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Let me first explain the basics of a sandbox MMORPG (SMMORPG).
SMMORPG is a virtual world. You don't play a game, you are living a virtual life. You don't play to gain some points and you don't compete with other players to win and be the best. You are simply living a virtual live.
A lot of people will ask, why should you live a virtual life when you can live a real life. The answer is that in a virtual life you can be much more than in real life. For example I always wanted to be a space pilot / mercenary / smuggler in a galactic civilization (like Han Solo in Star Wars). I don't think I have any chance to fulfill my dream in real life. The only way to come close to that is by living a virtual life in a virtual world. Ordinary games or MMOs are far away from fulfilling this dream.
Now I will describe the basics of an ideal SMMORPG. I know that at this moment the cost is probably to high to make a SMMORPG and we also probably don't have the technology for it. But in the next 50 years we will probably get the first SMMORPGs.
The basics of a SMMORPG:
The virtual world is huge. You have to spent a lot of time just exploring a small part of the world.
It is one unified world. There are no instances and no loading screens. There are also no realms (like in WOW), every player on earth is living in the same virtual world.
Everything in this world is explained with world mechanics. For example all the communications between characters and all the transportations are explained within the world. Also the death and respawning is explained with world mechanics.
The world has a large background. The history and lore are huge and of course believable.
The world is not static but it is changing all the time. All the NPCs have a complex AI. They live their lives: going to work, having children, dying of old age and much more. The game masters are steering the world by making strategical decisions. For example kingdom A attacks kingdom B. And the NPCs will react to this event based on their AIs. The whole natural ecosystem is dynamic. The plants and animals are interacting with each other the whole time and changing their populations. The NPCs are also influencing the plants and animals (hunting, cutting trees). This world could be also described as a large scientific and social experiment.
The players are interacting with the world and of course with other players. They can kill a lot of animals of one species and destabilize the natural balance. If kingdom A attacks kingdom B they can help one of the kingdom and influence the outcome of the war. A group of players can overthrow a NPC king and they can rule the kingdom by themselves. Of course players can destroy and build cities, roads, ships and much more. They can establish great empires. Players can also date with NPCs, marry them, have children and quit them. Of course they can also do that with other players.
Communication with NPCs. You can talk with NPCs in the same way as you would with other players. Their AIs are capable of having nice and interesting conversations with you. The AIs are so good and the immersion of other players is so good that after 10 min of talking with a new character you can not know whether this character is a NPC or another player.
Skills. Each player has skills which he can develop only with using them or training and it is impossible to develop all of the skills in a reasonable time like for example in 100 years.
Quests. Quests are real world quests. For example you meet a new NPC, after a long talk you find out that he has a problem. You solve his problem. The problem is gone. Another player can not solve this problem anymore, because the problem is solved. But don't worry, like in real life problems are popping up all the time. And you can also solve problems of other players.
And of course there are no levels, no XP, no points whatsoever, no professions, no classes, no name tags and other similar things from MMOs. PVP is defined with world mechanics like in real life.
If a company would made a good space galactic civilization SMMORPG by the above basics then I would be prepared to pay even 100 EUR monthly subscription. I'm not joking.
Comments
No comments? Very interesting.
All fine but...
why bother making NPC`s anything above wildlife? Why not let everything else in the hands of the players?
Why do you need NPC`s at all (except "mobs" )?
Dunno what you expect, there is nothing to comment or discuss.
There are already like 8 threads claiming that "sandbox" is the holy grail of the perfectest MMO ever. Phrases like "no grind" make no sense and I don't buy it. I have nothing against trying out a different approach but a lot of what sandbox supporters claim I just can't believe. I wonder if you're all scientologists? I kid I kid...
sure it looks good on paper but, you really need more people digging the the crap than flying spaceships to make it work.
Although with some intresting AI it might be able to be pulled off pretty well but that will have to be seen later.
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Achiever 20.00%, Explorer 86.67%, Killer 60.00%, Socializer 33.33%
EKSA
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Human beings struggle between reality and ideals, this is what define humanity. Limitation versus. Freedom, without one or the other, life would be extremely dull. Same can be said about all opposing forces such as life and death.
Sorry I clicked the wrong button while editing >_>; sorry to the person below me.
I don't remember it word for word, but basically the OP think too far ahead before the possiblity of such game can come into existence. OP did mention 50 years, but the problem still remains that game is best served as a single player game instead of a mmo setting. If one person's influence on the game change the world, then multiple people changing the same thing simply cause conflict.
Such a game is best made by highly intelligent artificial AI that constant create contents, but even then it will run out of idea. The OP dreamed big and wants an alternate life, but there are still many inconsistencies before this type of game can come into existence. One of the biggest one is how much it would cost to make something like this and if you live in the game how much would you need to pay? Virtual reality is rather far off, I am not sure 50 years is even enough to achieve this in commerical usage.
Linren summed it up pretty well. I mean, just an NPC that passes the turing test? Not gonna happen even IF the technology was that advanced. It's the question that often pops up when people are talking about making ideals come true in general: Who the hell is going to pay for all that?
Edit: Okay, while i was writing this post, Linren edited his/her summary away... Well, my point is still valid though.
i d love to play a world wide mmo,not a version of an mmo lol.
take asian game in there there are lot of people ,but they bring it here notbody play.
i would love to play the game they play on their server but in english can i do that today nope if i could i wouldnt even bother
i play there in a jify
Real life is the best sandbox there is. Some people should spend more time accomplishing REAL things rather than waiting and hoping to do them virtually in a videogame. If you really want to impact people, go DO IT. Thats the common thread that seems to hold every sandbox DREAM together. Having an impact on the world and their fellow players. Well, you don't need a videogame to do that and you won't have to wait 50 years either=) Unplug yourself and experience real life and its amazing how that need to virtually impact people just goes away. If you always wanted to be an assassin or talk with aliens, then thats a different thing all together=) Besides, plenty of single player games offer those types of experiences in MUCH better ways than any MMO ever could.
Seriously, whenever I speak to those in real life that are clamoring for a sandbox its always so obvious why. Their everyday life is ussually empty so they need to fill it with something else. Its not a knock, just something I've noticed over many years. Don't take it personally, please.
Have you ever playted Eve Online, Ryzom, Anarchy Online, Darkfall or even Ultima Online?
Im guessing not.
Playing: EvE, Warhammer free unlimited trial, Allods Online
Played: Anarchy Online, WoW, Warhammer, AoC, Ryzom. Aion
Strongly Recommend: Ryzom, EvE, Allods Online
Nah .. no thanks. I don't want a virtual life. I want entertaining games.
nha real life is boring ,always end up in a war the french did it th asian did it lol
at least when we play war in game nobody gets hurt
Because when you launch the game there has to be a populated world - a living and breathing world. I don't think players would like to start playing in a complete empty world.
But there is an interesting idea that after some while you could slowly pull all the NPCs out of the world and leave only the players. And also the game masters could slowly leave the world, so the whole virtual world be in the hands of the players.
That's the whole point of a SMMORPG. All games are based on conflicts. Can you imagine a game that would not be based on a conflict whatsoever.
In singleplayer and multiplayer games (also MMOs) the conflicts are made by developers and served to the players. In a sandbox MMO the conflicts are created dynamically by the players themselves because of social interaction between the players. These conflicts are much more complex, deeper and interesting than any conflicts that developers can create.
I'm not claiming that. This claim is absolutely stupid. It would be like claiming that MMOs are the holy grail of the perfect singleplayer game ever.
I'm only saying that we should have MMOs and we should have sandbox MMOs. And that we should clearly distinguish between them. They are completely different type of games and we can not compare them.
I think that the real danger is that the phrase sandbox MMO would be compromised. Last time I read that Aion has sandbox elements because it has side missions. The next time they will define WOW as a 100% sandbox MMO. Because of that it would be nice if we could define sandbox MMOs more clearly to prevent mixing them with MMOs. That's one of the reasons why I started this thread.
As much as a complete sandbox is a decent idea, it's not something that anyone will ever make. Back in the day, there were a lot of social text-based MU*s that were pretty much what you described. No levels, no XP, no loot, no PvP, no PvE, no nothing, everything that was done was done by and for the players. You were dropped in the middle of this virtual world and you figured out what to do. You could build any home you wanted, virtually anywhere you wanted (so long as the person who owned the point you wanted to link to allowed you to do it), you could wear any clothing you wanted, any armor, carry any weapon, do anything you wanted because none of it was real, it was all text descriptions and so long as it didn't violate decency provisions, you could do absolutely anything in the world you wanted.
Translating that to a graphical game is going to be much harder, of course, because you cannot do anything you want, you can only act within the confines of what the developers have already built, you can't make any building you want, you can only have a choice of the particular textures and furniture that already exists.
The problem with this kind of ultimate sandbox is that most MMO players would never play it. It has no direction, it has no pre-designed enemies, it has no gear to loot, no XP to gain and no gold to hoard. For the most part, it probably has no combat system whatsoever so fighting is going to be entirely through roleplaying and group decree.
It's the most freedom you could ever have and it's a game that virtually no MMO players would ever play.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
I don't expect MMO players to play sandbox MMOs. Why should they. They like MMO games and they should play MMO games. I expect players that don't like MMOs and like sandbox MMOs to play sandox MMOs.
There are probably around 15 million MMO players around the world. I think that there are much more people in the world with computers and Internet conection. A lot of these people could be potential players of sandbox MMOs and they aren't playing MMOs because they don't like them.
Maybe in the future we will have 50 million MMO players and 50 million sandbox MMO players. That would be nice .
Have you ever playted Eve Online, Ryzom, Anarchy Online, Darkfall or even Ultima Online?
Im guessing not.
An impressive list of games. What about the following games: Sociolotron, Second Life, Entropia Universe, Dawntide, Mortal Online.
Would the world of star trek as depicted in its various tv series be a virtual world? Remember, there is Q in the world.
hahah lol virtual life are also entertaining, as long as you dont push too much for that... ^^
Luminary: Rise of the GoonZu player
The firsy players start out as caveman and have to actually build the world
Interesting idea
maybe start out as god and create the world?
I agree with this. EVE is actually a borderline case due to some innovations in the game. I like it, but only because, you can still advance offline.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."