MMO Spotting

Ever ask yourself

“What kind of MMO is that?” “How is that MMO put together and how is it different from others?” “What kind of MMO am I (building)”?

I thought not.

MMOs come in all shapes and sizes. From a players perspective the experiences range from flash based games that allow players to talk to eachother, to fully immersive interactive 3d real time simulations.

From the inside, looking out there are some similarities all of these games have in common. It turns out online games share a set of technical challenges with systems like financial trading desk systems, and high scale web systems like ebay and amazon. Only different.

Because all online games have to solve some basic common challenges of providing an internet connected shared space, there have emerged some common patterns to developing the games, and solving the technical challenges.

In the work I have done on MMOs and online systems I, and the people I work with, have discovered 3 patterns. The slides that follow describe those patterns, and provide a high level compare/contras of the features and benifits of each pattern.

Step through these slides slowly,  give PPT a second to get the animation right or the slides will jump around and not make much sense.

Anatomy of the MMO 1.7.3 Patterns

Once you know what types of  MMOs there are you can then move on to the next posting that describes all the pice parts of MMOs