
**at that time, battleship equaled WoW's lv60.

[e_bortion]

A sort a GW'esque hub, to wich you connect with your character, and you basicly bought every quest or content( Maybe module is a better word)  you played.

A variant on that idea that I posted a long while back is to have the "endgame" be content creation - use in-game money you've earned as a player to purchase content creation tools - the content you create in your zone is accessible to other players and has the potential to generate more in-game money for them, you, or both.  Apply the principles of a sim economic game to this so that there's real challenge to building and maintaining a "profitable" zone rather than making it an easy money faucet.

Yeah I would like to see something like DAOC's GVG zone, except you build your own fortresses instead of taking over pre-existing ones. Sort of a combination of SWG's player cities and DAOC's fortress GVG.

In SWG you would see players building a bunch of forts around their cities in an attempt at creating their own content for other players to play. Some would disagree that this was their intent, but bragging rights are an awfully powerful motivation to create content that is playable to other players. Unfortunately there weren't many options in SWG for creating such content aside from the  player fortress which spawned a few allies for them. Had their been a lot more PVP related structures that served a variety of purposes, and REASONS to construct these objects in certain valuable areas, you would have seen a greater flexibility in player-created game content.

One such way to add motivation to create such player created content in SWG could have been by simply changing the way resource spawns worked. In the case of mineral spawns. areas could have been designated as particularly mineral rich, where only the best resources would spawn, giving the players a definate reason to capture this area, protect it, and create playable content for their enemies.

You would also see players creating player cities near popular creature spawns (such as Krayt dragons). Had players been able to "captuire" this area and protect it for the Empire or Rebels, the Empire/Rebel faction part of the game would have more importance, and therefore feel more Starwarsy, while at the same time giving end-game players (those ith maxed characters and more money than god) something more to do.


To sum it all up, "end game" (in my opinion), is what you do when you have done everything you can do in a game, and you have everything you can get. It is where you finally get to use all these things you have accumulated throughout the course of playing the game, whether this be experience, skills, money or items. It is a time when you can do frivolous things that you could not afford to do before, such as throwing money away to make uber items, or collecting rares, or collecting bugged items, or creating your own player city, or getting every buff possible on your character to go solo the toughest area in the game. It is the time where the entire game is open to you to do whatever the hell you want because you earned it.

Anyway I wholeheartedly agree, player created content is the gaming of the future, such as the internet could be considered "player created content". If we left it up to the originators of the internet to do all the creating we wouldn't have much of an internet would we? The internet itself is completely "player created", and this is how I see games becoming in the years ahead.

[Arnold]

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