KeeperS Karu

The reason why a lot of people insist on selling their items, in-world, is because when they sell their items on the Marketplace, LL takes a cut of their profits. While the cost of tier means that placing items in a shop isn't necessarily free, you still get every penny from the item customers purchase.The other issue with selling through the web site is that the transaction histories only go so far back, while you can keep your entire transaction history from, say, Hippo, all the way back to your first sale. It's why I use vendors from Hippo at the shop I own, because I don't like the idea of having my transaction histories cut short. It really irks me. So, there are reasons why things are as they are. Hm... You know, if you are having trouble getting DJ's who play in the good venues to play something different, have you ever considered speaking to them, directly? What's the worst they can do if you make a friendly suggestion as to the kind of songs you'd like to hear, as well as where to go to obtain those songs? Some may even really appreciate it, because they may have hit a dry period in which they just feel a bit stagnnt. Another fun idea to consider: What about trying your hand as a DJ, yourself? Anyhow, I AM sorry that you feel your fun in SL has been ruined. I do hope you ultimately find something, here or in RL, that you really do enjoy and can stick with. Take care!

I apologize for not having been able to get back to this thread since my last posting. I think I may have been misunderstood. My original intent was to discuss how one would go about creating an MMORPG within the limitations and boundaries of Second Life. While I've mentioned models like WoW and DDO, I am well-aware of the fact that, whatever is eventually created in Second Life, it will very likely not look quite like these games. For example, there could not be private dungeon instances, simply because Second Life does not allow for it. And while I do appreciate discussing many of the limitations of Second Life, I would love to hear how one would go about overcoming the challenges those limitations bring, in order to bring us fun and exciting gameplay. Of course, this brings us to the earlier comment that Second Life "is a platform, not a game." While Second Life is, indeed, a platform, one must ask: "What is it a platform for?" Linden Labs, after giving us this wonderful platform called Second Life, with so many things we, as individuals, can do to make our own piece of it what we will, left us to answer that question. I truly believe that if someone's answer is, "This platform is meant for me to bring to life my ideas for an MMORPG," then I think it's possible. Certainly, due to some very obvious limitations, it will likely be nothing like WoW or DDO, in terms of how many situations are handled, and perhaps even in the quality of graphics, at least when it comes to the portrayal of NPC's (again, perhaps one of the sacrifices that would have to be made, as SL currently exists, would be to make NPC's no more than single, flattened prims with textures), but that doesn't mean that the actual gameplay, itself, such as the actual writing of the quests and storyarcs and how certain situations, such as combat, are handled, couldn't at least match the quality of WoW. And speaking of WoW, it isn't the only model that exists for fun and exciting MMORPG's that people enjoy playing. As I've mentioned, earlier, there exists MMORPG's such as Runescape, Maplestory, and Trickster, all of which don't have the stellar graphics of WoW, but they do have other features that people truly enjoy. These games worked have solved the many problems and issues we're discussing, and they did them in different ways, which we can use for inspiration in making an MMORPG within SL. And why limit ourselves to MMORPG's when in search of inspiration as to how to tackle the challenge of creating an MMORPG within SL? The classic game, Wasteland, comes to mind, when thinking of computer-based RPG's, in general, followed by Fallout and Fallout 2, which were very obviously inspired by Wasteland. Rather than relying upon intense graphics, they, instead, decided to focus on the story and gameplay, working within the limitations of game creation of the day, solving unique issues that needed to be dealt with. I suppose that what I'm trying to say, in the end, is rather than focusing on what we don't have, we should focus upon what we DO have to work with. I had intended to bring up DarkLife, actually, as an example of what can be done with NPC's, as they seem to have very few problems with the lag issues that people have brought up. From reading the article that was linked, it seems that real life, sadly, has caught up with these developers. While this is, indeed, quite heartbreaking to see, as I've been keeping an eye on DarkLife in the hopes that it would finally blossom into a full-fledged MMORPG, complete with quests and storyarcs for people to participate in, in a way, I actually find it GOOD news that the reason why it had to close its doors was NOT because of issues with Second Life. Rather, they needed to deal with the demands of real life. That, I can understand, as I, myself, have needed to take periodic breaks from SL in order to tend with real life issues. But, this being said, the fact that they had a great NPC system shows that it CAN be done. As I mentioned, the lag on the island seemed pretty mild, from my point of view. And just to give you an idea of why I saw the lag on DarkLife mild, here are a few tales of my experience in DDO: just last week, in DDO, I was in a high level raid. Just as we got to the end boss, our arcane mage suddenly lagged out to the point he lost his connection, but we didn't realize this, at first. Then, when we realized our Warforged tank wasn't being reconstructed, anymore, we understood. Suddenly, the tank went down, and without his intimidation to keep Horoth at bay, our healers quickly followed, then the rest of the group. True to form, as the monk in the party, I was the last one standing. Our arcane managed to log back in, but it was too late. It was a wipe. Earlier that same week, I was doing another raid at epic level. While fighting Velah, the red dragon, teammates called out the warning that she was about to let loose with her fire breath. I turned to get out of the way, everything already moving at a crawl, due to lag, when everything suddenly FROZE. I could still hear people on the mic, and they could hear me, but I couldn't do anything for about two minutes. When everything began moving again, at regular speed, I was looking at my soul stone. I was HOT, to say the least, but the raid DID end successfully, despite this hiccup. The point of these examples is to show that even dedicated MMORPG's have to tackle issues with lag, but if they and their players can work around these issues, I don't see why we can't. Again, tailoring the situation to reduce this lag as much as possible is something we should keep in mind, but the fear of lag also shouldn't keep us from getting anything done, at all. I'd rather see something finally come out, with a few bugs, rather than to never have it see the light of day, in my particular opinion.

Penny Patton wrote: It's not rendering the monsters that's the problem, it's everything else. There's no way to convincingly animate in-world creatures, all animations are cheap hacks that look poor compared to any game made in the last 10 years. Scripting in SL is slow and glitchy, meaning you'd run into lots of issues getting everything to run smoothly, especially the moment the first person with 20MB of scripted attachments wanders in complaining about the lag then getting mad at anymone who points out its their scripted attachments dragging down the sim. As far as populating a sim with NPC creatures and characters goes, bots are the only answer and they're no answer at all. A bot places as much a burden on a sim as a human controlled avatar, is at the mercy of the same unreliable scripting system and to top it all off bots require you to host them on a separate server you need to keep running all the time. Untill LL gives us NPC objects, SL will remain little more than a chatroom with graphics. Well, the animation for a flattened prim with texture would likely not be as complicated as running an animation for an actual mob figure. For the cardboard cutout mob, you'd only have to worry about scripting in its random movements, then how it would move when it encounters a player and is engaged in combat. Although, going back and reading those words, I just realized that sounds complicated enough, as it is. I take it the script for an AI system for the mobs would be complicated enough that it would slow a sim down? From your comment about NPC objects, I have to ask: Is this something that some residents have been asking for? NPC objects would certainly be nice!

Niko Kozower wrote: Agreeing with the post above me, I think money would be the biggest problem.. In order to have a MMORPG feel you would need alot of differant enviorments.. this means multiple sims which indeed costs alot of money. Its an idea.. is it possible yes, will it happen anytime soon? No. Yes, I've been thinking of this, as well. However, I do have a model to fall back on, when dealing with limited space, and that model, once again, hails from Runescape. In Runescape, the land has pretty much been plotted out and set. Many of the quests involve the adventureres moving from one part of the map to another, in order to complete the quests. Mostly, new quests tend to involve the addition of new NPC's. Of course, there will still likely be the need for new areas for quest-specfic dungeons. I'm thinking, perhaps one sim to set up the total environment, making use not only of the land below, but the land, above, to create the illusion of a world much bigger than it really is. Another sim would be set aside for individual dungeon areas that players teleport into. Again, this sim would make use of all available space, both on and above it, to make it work. I'm not quite sure how meshes will affect prim count, but that's another resource to look into, when trying to make a sim look like a very full and complete world, without going over the prim count limits. Of course, two sims to begin with is still fairly expensive, but running two or more sims to create the right environment is both not unprecedented and not unusual, in Second Life. Of course, I know I'd have to wait until I can be in a better position to fund one sim, let alone two, at the moment.

Pussycat Catnap wrote: Scripted animals are amazingly laggy creatures, and there's no ability to 'instance' anything in SL. Hiring a bunch of people to play the monsters has all sorts of management issues... and you just wouldn't be able to get enough of them. Especially enough that could deliver quality. This is why the combat-roleplay model in SL is more like a 'first person shooter contest' - teams or freeforalls enter the combat zone and go at it and then argue in chat over the person who's gaming the system... Roflol! I had no idea that the argument was part of the entertainment! lol! Hm... one compromise on the monsters would be to simply make them into the equivalent of cardboard cutouts. That way, rendering them would be easier on the system, freeing up resources for the scripting. Certainly, this means that the MMO won't have the same level of graphical detail of today's more popular ones, but I've noticed that if the actual gameplay is incredibly well-constructed, people tend to be forgiving towards the lack of state-of-the-art graphics. It's why certain games remain classic. But, yes, I have wondered exactly what would go into making scripted mobs for the players to kill, and exactly how much lag they would cause. Perhaps script writing that involves more puzzles to solve and tricky environments to navigate, with bosses lightly sprinkled within a dungeon, might also be a possible compromise, as well. But such MMO's would have to have very excellent storytelling to drive the game, to make up for the fact that there is much less in the way of action.

Heyla and well met! I've been wondering why there doesn't seem to be true MMORPG environments, similar to Dungeons and Dragons Online, or World of Warcraft, complete with quests and challenging raids with well-written story-arcs and plotlines, within Second Life, as it seems to lend itself fairly well to such an environment. What would be the challenges, limitations, advantages, and disadvantages of creating a true MMORPG within Second Life? What would be the kind of features you'd love to see in a Second Life MMORPG? For me, when thinking about an MMORPG within Second Life, I realized the one thing that would be very difficult, if not impossible, to replicate: private instances of quest dungeons for questing parties. An alternative would likely need to be a system akin to the one Runescape employs, in which parties will simply have to wait their turn to defeat a boss. Of course, I never really liked Runescape's system that gives loot drops to the person who delivers the killing blow. Perhaps, instead, in setting up a dungeon with bosses, chest loot can go to the party that contributes 30% or more damage to the boss. The chest and boss will then refresh for the next party or paries to come and kill it? Anyhow, if anyone else has any thoughts or ideas to share concerning creating an MMORPG with SL, I'd very much love to hear them! Keeper S. Karu ------------------ EDIT: June 22, 2011 ------------------ While I clarified the intent of this thread in a later post, I thought it would be nice to place my intentions, here, in the first post, as well. What I'm hoping is for interested people to come and discuss ways in which, within the limitations of SL, some obvious, some less so, one can go about and create an MMORPG within SL. Why? First, I love and enjoy MMORPG's, and I love and enjoy SL, so I figure that combining the two would be the ultimate bliss. Second, I love and enjoy Second Life, and I'd love for more people who have the ability to run Second Life to come and give it a chance. Unfortunately, from my own experience, I've found that most people just don't seem to understand what Second Life is about, but they do seem to understand and enjoy MMO's. So, I thought, maybe if we had MMO's within SL, we can use that as a bridge to understanding SL. Because, let's face it, an MMO within SL is going to be unlike anything they'll have experienced in any other MMO. For one thing, they'll discover that, unlike other MMO's, their toons can truly look absolutely unique, something many players strive for, in a world where they know they'll look like every other toon on the block. For another, if they want to play another MMO, it's as easy as teleporting to a different location within SL. Of course, there will be other aspects of playing an MMO within SL that will make their experience vastly different from playing MMO's outside of it, but I figure you get the idea. Eventually, as players get to really know and understand SL, they'll realize what a fun and exciting place it truly is, the blank canvas waiting for them to express their creativity.

After reading it through, I think I have to agree. It's all very simple advice, but nicely sound.

Heyla and well met! I've read that Linden Lab is using a User Group system, now, to replace their old Office Hours system. I'm wondering why this was necessary, as I'm more than a little unsure as to how they're supposed to differ? In addition, if you don't see a User Group that quite fits what you're looking for, is there a way to suggest a new User Group category? Thanks! Keeper S. Karu (KeeperS Karu)

Dr.Dahlgren wrote: Ah yeah, right... Well, my alt had protected sex but still got an SLSTD and his parts fell off. I think he would have rather been pregnant, count your blessings.... OMG! I think I spent the last 15 minutes laughing because of this! Ow! My stomach hurts! I'm still chuckling!

It is all top SLekret. And they ain't talkin yet. Aw! Oh, well. I guess I'm just glad I know it's going to happen! Thanks for the info!

Cinnamon.Lohner wrote: You are correct. You cannot upload prim meshes today. Linden pre-announced Mesh importation at SLCC 2009 --Cinn During T Linden's road map presentation at SLCC 2009, a sneak peek was shown for Mesh importation into Second Life, along with dynamic lighting and shadows: Oh, wow! So they're finally going to allow us to import previously created models? That would be wonderful! Is there any estimate as to when we get to see this become an actual feature?