Crisis on Infinite Servers

I said I wasn’t going to spend all my time on the web log, darn it.

There are rogue versions of multiplayer games out there.

There’s a “really massive” MMOG in development that plans to host everyone in a single world, but most popular ones are multi-instanced… you’re not “on EverQuest,” you’re on one of the Sony servers that is hosting EverQuest. People associate not necessarily with “the game” but with one particular server on the game. If, by hook or crook, you can get your hands on the software and host it, then people can associate with your server, too.

As I noted earlier, narrative synchronicity has been enforced across servers in MMOGs for the sake of keeping consistency across the game as a branded and, I’m guessing, organizational entity… in other words, to obviate the questions: “Is it still Asheron’s Call if in-game events are different on that server?” and “How could we possibly maintain multiple divergent storylines across servers when it’s expensive to maintain just one?” You can answer issue number two with user-generated content, I’m guessing, but, again, there’s still the brand equity question. Of course, if you don’t work for the company, then you can let the world be whatever it wants to be.

Obviously, I have a lot of affection for comics universes and the multiple divergent iterations of core narratives they allow (“multiple earths”) and I consider that divergence a narrative pleasure in itself: seeing how environments with identical initial states grow different, given subsequent events. Rogue servers can create this divergence. Of course, ideally, a game could present instance divergence under its own auspices, giving the player a “legal alternative” for this sort of fix.