An Idea as far as the setting(s)

[Turg]

I believe it will pretty much be impossible to herd everyone with their own ideas as far as game development into one pack and everyone pulling in the same direction. Even something as broad and general as the "setting" will get 100's of passionate responses as varied as can be. Pretty much I agree with what Faille says in the sticky post. Basically the only new thing is that I have a specific setting that I'd personally like to work on. Basically if everyone with an idea could categorize them somewhat we could start grouping together:



+PVP, limited PVP, or non PVP

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+sandbox or not a sandbox

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+sci-fi with planet bound avatars with limited space travel / combat (think AO)
+sci-fi with mech / pilot avatars with the majority of the game taking place in space (think EVE) with perhaps additional planet based content
+steam punk (haven't seen one yet)
+high fantasy (every mmo basically)
+fantasy / primitive / medieval with limited magic and power (think Age of Conan)

+invent a totally new category? like a MMO with a full story arc that everyone plays through under the direction of GM's and is episodic? come up with your own



I think the first step is to build or find a toolset that is powerful and flexible for world creation. I am not familiar with any existing tools personally but maybe this is already done for the most part?

I think congruent with that should be... let's get a 3D "chatroom" world up and running... a gray plain with a blue sky and sphere avatars running around with a login system and a chat interface.



Eventually I kind of envision a situation where like minded people can group together and using the toolsets create offshoots from the "login" world and, via a portal / grouping interface, the players can join one or another world. The portals could be customized to represent accurately the game that lurks within them obviously.

Also, world creation should be limited to the ones that have the support of at least a certain number of people so we don't have 1000 worlds being made by one person each. Maybe say you can't create a portal world until you have at least 20 people signed up to work on it.

Perhaps the levelling system could be universal so that if a player wants to try out another module they could play it at the same level as the one they played in before? Not sure about that one.

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setting I'd personally like to see:

a sci-fi game with fantasy elements with a universe along the lines of the Edgar Rice Burroughs "Mars" books. I've always kind of had a weakness for these books and the world since I read them as a kid. I wouldn't want to copy it word for word but the combination of sword combat / limited rifle combat and a sci fi setting with alien races and outside influences and impending planet-wide disaster is very compelling to me. It would be very character driven, definitely PVP (not sure full or limited), somewhat of a sandbox with a skill based or job based levelling system.

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Originally Posted by ...

you could universaly use a 'fallen scifi' setting as the setting. An ancient civilizations built the gates (and fell apart in ancient times, or show up in the story later). some worlds connecting to it 'went feral' and fell back to fantasy-esque midevil style sword slinging.

add extra-planar demony monsters that let magic seep in the world (for wizards, warlocks etc) and that will let you have gates that go to fantasy realms, scifi realms, Victorian steampunk etc. Maybe each world has to obey a paradigm set for that dimension, locking out the high scifi from the high fantasy.

I say make it 'fallen scifi' the most because scifi can contain fantasy elements, but fantasy tends to loose it's Fantasy Feel when you have elements of scifi in it anywhere.

(posted this in the sticky, elaborating on it here)

this would let each world include only the elements it wishes. each type of gear or skill could be flagged as 'high fantasy', 'magic', 'dark fantasy', 'high tech', 'steam tech, etc. each would could have an allowed list of stuff.

it WOULD mean that if you wanted to go deeper into a fantasy world on your scifi character, you'd have great chunks of your character not functioning...but inevitably some folks will want to keep their Tolkien style fantasy clean of laser rifles. some worlds could have both. if the system isn't a 'locked in your class' system (more eve style, or even ffXi style i guess), you're free to pursue skills from all genre independantly.

[Vatoreus]

Personally, I like the idea of the portal system, it would allow for a multitude of player styles to come into the game. The only problem that I foresee with this is player population. It would require that you have a much smaller amount of servers than normal, if not just one server for the entire game, much like EVE.

Having something of this nature would spread your population, but hopefully it wouldn't spread it too thinly to the point of the whole world feeling empty. Your central world could come across something like the city Sigil from the Planescape module for D&D.

[Braen]

A Planescape type game would be awesome... Every portal going to a world with different rules, setting, envrionments...