[vworld-tech] Ultimate MMO Platform (was OT:Dead?)

[Jim Purbrick]

OK then, given no one else wants to talk, this is the discussion I want to
have. What does the ultimate MMO platform do and how does it do it?

Firstly, what does the ultimate MMO platform do? From my perspective it
scales to near arbitrary numbers of users, supports any kind of game play
from twitch games to traditional MUD style games and any kind of client
technology from phones to consoles to uber PCs. In addition to dealing with
scalability and latency, the platform has to make it very easy to develop
vast swathes of content to fill enormous worlds with masses of interesting
content very quickly.

I'm primarily interested from a network/server
middleware/framework/architecture perspective, but would like to know about
the kinds of graphics, physics and AI technologies people would use too.
It's going to need to be general and so may be somewhat vague, but
identifying the general systems, alternatives for those systems and
hotpoints in the framework would be useful too.

As an initial stab, my current thoughts tend towards having replicated
objects built from smart properties which know how to synchronise themselves
across the network and smart methods which deal with distributed calls.
Client code deals with objects as if they owned the only copy. The framework
is open so that new smart property types and new smart method types can be
developed to implement different blocking/prediction/reconcilliation
behaviour, without changing client code. On top of this is a very general
purpose publish/subscribe model so that objects can specify the objects and
events they're interested in and be told when those things occur this system
is also used to decide which objects given clients replicate.

What I'm thinking about is the platform that supports MMOs beyond the
current EQ/graphical-mud-on-steriods games and heads towards a SnowCrash
metaverse.

So, ball rolling. PUSH!