Quote:
Originally Posted by Tecmos Deception
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It's not like I get paid [whatever big-shot MMO designers get paid] to design brilliant MMOs! But I'd like to think that the people who DO design games for a living would be able to come up with something. Of course, I'm pretty pessimistic, so I don't actually think that.
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It's mainly about resource management. You either have low population servers, no servers at all (multilayer-instanced zones - everyone zones into Dreadlands, or Dreadlands_01, Dreadlands_0xx), or high population servers that employ hubs of connectivity (Cities, other leveling zones) with instances in them to increase the real estate. When you have 2000 people at level 40, you need them to go somewhere. It's really just a thought exercise in population distribution.
I don't think there's a magic bullet. I think the EQ we played, and the way we played right now, was unique. Servers had relatively low populations as the genre was new. We had lots of players playing at different times of days, and even then zones got 'crowded'. Now that MMO is more mainstream, you have to be able to sustain that model, or throw it out entirely. However, most attempts I've seen make you either feel like you're playing solo, or there's no community, or that everything is too easy.
Also consider the effect of a high population server and static zones with regards to loot distribution. Say normally there are 1-2 FBSS on this server entering per day on a population of about 900 peak hours. To keep prices the same, on a population of 30,00, you'd need 35-45 dropping a day. You can't do that in a static zone - it has to be instanced. I think a lot of this conversation has to do with scaling a community when we are used to our small ones, and maybe what a lot of you want is just a small community.
You can guarantee that SoE is not going for 'small' w/ EQNEXT.
06-12-2013, 11:37 PM
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