For LB OPO = String Theory, Multiverse, you hired Dr. Sheldon Cooper for coding?

How will you be able to interact with all the instances OPO's

???

What is the MAX size of each client? 100 people? 100? 1,000? 10,000? more?

 

This will not be an MMORPG, Massively = Minimum 1,000 per. (The actual definition of Massively can only be defined by the coiner of the term, R.G., but because he never mentioned the exact number it is open to interpretation, the record breaking UO stress test during the 1997 beta test held around 12,000 per. (But everyone was lagged to the point that they were virtually walking with lead shoes).

SOTA is not an MMORPG, we can drop the first M as we know it won't be even close to 1,000 per 'instance'. Even 100 passes for MMORPG per instance on sites like mmorpg.com, but SOTA will not have 100 per instance.

The official answer we have been given thus far is this; "dozens".

This quote was in a live video chat, one of the early ones I remember. When it comes to getting your hopes up I have grown accustomed to having low expectations, so when I hear "dozens", the worst possible scenario is this;

24 players can co-exist per major town.

We can hope that the "dozens" comment means more than 2 dozen, perhaps it means 3 dozen "36", perhaps it means 4 dozen "48", perhaps it means 5 dozen "60", but looking at the word "dozen" in a realistic way I seriously doubt "dozen" means any more than 4 dozen or 48 player per instanced major town.

This game will not be an MMORPG but you can drop the M and call it an MORPG with a single player feature.

 

WoW uses cross realm zoning. (Look it up if you need) How is OPO any different than what WoW has already accomplished? Short answer: there is a priority list and not just a simple first in first out.

 

As I suggested in another thread, SotA may be more effective than any MMO to date. Every MMO I have played (and the list is long and distinguished), I frequently find myself out in the wilderness where I see no one, for hours at a time. When I come to town, things are congested, inconvenient, and at times, very laggy, particularly around banks. This was true for Ultima Online, WoW, and about every other MMO I've played, although lag issues have improved with the advent of high speed internet.

This is an issue of load management. SotA, on the other hand, will actively bring players together in the wilderness, and limit the number you see elsewhere, making your interactions with other players more uniform. I think SotA will seem more populated than your typical MMO, because the population will be actively managed, unlike any MMO I am aware of.

 

From a player point of view SotA is similar to an MMO with reduced Max number of players. The players you see are chosen algorithmically.

As I understand it, given that we've not heard alot of details:
From a hardware perspective they are completely different. In an MMO all action takes place on a server with each player sending it's own stream of data. What you see, hear, accomplish is all performed and governed by the server. In SotA each group of players becomes it own ad-hoc network sharing data amongst themselves.. SotA's servers act more as a member of that ad-hoc network governing relevant changes to the world.

 

@Owain, that's what I have been saying. MMO's have been finding ways to take the massive out of multiplayer for years. They all have been using either hard caps (10 man instances) or arbitrary caps (only see the first 30 players)

SotA has proposed a system that will not be logical - Friends first arbitrary last. If you do not have enough on your list to fill the event to cap the unknown players will show up.

 

given that the local PC is playing a significant part I hope there is extensive control in place. Hacks and cheats can very quickly ruin a game economy.

 

I'm pretty sure game designers have thought about this but, besides filtering by friend's list, a really great second filter would be filtering by timezone, so for instance EU people can meet each other more frequently than with other continent's folks.