[desertraven]

Thanks for the great response!

Just wanting to pick your brain on a couple of points...

1. Do you think an effective MMO can exist without being an extensive time sink? If so, how?\ 2. Community and cooperation are the lifeblood of MMOs - working together to meet a goal. I like the idea of building games, but I can't justify it because I think both myself and others should spend their time pursuing goals that will improve the quality of the real world. Do you think these two can co-exist? People pursuing in-game goals which directly or indirectly map to positive outcomes in the real world?

My second point may be a little long-winded - but I'd like people not to feel guilty about spending their time on an MMO because by playing it they are having a positive impact elsewhere.

[wexomania]

1. I think it depends on what you put in «time sink».

Some MMOs can be a real slog to level throug and you would loose interest quickly, but removing the concept entirely would take away from the sense of progression, maby you could move most of the progression to be server / community based? Something akin to what Ashes of Creation promises?

I remember Peter Molyneux`s game «Curiosity»[0]. It was sort of an MMO, where the entire point was to collectively tap away to «mine» chunks to reveal what was inside. In the end only one person would mine the last chunk and actually get the «price» This «MMO» was all grind / time sink and people went crazy about it. (Or maby it was just the lottery ticket feeling of «It might be me that mines the last chunk!».)

2. This is a really interesting problem, and I am a bit suprised I haven`t heard more people talk about it.

It would be interesting to see some kind of integration with crypto currencies or smart contracts, but I do find it a bit scary to link real world economics and game economics so clearly, even thoug it already has happened(Sometimes intentionally as well).

Just look at the what happened with Venezuela and RuneScape last year. [1]

Now, on a slightly unrelated note, I am not sure an MMO in the traditional sense ever could be the «WOW killer» so many have been waiting for,

Not because I don`t think a tradtional MMO could beat WOW, but that i think the next «big thing» would be more of a platform than a singular game,

think; Mastodon meets Oasis from Ready Player One.

A decentralized community driven social playground.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity:_What%27s_Inside_the... [1] https://www.polygon.com/features/2020/5/27/21265613/runescap...

[desertraven]

Great points! I'm glad to be talking with someone far more knowledgable on games than I.

Do you think with current technology we could build a primitive version of MORPO (Mastodon meets Oasis from Ready Player One)? Enough that a gradual roadmap to MORPO can be envisioned as technology progresses? Laying the groundwork so to speak.

[wexomania]

I think so, the most difficult part would be to find an intuitive way for people to make their server the way they want, For instance, I want a server where you could bring your buddies and have a cart racing session, whilst my little nephew wants to have a server for his haunted mansion escape room game, and so on...

[desertraven]

How would you envision a MORPO MVP (minimum viable product) currently?

[wexomania]

Everything would be running on https / wss

It would need a character creator, and somewhere to store characters and accounts. A portal / teleport / server list system to move between servers. A server would need to be able to authenticate users from different servers / databases. OAuth would probably do the trick, unless there is a better standard for decentralized systems now. A basic «admin» mode where you would access a level / server editor Basic multiplayer capabilities, walk around the same area, chat, etc...

I am thinking that the client should just run in the browser, web based 3d graphics are not amazing, but good enough for an MVP, and it makes loading custom server assets super easy, just like CDN`s,

Websockets for networking.

A basic version of the server could be based on node.js, for ease of scripability / extensability, i think it would be limiting when it comes to scalability of single server / node, but that would not be that critical for an MVP.

I am probably forgetting important stuff, its been a while since I last thought about this.