Grand Unified MMOG Theory

[raydeen]

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/collide.html

If this has been talked about before, then I apologize. This seemed like a pretty likely premise (even if it is from Wired), but then I'm not all that bright and am still impressed by digital watches. Thought it would be a good topic of conversation though.

[HaemishM]

I disagree with what he said. Vehemently.

Within a decade, then, the notion of separate game worlds will probably seem like a quaint artifact of the frontier days of virtual reality. You'll still be able to engage in radically different experiences - from slaying orcs to cybersex - but they'll occur within a common architecture. The question is whether the underpinnings of this unified metaverse will be a proprietary product, like Windows, or an inclusive, open standard, like email and the Web. (The Open Source Metaverse Project is currently working on such a nonproprietary platform.)

One way or another, consolidation is all but inevitable. A single, pervasive environment will emerge, uniting the separate powers of today's virtual societies. And then we really will have built the Matrix.

No, it is NOT inevitable. The only single, pervasive environment will be a standard interface for launching the worlds, i.e. an X-Box Live sort of thing. But the makers of the games are NOT going to provide some form of standardized architecture whereby a character in EQ is equivalent to a character in WoW because it's not in their financial interests to do so.

I brand this man a thinktard.

[Lantyssa]

As long as we have multiple companies that want to control such a market (MS, Sony, Nintendo, et. al.) and people that think there should be alternatives (Mac, Linux, and Open Source type enthusiasts), I doubt we will have even a single interface.  Were we to somehow get to that point, eventually something would come about to challenge it simply because no product can be universal and someone out there is arrogant enough (and maybe correct) to think they can do better.

[Venkman]

I agree with what he said, because I've hawked the same wares as well.

But, it doesn't apply to diku-inspired themes. Yes, that wouldn't be in financial interest for SOE nor Blizzard. At the same time though, it's iterations on a limited-appeal theme. Lots of money, but not a lot of people.

I don't necessarily think it'll be common architecture/Open Source type stuff. Sure there's Bigworld (nice tools they have, but much more for indies than people with series marketing bling to spent), but the current model still requires account retention in a singular experience that gets updated with iterative content.

Rather, I see the commonality between players lessening, allowing for broader/compartmentalized experiences as noted in that article. Stuff we're seeing now (SL, SWG) but which the current genre vets haven't embraced en masse (because most obviously like the Diku stuff instead). Worlds will get broader, probably based on scaling through success. Start as a diku, end as a World, that sorta thing. During te life of an MMO, adding housing and player vendors to WoW would be a lot more successful than retrofiting even the best combat and content system to SWG. You need a successful foundation to generate the cash for true integration of breadth though.

[Telemediocrity]

Wired Magazine is well known for publishing writers who are full of shit but would like to appear profound.

This guy doesn't even appear profound; he's just full of shit.

Any shmuck can point out the similarities between two things - the similarities between consolidation of BASIC programing languages and hypothetical 'consolidation' of MMORPG avatars, for instance.  But that's not real knowledge, and it's not actually saying anything.  Real knowledge, and real understanding, comes from examining differences, not similarities.

And that's where his case completely falls apart.

Why did BASIC consolidate?  Because there was a serious demand for it and the fragmented system was fundamentally untenable in the long term.

What's untenable about the fragmentation of virtual worlds?  Nothing.  No overwhelming demand has been produced for your level 60 in WoW to translate into a level 60 in EQ2 from the player side of the equation.

From the developer side of the equation?  It'd be hell.  MMOGs would essentially then form a highly imperfect marketplace, where player labor (time at keyboard) would be exchanged for items and XP.  Any podunk indie game that was included in the system but which made it easier to level would instantly become the grinder's game of choice, from which they'd transfer to another system.

Oh, and exploits?  Yeah, that'd be great.  Now a gold dupe in EQ2 isn't just a problem for EQ2, it inflates every game on the market.  Goodie.  That's exactly what we need.

Also, when you make a market permeable and fungible, guess what floods right in?  The most fungible good of all, real-world money.  Kiss any hopes of being able to regulate IGE-ish behavior goodbye.

One more point to think of - MMO Dev teams are suspiciously similar to the American government.  We 'vote' with our dollars in some sense on which game we'll play, but the games are relatively similar, and due to being wedded to a game in the virtual world (much like you're wedded to an incumbent, gerrymandered politician in RL), you'll be willing to put up with a lot without jumping to another game.

What does that create a big constituency for?  Lobbying.  The exact rate at which an EQ1 epic translates to an EQ2 epic would be the subject of immense forum ranting and whines.  In the real world, the amount of lobbying behavior correlates to how much power you put in the hands of governments; in virtual worlds, the ones with the least complaining to the devs tend to be relatively balanced full-PvP worlds where people feel their destiny is in their own hands - In AC1, for instance, Darktide complained considerably less to the devs about game mechanics, because beyond PvP class balance, we created our own content.

Any system like this exponentially increases the power of the devs over the player's day-to-day virtual world existence.  As a result, there's going to be that much more teeth-gnashing over dev decisions.  Imagine - they talk about making EQ2 more casual-friendly by adding easier-to-get epics, and all the WoW and Vanguard 200 man raid guilds flood the EQ2 forums to tell EQ2 players to learn2play and quit ruining other games by wanting to have fun in their own.

There's only one decent way you could pitch this - and that's a company shutting down a game and allowing the players some compensation if they move to another game that the same company owns.

Anything else is just more of Wired's usual sub-par HAY GUYS DOESNT TECHNOLOGY OPEN NEW FRONTIERS babbling to an uncritical audience.

[bhodi]

I do hope that as systems get more and more complex, people will no longer be able to afford to create their game world, due to time constraints, nor will they need to - I'm hoping that in the future, there will be GPL'd virtual reality... all the 3d models of the real world, in some indescribably gigantic database that anyone can draw upon plus alll the APIs to act upon those objects through the fundemental forces. Once our computers get powerful enough to render the visible world (pieces of it anyway) in real time, that's when I think we'll start to see consolidation. It'll simply be too huge for any one company, there will have to be open standards. At first it'll be for-profit companies doing things for various commercial enterprises, but eventually free software will catch up and exceed any one company's database of items. It'll grow and grow, until (once again) the important part of a game (or entertainment, or virtual reality, wherever that line is) will be as it should have been in the first place - about the story and characters. The world will be free.

It's a nice dream, anyway.

[Telemediocrity]

I do hope that as systems get more and more complex, people will no longer be able to afford to create their game world, due to time constraints, nor will they need to - I'm hoping that in the future, there will be GPL'd virtual reality... all the 3d models of the real world, in some indescribably gigantic database that anyone can draw upon plus alll the APIs to act upon those objects through the fundemental forces. Once our computers get powerful enough to render the visible world (pieces of it anyway) in real time, that's when I think we'll start to see consolidation. It'll simply be too huge for any one company, there will have to be open standards. At first it'll be for-profit companies doing things for various commercial enterprises, but eventually free software will catch up and exceed any one company's database of items. It'll grow and grow, until (once again) the important part of a game (or entertainment, or virtual reality, wherever that line is) will be as it should have been in the first place - about the story and characters. The world will be free.

It's a nice dream, anyway.

You can do that today, essentially, with ASCII.  I'm not kidding.  Download Megazeux (or ZZT if you feel that working within limitations is what make art beautiful) and go to town.  Make any kind of world you want.  Extending it into MMOSpace would Not Be Hard.

Why don't you?  Because technology has advanced beyond ASCII, that's why.  What happens to your ever-growing database of models and textures as time goes on and technology continues to advance?  It languishes in the same way ASCII game-making does, that's what.

[Morat20]

I'm afraid I simply don't get this man's points. If MMORPGs were chat programs -- or hell, a sort of metaversy thing like Second Life -- I could see them merging and allowing crossover, the same way MSN and Yahoo are merging their IM software to allow crosscommunication.

But people don't play WoW in order to go beat up on spaceships in EVE. This just sounds like a guy who really wants to see who'd win in a fight between the Enterprise and a Star Destroyer -- and had had a few puffs before work.

If he was talking engine standardization and licensing -- so that, for instance, companies might stop producing MMORPGs and just produce engines and toolkits for it -- like the Quake engine or the Unreal engine, I can absolutely see that happening. But just because Joe Bob's Space MMORPG and Tammy Sue's Elf MMMORPG are running on the same basic engine that anyone is actually going to want a Joe Bob cyberlord wandering over to duke it out with a Tammy Sue Elflord is pretty ridiculous.

Hell, only EVE has managed to pull of a 20k+ shard -- everyone else already divides their worlds up into 3k or so chunks. Why would you start letting them merge?

[Krakrok]

stuff

I'm sorry but you are full of shit. If you can't see a 3D web coming you must be living under a rock somewhere. The 2d web now but in 3d. How hard is that to understand? We're just waiting for someone to build a 3d procedural Mosaic client.

[Morat20]

I'm sorry but you are full of shit. If you can't see a 3D web coming you must be living under a rock somewhere. The 2d web now but in 3d. How hard is that to understand? We're just waiting for someone to build a 3d procedural Mosaic client.

A 3D web is a hell of a lot different than some weird-ass merging of MMORPG gamespaces. Hell, add Wikipedia into second life, and you've got the net. Men pretending to be women, porn, arguments, information to be skeptical about, more porn....

[Telemediocrity]

stuff

I'm sorry but you are full of shit. If you can't see a 3D web coming you must be living under a rock somewhere. The 2d web now but in 3d. How hard is that to understand? We're just waiting for someone to build a 3d procedural Mosaic client.

Not that this is in any way related to what I wrote, and you're taking this thread in a silly direction, but I'll bite.  How would a '3D web' be seriously different from a glorified version of The Palace?  How would the vast majority of web-users see their experience improved by a move to 3D?  How will my friends who use their PC to watch silly videos, buy stuff off Amazon, and check their e-mail benefit?

If it's just a niche thing, then again, how would that be seriously different than a glorified version of The Palace?

[Krakrok]

Not that this is in any way related to what I wrote, and you're taking this thread in a silly direction, but I'll bite.

No. The author of the article only mentioned MMOGs because that is currently the only sizable use of 3D metaverse like environments in use today. MMOGs are the BBSs of today.

How would a '3D web' be seriously different from a glorified version of The Palace?  How would the vast majority of web-users see their experience improved by a move to 3D?  How will my friends who use their PC to watch silly videos, buy stuff off Amazon, and check their e-mail benefit?

These questions you're posing, they said the same thing about the web in 1994. I was there.

If it's just a niche thing, then again, how would that be seriously different than a glorified version of The Palace?

Use your imagination. There are thousands of ways which I won't even begin to list here.

[Telemediocrity]

No. The author of the article only mentioned MMOGs because that is currently the only sizable use of 3D metaverse like environments in use today. MMOGs are the BBSs of today.

See my previous statement about how intelligent thought generally stems from showing how things are different, not how they're alike.  For instance, one might argue that bulletin board systems like, y'know, THIS ONE, are the "BBSs of today", not MMOs, and that MMOs are if anything more akin to, say, Magic: The Gathering.  But that'd just be me.

How would a '3D web' be seriously different from a glorified version of The Palace?  How would the vast majority of web-users see their experience improved by a move to 3D?  How will my friends who use their PC to watch silly videos, buy stuff off Amazon, and check their e-mail benefit?

These questions you're posing, they said the same thing about the web in 1994. I was there.

That's cute, and good to know.  I actually got on the net in 1994 (I was 8 at the time, was the first in my school to have it), and was using it for all sorts of things - linking up with a huge network of likeminded 8 to 13 year old Sonic the Hedgehog fans, for instance, and writing a video game newsletter with 40 or 50 subscribers (I wrote at about a high school senior level, which was useful, though ironically I reviewed games I hadn't actually played).  A few years in, when I was in 11 and the awesome power of the 14.4kbps modem made image retrieval reliable, I got myself a 14 year old internet girlfriend with my l33t typing skills.  Not only was I, in fifth grade, The Mack for doing so, she sent me hawt pics.  The internet's uses revealed themselves very clearly.

In other words, the question was posed in 1994 and easily answered.  You seem to have a bit more trouble answering the question posed now for your half-baked idea.

Use your imagination. There are thousands of ways which I won't even begin to list here.

Yes, because the best way to win an argument is to refuse to provide any points in favor of your position.

Sheer brilliance!

Next time I'm in a formal debate, rather than taking the affirmative or negative I'll just lambast my opponent for his failure to imagine what my arguments might be.  Why didn't I think of this sooner?

[Krakrok]

Why didn't I think of this sooner?

You didn't think of it because you appear to be closed minded and lack imagination. Afterall, who needs more than 640KB right? Likening MMOGs to M:TG is laughable. MMOGs, BBSs, and forums are all closed communities. M:TG is not a community.

[Kail]

You didn't think of it because you appear to be closed minded and lack imagination. Afterall, who needs more than 640KB right? Likening MMOGs to M:TG is laughable. MMOGs, BBSs, and forums are all closed communities. M:TG is not a community.

He's got a point, though.  You're not going to win any arguments by saying "look, it's just obviously true" unless everyone already agrees with you, in which case arguing is kind of pointless. 

The author of the article does seem to be implying more than just "The web will be 3D someday" when he talks about the idea of separate game worlds becoming "a quaint artifact of the frontier days of virtual reality."  And that kind of thing is completely unfounded speculation.  You can't predict, with any kind of accuracy, a massive conceptual shift like that.  People spend fortunes trying (and failing) to do so.  Maybe it will happen, it's certainly physically possible.  Seems highly unlikely, but stranger things have happened.  Who knows.  I don't.  I'm fairly sure, though, that the author of that article doesn't, either.

[bhodi]

Why don't you?  Because technology has advanced beyond ASCII, that's why.  What happens to your ever-growing database of models and textures as time goes on and technology continues to advance?  It languishes in the same way ASCII game-making does, that's what.

My point is once you get to the point of being able to render the fundemental forces real time, there isn't anywhere else to go for all intents and purposes. Even if you can't render individual atoms (the quick answer being the computer itself would obviously have to be bigger than the atoms you render, all compression asside) if you can render their affects in a macro universe you're already there. There is no greater technology that you can get for day to day purposes. 'm saying that once people hit it (it's closer than you think, if you believe moore's law) there's really no where else to go in the techical arena... so the frenzied advance in graphic experience instead of play experience can finally stop.

[Telemediocrity]

Why didn't I think of this sooner?

You didn't think of it because you appear to be closed minded and lack imagination. Afterall, who needs more than 640KB right? Likening MMOGs to M:TG is laughable. MMOGs, BBSs, and forums are all closed communities. M:TG is not a community.

This whole "I'm going to randomly bring in the quotes of people who wrongly predicted the flow of technology" thing is relatively stupid.  As is the argument that  "lack imagination" because I don't subscribe to the (often ignorantly made) argument that "eventually, everything cool will happen through the magic of science".

But let's get to the root point, which is that you know fuck all about the nature of MTG communities.

MTG had a larger, more dedicated community, centered around official certification (The DCI) and the pro tour circuit.  We could roughly analogize this to the uber-guilders, the people who are known all over by those who care to learn about such things.  There are also, inhabiting the MTG "world", a ton of smaller, semi-insular communities based around individual comics shops running their own local tournament - you might see an unfamiliar face from time to time, but most often you see a core group who form the "community" for you.  This sort of socialization could roughly be analogized to guild membership.  And then there are the people who play entirely outside that system; they could be analogized to soloers.

Also, let's not forget the acquisition aspect of MTG card collecting; it's basically DikuMUD behavior with a much cooler combat system.  Just as there are some people who love to craft in MMOs, there were some MTGers who just liked to talk about the cards and collect them without actually playing a single game.  (I did that for the Pokemon TCG:  Made roughly 800 dollars, a princely sum back at age 13ish, based on speculation and smart selling without ever actually playing the game.)

So you see, while you can bicker over the specifics, the analogy of MMOs to MTG is really quite apt.  Of course, I actually took the time to explain and elucidate my ideas to you, instead of simply castigating you for "not being able to see what's obvious".

Which one of us lacks imagination, again?

You're thinking in binary, where something is either "closed" or "open".  In reality, most people in MMOs (and in MTG) live and operate within subsystems of the larger system - how the overall system encourages the creation of subsystems (or doesn't) is directly relevant to making an analogy that speaks accurately to people's experiences.

In short, we're on a tangent, and you're wrong.

[Krakrok]

He's got a point, though.  You're not going to win any arguments by saying "look, it's just obviously true" unless everyone already agrees with you, in which case arguing is kind of pointless.

ArticleAuthor: "*I think* that at some point there will be a 3D metaverse ala Snow Crash connecting all this 3D shit togather".
Televangelist: "Bullshit because esoteric MMOGmumbojumbo."
Krakrok: "*I think* Televangelist is full of shit and the author is right."
Televangelist: "640KB! the palace!?!"
Krakrok: "MMOGs are isolated communities like BBSs were before the internet. Use your imagination."
Televangelist: "Bullshit. Mylifestory. MMOG=M:TG."
Krakrok: "No. Closed communities."
Televangelist: "M:TG is an MMOG because everyone goes to comic shops to play. 1 can equal 2 if I become esoteric enough. You are wrong."

In short, we're on a tangent, and you're wrong.

The only tangent here is your narrow view that the universe revolves around gaming and your incapacity to accept differences of opinion. The technology is here right now (all over the place). All it takes is for someone with the right special sauce to bring all that shit togather into an open killer app. Second Life got pretty close but they wanted too much control.


Don't let me disturb your fixation on when to tap out or how many times your weapon can proc though.

[Trippy]

While I agree that this Mr. Steven Johnson is a "thinktard" (and not even a good one given how poorly he supported his argument) and the ideas presented in the article are wholly unoriginal they are not without merit. There are two parts to his argument: the first is that development will move to a common platform rather than constantly being recreated from scratch and the second is that characters in these worlds can freely move between them.

For the first part, while I don't agree there will be a single "monopolistic" platform since that violates one of the three virtues of programming (i.e. "hubris"), I do see there being consolidation onto a handful of frameworks for major development though developers will still be creating specialized frameworks as well. You can see this trend happening in video game development already with the move to middleware to speed up console development and the emergence of licensed graphic engine frameworks like the Unreal Engine, Source Engine, the iD engines, Lithtech, Gamebryo, etc. Sure developers still love to roll their own engines (a la the "hubris" virtue) but as the complexity continues to increase more and more games will use licensed engines/middleware for game development.

In the MMOG space, while there have been a handful of frameworks developed none of them have attracted any serious interest so far though the Multiverse product got some attention given the possible connection to James Cameron's MMOG project. That will change as the genre continues to mature, though I expect the first successful framework will be "extracted" from a successful game (to borrow a Web application framework concept) rather than created in a vacuum like the current attempts have been.

For the second part of the argument that has already been done in MUSHes, MUCKs, and MOOs and LambdaMOO was my first exposure to this where there was a full-blown fantasy RPG built into the world which was a little jarring at first since the primary world is a recreation of a house the main developer lived in so you would be wandering by, say, the pool and run into somebody dressed in a suit armor and carrying weapons. This is exactly analogous to the Star Trek holodeck concept that has been discussed in other threads where in the shows the crewmembers would "dress up" and enter their holodeck world for fun and games. The game The Second Life is in many ways the spiritual successor to LambdaMOO since it gives players the same building/programming abilities to create their own little worlds within the main game world (the fantasy RPG within LambdaMOO was player built).

Now been able to play multiple RPGs within the same "parent" game world is more complicated than the LambdaMOO example above since the main game in LambdaMOO was not an RPG so there was no conflict with the fantasy RPG but it certainly is feasible. In the PnP world this is already well-explored territory with the GURPS and Hero systems (and D20 to a lesser extent) and something similar could be ported over to a MMORPG system allowing you to take your same character from, say, a western setting into a fantasy one. It's even less work if you skip the RPG trappings and just go with FPS-style gameplay.

Note that the two parts of the original argument are independent -- you can have a common MMOG framework(s) without having multiple worlds within the main world and vice versa.

We're still a long way off from this shared "multiverse" concept becoming reality on a large scale but I do think it's coming.

[Rhonstet]

The author shows a basic lack of knowledge in how MMOGs retain customers.  My favorite line is,

But if you view your avatar as an extension of yourself

The concept of a unique and consistent identity that follows you around shows a basic lack of understanding gamer behavior.  Many people like having anonymity for their games.  And many others like using trademarked names for their characters. 

People don't want persistent identities: people want perfect anonymity with one character and world-renoun with another.  People want multiple identities, or at least the option to do so. 


A better, and more realistic, concept in gaming convergence is an IM-style friends list that can monitor avatars in multiple games at the same time.  If my girlfriend is playing WoW and my brother is playing EVE and my buddies from work are playing Battlefield 2, it would kick ass if I had a client gathering all that information.  That's a much more realistic and achievable goal then some over-client acting as a single massive, persistant meta-world.

[Krakrok]

A better, and more realistic, concept in gaming convergence is an IM-style friends list that can monitor avatars in multiple games at the same time.

Xfire already does that.

Edit: People running Xfire spent 25 man years playing WoW today.

[Rhonstet]

A better, and more realistic, concept in gaming convergence is an IM-style friends list that can monitor avatars in multiple games at the same time.

Xfire already does that.

Xfire works as a client that both people have to run (right?).  I was referring/hoping to something that worked without clients needing to be installed on the PCs belonging in the friends list.   

[Trippy]

A better, and more realistic, concept in gaming convergence is an IM-style friends list that can monitor avatars in multiple games at the same time.

Xfire already does that.

Xfire works as a client that both people have to run (right?).  I was referring/hoping to something that worked without clients needing to be installed on the PCs belonging in the friends list.   

Huh? With regular IM you have to install a client as well, how is that any different?

[Rhonstet]

IM requires clients on both sides to share information.  So does XFire.

The software I'm thinking of just gathers information on whether a certain character is logged into a certain game/shard.   Why rely on a copy of that application on a remote side?

[Trippy]

IM requires clients on both sides to share information.  So does XFire.

The software I'm thinking of just gathers information on whether a certain character is logged into a certain game/shard.   Why rely on a copy of that application on a remote side?

But how would a player check who was logged on where? Through a Web browser? And how would you setup who was on your friends list? Also through a Web application?

[Rhonstet]

It could be something similar to RSS.  My understanding of RSS is a little sketchy, but the overall idea, in this case, works something like this:

Game worlds would write who is connected to them to a text file, and update the list every X minutes/seconds.  The application on the client side would sort through the list and determine if a certain name on a certain shard in a certain game was found.  If it is, that name would be displayed. 

This information is clearly easy for games to index and search now in game clients: moving that information outside of the game client to a public resource sounds like a good idea.

[Trippy]

It could be something similar to RSS.  My understanding of RSS is a little sketchy, but the overall idea, in this case, works something like this:

Game worlds would write who is connected to them to a text file, and update the list every X minutes/seconds.  The application on the client side would sort through the list and determine if a certain name on a certain shard in a certain game was found.  If it is, that name would be displayed. 

This information is clearly easy for games to index and search now in game clients: moving that information outside of the game client to a public resource sounds like a good idea.

But you still need a client on your machine to "subscribe" to the player lists. That's what I was confused about -- you seemed to be advocating some sort of "clientless" system.

A more robust system would be for online games to use a common text communication protocol akin to something like IRC (e.g. IRC + buddy lists) and open access to the communcation channels to external applications/servers. That way you could chat with people in one game without being having to be in that particular game yourself. You can fake this with IM right now as long as the game you are playing doesn't mind external apps popping up windows but it's not seemless since you have to switch to a different app instead of using the chat tools already in the game.

[Rhonstet]

That's what I was confused about -- you seemed to be advocating some sort of "clientless" system.

Pretty much, yeah.  An application to view the information, while the game server collects it.  MMO gamers don't always like third-party apps, even if they are beneficial.  Otherwise, just about every person in WoW would be using Cosmos.

[Lantyssa]

Regardless of whether it is a built in application or a downloadable program, it would be some sort of client.  Basically anything that connects to another machine is (even a web browser is).  The only way for there to not be a client of some fashion is if there was no separation of your machine and everyone else's machine, which we probably do not want.  So don't let the terminology get in the way of the ideas.

[Technocrat]

Lol, that is the most asinine "idea" I think I've ever heard.

[Telemediocrity]

See, as Lantyssa points out, there are ways that various MMOs could be interoperable to the benefit of the customers.  For instance, IMing between games.

(Can't you already do that between EQ and EQ2?)

The fact that between-games IM'ing is the first example pointed to, though, is somewhat ironic:  In any Intro to IR class, looking at how nations may choose to compete or cooperate, the international mail system is usually cited as the prime example of cooperation that will come with very little prodding, because nobody stands to lose anything by taking a cooperative stance.

In other words, something like Lantyssa imagines is actually very likely - even if it moves from client-side solutions such as XFire to something server-side.  But, as I'm sure the majority of readers here can recognize, that does not necessarily herald any greater interoperability, such as a free transfer of avatars between games.

MMO devs are going to be loath to give up their "sovereignty" over such affairs.  The most controllable situation is the current one - where, if I want to convert my WoW character into an EQ2 one, I can do so, with the one intermediary step of selling character A for cash on EBay and using that cash to buy character B.

The worst that can be said about the current system is that it's not 100% convenient.  However, most things those on the developer side could do to increase convenience would come at a severe cost to the autarkic nature of their worlds - all the EBay in the world doesn't allow you to transfer a level 60 in WoW to become an uber character in Game X at day one of release.

[Simond]

I'm all for the concept in the first post, it it means I can sit in geosynchrinous orbit above Teldrassil in my Navy Apocalypse and fry newbie night elves with heavy tachyon beams.

[Telemediocrity]

Just a thought:  How would CoH / CoV fit into his schematic?

[Murgos]

See, as Lantyssa points out, there are ways that various MMOs could be interoperable to the benefit of the customers.  For instance, IMing between games.

(Can't you already do that between EQ and EQ2?)

The fact that between-games IM'ing is the first example pointed to, though, is somewhat ironic:  In any Intro to IR class, looking at how nations may choose to compete or cooperate, the international mail system is usually cited as the prime example of cooperation that will come with very little prodding, because nobody stands to lose anything by taking a cooperative stance.

The one difference is that it's very difficult for someone in country A to say "I just talked to my friend in country B and they are having fun so I am moving there." even going from say the US to Canada is a HUGE deal and certain types of economies actively prohibit this sort of thing, see the Berlin Wall, I can't imagine a societal construct less likely to enable easy movment of people between instances than MMOG's run by different corporations.

Communication between MMOG's is one thing, just look at this board, but enabling movement between ones held by different companies is something else all together.

[Krakrok]

Just a thought:  How would CoH / CoV fit into his schematic?

The same way it works now. Except the interface between Game A and Game B would be in 3d. If Second Life had an open architecture server (ala apache) that anyone could run themselves instead of their stupid closed land system it would be pretty close to a 3d web client/server architecture. There isn't any reason that current games aren't meshed with existing protocols (irc/email/usenet/im/http) other than they don't want to be because they want to control their closed enviroment.

You've been trying to paint a 3d metaverse as some kind of socialist utopia where meaningless achievements in Game A would carry over into meaningless achievements in Game B, all companies would be lovie dovie with each other, and a unified set of rules would govern the whole place. NWN already is an example of server side characters vs. bringing local characters from your own client with you (and the individual servers control the config).

Whereas I see it as simply an open 3D interface over the existing internet architecture (re: usenet, email, irc, http, ftp, gopher). The only real difference being that people visiting a virtual location (like a website) would manifest as 3D avatars and would be able to interact and communicate with each other in 3D space in real time. Every server would govern it's own ruleset and handle it's own load just like web servers do now. AJAX is already moving the 2D web in this direction. Wizbang shit like text to speech, automatic avatar creation, and the actual 3D browser is all just gravy.