This year at GDC Blizzard dropped some more hints that indeed a Starcraft MMO could be on the way. At the “Future of MMOs” talk, President of Blizzard, Rob Pardo, had this to say when asked “Can sci-fi be as successful as fantasy in the MMO space?”

Provided by WanderingGoblin.com

Kim stated that IPs that are easy to identify, like Star Trek or Star Wars, make this problem disappear. Players know what to expect in a Star Wars universe, and it could be successful. Looking sidelong at Rob Pardo, he indicated that a Starcraft MMO, for example, would be immediately understood by players and, “I’d probably play that instead of WoW.” (both the panelists and the audience laughed at this exchange.)

Rob Pardo had a tinge of palpable disdain for the question. He reminded everyone that in the 1970s, people thought sci-fi couldn’t be successful on TV or in the movies. “Then a little film called Star Wars came along and it revolutionized everything.” According to Pardo, a big, successful sci-fi MMO simply hasn’t been seen yet. You just have to have the right product, and it could easily be just as succesful as WoW.

I have to be frank in saying that three WanderingGoblin.com staffers attended this panel discussion, and Pardo’s comments had the three of us raising our eyebrows and looking sidelong at one another. It wasn’t simply the answer he gave, one that was very strongly in support of the idea of a big sci-fi MMO. It was the tone he took when answering it. While we can’t say that Pardo was intending to drop a hint about Blizzard’s unannounced, in-the-works MMO, it is obvious that Blizzard thinks that a sci-fi MMO like Starcraft could be a big success.

With World of Warcraft showing its age, Blizzard knows that if they want to continue being kings of the MMORPG world they will need to branch out. Doing a Diablo MMO might make more sense in the fact that Diablo is already a RPG, so turning it into a MMORPG would be a natural transition. However by doing a Starcraft MMO, Blizzard can really do something completely new. A Starcraft MMO would most certainly be very very different from WOW. Only time will tell, but as I said months ago, I’m putting my money on a Starcraft MMO.

Well crap, it looks like Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures will be delayed an additional eight weeks.  Funcom, the publisher of AoC, today announced that the game is being delayed to add more polish.  The new release date is May 20th.

Well that sucks ass, there’s no way I’m going to be able to wait that long for a new MMO.  Mythos is fun as hell, but I already completed all the storyline quests and doing the random generated quests is quite boring.  Hmm, I think I’m going to have to make my way over to the LORTO site to see what new stuff has come out, might get back into that until AoC comes out.

It appears that yet another government agency is getting into MMO development (see my previous article). NASA recently announced their intentions to create an MMO aimed at high school and college level education, which would include a focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. No specifics have been made as to who will be developing the game, but the requirements of a realistic physics engine will definitely make this an interesting addition to the MMO realm. Why would NASA be looking into MMO development in the first place? They give a very good answer in their FAQ:

“MMOs help players develop and exercise a skill set closely matching the thinking, planning, learning, and technical skills increasingly in demand by employers. These skills include strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, team-building and collaboration, and adaptation to rapid change.”

In the current anti-gaming political environment, it amazes me to see NASA come forward with this statement. It is about time the world at large sees that today’s youth is increasing its integration with technology everyday. Text messaging, MySpace, and YouTube are now becoming the preferred methods for communication and entertainment, foregoing traditional methods. With this in mind, NASA is looking to reshape online learning by making a virtual world for educators and business leaders to teach the skills needed in the real world:

“Virtual worlds with scientifically accurate simulations could permit learners to tinker with chemical reactions in living cells, practice operating and repairing expensive equipment, and experience microgravity – making it easier to grasp complex concepts and transfer this understanding quickly to practical problems.”

The big question, is how popular would this type of environment be? I see no issue with the students being able to pick up the mechanics, as they are already knee deep in gaming, but trying to educate the educators how to use a virtual environment I feel will take time. However, coming up with attractive and engaging educational games within this world will be the main challenge. Even if they manage to provide the training and come up with the games, it will also be hard to implement this game into a curriculum.

A large collaborative project such as this has some precedent, but the scale at which this is being done, may dwarf all previous educational gaming attempts to date. It will be interesting to follow the development of this game and see where it is taken. See you at the virtual particle accelerator!

I’m sure most of you will agree that todays MMORPG are not exactly what you first imagined when you first heard of MMO games. What do you mean I have to pick a server? We all don’t play in the same virtual world? I know I sure didn’t. I had the fantasy that hundreds of thousands, millions even, of players were all playing in 1 virtual world and not split up between dozens of separate servers. What a let down when I finally learned the awful truth.

So whats stopping todays MMO from creating 1 massive virtual world where everyone plays together? I mean Second Life is doing it.

Even though your going from instance to instance your still in the main world and still connected to everyone else. If you want to meet with someone, regarding where you are, you can still meet up. The same cannot be said for basically every other MMO out there. (Please correct me if I’m wrong)

So whats the problem? To start there are some technical as well as game play issues that would have to be over come.

Bandwidth
Any MMO gamer will tell you as soon as you enter a large populated city everything goes to hell. Its happened to every single MMORPG I’ve ever played. So what can be done? Well I’m not a network engineer or anything, but it can be simply that the amount of bandwidth that is needed is not possible to obtain on cable or DSL. Perhaps more servers spread out over a larger network. As I said I’m not sure what the solution would be, I just know its not possible with todays technology.

Processing Power
With any MMO, the most taxing part on the CPU is the combat. The servers need to calculate thousands of factors within a spit second, so if you have just 1 gaming world and it just happens that you have an extreme amount of players in one area, going by Seconds Life server configuration, it would crash that server. Each area (instance) in Second Life is tied to one server, so if you have too many players in the instance there is no way that server could do the calculations needed for combat. You would have to setup some of limit so you can’t have more than X amount of people in the instance at one time. But doing that wouldn’t make a true virtual world. Imagine trying to go to NYC and being stopped by a cop and told “Sorry we have reach our limit for this area, you will need to wait until someone leaves”

Quests
If you managed to get beyond the technical issues with having 1 virtual world, the next problem would be how to do quests. You certainly can’t have 10,000 people doing the same quest at the same time. And if you decide to create separate instances for quests, well than again your not in a true virtual world. MMOs would have to create a totally new style of game play that do not rely on quests cause they just won’t work.

Battles
How would battles be fought? If you can have a raid of thousand, ten thousand or even a hundred thousand users, how can you possibly setup battles. Again, the whole idea of combat would have to be reinvented.

Even with all these issues to overcome I’m sure sooner or later someone will do it and it, I just don’t think it will be done anytime soon.

Edit: I have just been informed that Eve Online is setup as one main virtual world or galaxy if you will. At its peak hitting 32,955 users logged in on Dec 3rd, 2006 Src: http://www.eve-online.com/news/newsOfEve.asp?newsID=385