another re-read, heh? *grins*
That would be a reason to finally buy Otherland 2-4.

Hi all! I'm a new user. I personally don't play any MMO games for many of the reasons already described, but if Otherland became a game most of my aversions would be eliminated. Everyone I know plays WOW, so I'm quite familar with the game. Since my husband works at NcSoft, I also get immersed into the 'behind the scenes' aspect of MMO games, as well. Otherland would be the perfect competetor to WOW. I doubt any game could kill WOW.

I think the idea of starting in 'RL' to create your character, use as a meeting area, etc. is an amazing idea. I also agree that dying sucks. Perhaps if you die in one of the Otherland worlds, you get bumped back to RL.

Tad, I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say we are at your desposal for brainstorming ideas.

He definitely enjoys it. Now if only I could get him to read the Otherland novels, I know he'd be just as excited about this possiblity of a MMO as we all are. Although I've talked enough about the books, he probably knows just as much about Otherland as I do. But, reading the series is so much better. Speaking of reading them, I know everyone was discussing a reread. I would recommend it. I'm in the middle of book 2 and loving it all over again! It's amazing how many things I missed when reading it the first time. I could also be that now that I know what happens at the end, I'm fully aware of the things that are being described, whereas the characters do not.

I just reread what I wrote and well...obviously.

I had another thought on the Otherland game. Have any of you heard of Spore? It's a game where a person creates and develops their own organism and develops it over time into a larger original species. From there you continue evolving developing towns, cities, and then the world. From there you can go explore other worlds, and other galaxies. The beautiful thing about this is every person that is playing is doing the same thing in their own unique way and it is all being uploaded onto the Spore servers. So you want to explore another world, you'll run to a whole other species. You'll have to attack to get it. The great thing is, since the data is being uploaded on to a server, if you annihilate another person's planet, it doesn't delete their data. This isn't the best description of the game, but there is a ton of info online. Check it out. Anyway, what if, Otherland was taken to the next level.  Rather than develop species, you develop the planet? In your tools you could be given land types and climate types, etc. You could choose between various animal species and time period humans. The world development would be quite simple really. Then it could be uploaded the same way Spore will be. The main difference would need to be to allow multiplayer modes in addition to single player mode. If the RL world was developed, then every player wanting to play to meet there. Then they could decide which 'world' in Otherland to play in. In another words, every player who had an account with Otherland would develop their own world. They could play in their own world, or in another player's world, by themselves or multiplayer. Since most of the content is user-created, it will always be changing and less work for the developers to do so. Since every user would have a world, the number of and possiblities of worlds are endless. WOW has over 9 mil users. Translate that to worlds! If it's all uploaded onto servers, like in Spore, than you could have any number of people come and destroy a world, and it wouldn't change what the actual creater had done. Since every user would have the same tools for world development, the game developers could create 'quests' or scenerios' for gamers to do. It wouldn't matter if only 3/4 of the worlds met the quest criteria, but there would be enough other that would. The biggest issues I see with this type of setup is there could possibly to too many worlds (maybe...), quest development could be a lot harder to do than I've described, and I'm not sure about the server space. If it would take more or less server space to do this than a WOW setup. Spore would be a good teaching experience.

Well, I've written enough. Sorry about that. My husband, Jeff, and I do this all the time. Discuss various ways a game could work if made. What are all your thoughts?

I read the Otherland series several years ago, and have actually only recently begun re-reading it.  Extremely enjoyable books!!!  As I was re-reading it, specifically where Orlando and Fredrichs are breaking into the tower of Senbar-Fey, I was thinking how awesome an online game like this could be.  Where the difficulty would lie though is in the truly interactive environments possible with VR, whereas seeing it on a monitor just wouldn't have the same impact.  Either way, monitor or straight VR, I'd be most interesting in seeing how this pans out...

I'm more into turn based startegy than mmo's.  However, I thnk Otherland would be the perfect scenario for an mmo game.  I might even check it out.

Last word we had was that Tad was talking to some folks about game development. Serious talking, like beyond just talking, but we were not given/allowed more details. It's very hush hush. Top secret & all that.

Probably TGB is putting pressure on to keep things quiet.....

I remember Tad also telling me at a signing that he's went through this process before for a different game, but at the last second it fell through the holes. He's probably just being more cautious this time around, not wanting to get anybody's hopes up.

strangeshe wrote:

The news you've been wishing for!!

No dupping.

Faithfully crossposted to Atomicmpc.com.au :P

-X

This is the -only- MMORPG I'm willing to spend any time or money on. And it's the only one I've seen in my dreams....

I CAN'T WAIT to play in the House world! And the Kitchen world! OMG! And ancient Egypt.

Wolfshade wrote:

And remember these things take a lot of time to develop.  Years of artistic work alone.

Yup, 2 or 3 years already - really.

deborah wrote:

ArcticSwan360 wrote:

He's probably just being more cautious this time around, not wanting to get anybody's hopes up.

At this stage it's just a boring - but necessary - press embargo...  Plus, it's real cutting-edge, rule-breaking stuff, so there's only so much we can say about its development...

It's going to be thrilling, folks.  It's a real big deal.

Squee! And seriously, I'm happy for you guys and all the hard work you do on these projects.

YAY! just read the first "official news" with screens on onlinewelten *excited*
Just cant wait for more information *jumps up and down*
Guess there will be a Beta Test? You know.. we smarchers are such a nice bunch of people you really want to give us beta keys *puppy eyes*
There are 3 new games I´m waiting for now: Otherland, Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3

Kairi wrote:

. Everyone I know plays WOW, so I'm quite familar with the game. Since my husband works at NcSoft, I also get immersed into the 'behind the scenes' aspect of MMO games, as well.

NcSoft puplished my favourite game right now: Guild wars..so not everyone plays wow

Last edited by Lunar (2008-10-01 04:33:15)