If you decide to keep reading, turn to page 23!
I’m sure I could have come up with a more clever title and by the end of this post I very well may have, but I needed something to start writing 
(It began with Door #1, Door #2 or Door#3?).
Before I get too far into the post, I wanted to acknowledge the new piece of art displayed on the top right of my site. That right there is proof and a very auspicious award given to me by none other than Tish Tosh Tesh as he describes in his post today. I of course, accept this award with humility and casually stick my tongue out at all of you who didn’t win! Just kidding 
Thanks very much Tesh for your consideration and the consideration of all the people mentioned on your list. They are all very well written and entertaining blogs and I’m happy to have been mentioned.
I had a vision as I drove to work today that’s based off a lot of recent blog posts by friends and cohorts that address the need for options in MMOs. Most of these discussions center around billing options (such as subs / MT), but some have come about with additional options in character creation and even user-based content creation.
My idea has to do with genre options in a single game. What I mean by that is one overall world much akin to our world or possibly a world in the not-too-far-off future that has access to multiple genres. The metagame would be your character linking in to the online world where they can visit various E-establishments (interactive and 3D chat rooms) kind of like Sony Playstation’s Home, but not filled with as much “Suck.” That idea is of course, malleable and in no way final, but I thought it a decent and simple enough jumping off point. Examples of the actual game worlds you can enter from this common area would be Steampunk, High Fantasy, Fantasy, Futurstic, Post Apocalyptic, things like that. Each would be a different world with its own monsters, items and rewards, but they all tie in to the main world in some way / shape / form (for those damn lore writers to come up with!).
This way, people are free to choose which genre they play in an MMO without having to hop from MMO to MMO. Yes I know it would be a massive undertaking, probably requiring separate teams for each world, but I think it would be pretty awesome in the end, especially if everything is tied in. Having multiple worlds to choose from is one thing, but having an overall tie-in story would make it even more fun, methinks.
I’m not sure yet that I want items from one world to be transposed to another world in its genre’s equivalent, but transfer of xp or skills or something is possible I suppose. Also, what you do in game earns you things in the meta game as well.
The more I think about it, the more I believe this type of thing could be done (to an abbreviated extent) in places like Metaplace, with user designed worlds.
Anywho, just a thought to add options to an industry that forces people to choose one thing over another in many aspects of gaming. Throwing separate worlds together is easy, but tying them all together is a touch harder, imo.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Like GURPS or Rifts the MMO!
That’s actually a very cool idea.
That’s sounding a lot like the sort of Second Life setup (but a bit more organised). I remember the old MOOs and MUCKs (ie. text based games where it was quite easy for players to add their own areas) had widely varying themed areas also.
I’m sure Metaplace could be used for the same sort of thing! But I do think the key, if you can, is to find a way to figure out who is reponsible and let them be in charge of ‘running’ their own area. And maybe even building it too.
I do think you are onto something though. It would just be cool to be able to transfer an avatar from one world to another. They don’t even need to have very consistent lore, a Dr Who type setup (travels in time and space) would be enough.
HA! Actually I was thinking of Rifts when I wrote the post, heh heh. Phaseworld and Rift jumping and the like. It wasn’t necessarily an inspiration, but when I began to picture the world in practice it provided a very “Riftish” type atmosphere.
Actually though, and something I probably didn’t explain properly, was the metaworld above it all. The worlds wouldn’t be experienced by the player’s character, they would be experienced by the player’s character’s character. See the player makes a character to fit in the futuristic world and then when they go into each world, their avatar is given more character options or a new avatar can be created. The player’s character knows he is playing a game, just deciding where he wants to play, but the created worlds in his gaming world (Think of the interactive lounge like an arcade) are tied together.
That probably isn’t necessary and just adds complication to the idea, but I thought it would be fun. If no one understands what I’m talking about I’ll take that as a bad idea
@Spinks ever see Quantum Leap? Heh heh
That could be an interesting game play idea for an MMO as well. Would it be feasible to have several different worlds at several different times that changed weekly, monthly or even daily?
An easier implementation would be a la WoW’s Caverns of Time where you have quests that take you to different times, but having the whole world shift and having to learn new skills for each one while you play in them would be kewl. Then you could take them offline, gather data from the things accomplished in the world per server and serve the world back up again in a year or so with the repercussions of the transpired events.
I.E. if a world was about to end due to a huge bomb going off before the world shifted, you could open the world back up a year down the road AFTER the bomb has gone off (or hasn’t if the people on the server stopped the cataclysmic event) and they continue on with the current situation.
I loved Quantum Leap! And that’s another interesting idea. What if you could log into an existing gameworld as a different premade character every time (if you wanted)? I dunno if it would fly because people tend to prefer their own characters, but a premade character could come with premade background and goals, woven into the game setting and NPCs (and PCs).
Having the world change at a fixed schedule is really intriguing. Could be a lot of work if it was an expansive gameworld. But if you take a small, contained setting (like a space station or a remote village), I could see it. The problem is getting enough of a player base who doesn’t mind their gameworld being changed on an external schedule to keep playing. But if the continuing storyline was compelling enough and personal enough, I bet they would.
I’m not really sure what kind of game it might end up being, but it’s intriguing to think about
As an advocate for character investment and development, I am naturally against max level characters and premades of all types UNLESS there is the option for both and they are on separate servers. I’m all for giving people what they want, but I hate for something like that to cheapen the point of the game.
And yea it’d be a lot of work, but if you hire enough people it could be worth it. I’d start out small, obviously to see if people liked the idea and if it took off we’d expand the idea.
The idea for people falling into new worlds is to make them think a bit differently, use different skills and obtain different loots. Those rewards would then somehow be represented in the metagame. I dunno … lots of thoughts!
Dr. Quantum Rifts. Sounds good to me.
…the trick is to make it fun to play, not just to create.
“As an advocate for character investment and development, I am naturally against max level characters and premades of all types UNLESS there is the option for both and they are on separate servers.”
Fair enough
But as an advocate for more immersive gameworlds I can’t help thinking how co0l it would be to have specific goals and background baked into your character and with some aspects of the game world tailored to exactly that character. I know it is more of a single player game type of thing, but I could imagine a self contained soap opera style gameworld where people pick their personas according to the type of story they want to tell.
Well remember that BioWare seems to be doing that kind of thing with SW:TOR (or at least that’s how it reads with the interactive story telling thing they’re touting) so we can only hope it will give an immersive world using the mechanics you described. It will obviously be out light years before anything I ever make, but if people use the ideas we’re thinking of (even if they had them first
) then it’s a good sign that people are trying new things.
That’s not to say I’d never consider something like that, I would just try to implement it in a way that didn’t require premades or max level characters. In fact, having the stories of the world tie in together and back to the metaworld was one of the things I really wanted to do to create character investment and immersion in the game.
@Tesh – Well that’s the challenge now, isn’t it
I do my best to remember that games need to be fun for other people, but man how fun it would be if I could just design games for people who thought like me 
There’s lots of ways to approach this, as you all are quite ably illustrating! My first take on it, not surprisingly given my social Bartle bias, was on a social level — it would mean that I could FINALLY be able to interact with more of my gaming friends, if they played this too.
Am going to post and link to here so I don’t forget the discussion — I just got buried in work.
I’m actually going to post more of a design proposal on some ideas I had about this world today, so if you wish to link to that one when I’m done, it may be better. Or both *shrugs*
SuperPhasing? MMO Skins? Customizable clients that run a “core” set of data through Babelfishish flavor filters for the whole world?
…I’m just trying to think of how to *implement* some of this with modular design. Still thinking…
So are you saying it would be one MMO where you jump into different personas and genres when you enter different portals, or were you thinking of linking different games together?
Like, if WoW and Warhammer signed up, you could take your character out of WoW and enter the hub area of the game, it would award you some points based on a formula involving time /played, current money, current items and gear, current skills, and current level, and then when you entered Warhammer you could spec a character up to the equivalent level?
Pretty much, except when you switched worlds (at least in the beginning) your character would have its own separate levels for each world. All the worlds would belong to the game, so it’s not necessarily incorporating existing MMO worlds, but we’d provide a WoW type world, a WAR type world, perhaps a Rifts / GURPS type world, a steampunk type world, maybe a crafting based world, maybe a 50s style earth-type world, etc.
Each world would hold its own mobs, quests, adventures, items and rewards and your meta character jumps into the worlds as they see fit. The worlds progress even if they aren’t in them and can change dramatically over time.