Quote:
Originally Posted by Jorael
Say for some reason the world discovers EU and by next week the game has 5 million active players, trying to get in and play. Suppose MA gets enough servers to hold all that traffic...
How would this game be like? What would happen? Would it be much different then what we know now, in your opinion? |
That really depends on how many of those imaginary 5 million deposit funds into the game, now doesn't it?
If 4.25 million avowed non-depositors were magically dropped in tomorrow to compliment the "over 700 thousand" accounts now in existance,
MA would go broke in no time. There'd be no money for anything but supporting bandwidth, and maybe not enough for that... no development, no loot, no nothin'
If the same number of regularly depositing players showed up, Marco would be fat and happy on the beach someplace. Who knows, maybe MAs server farm would have a dedicated OC-48 connection and the inter-server LAN would be OC-12 or something speedy like that. Lag? A thing of the past!
From a game culture standpoint, if that many people joined at once the fabric of the civilization we've built in-game so far would likely be destroyed. How many of you remember when AOL turned on their online services gateway to the internet without the first thought of indoctrinateing theit users to the cultures of usenet, IRC, etc? They unleashed the great unwashed masses onto "us".
If you're talking about a steady state of growth to that number of lusers, then it might be interesting indeed. I'd almost kill to see Hadesheim as a vibrant, active city.
I suspect that some self-imposed segregation might begin, as people tend to migrate to areas where they see more of their native tongue. I know English is the official language of Calypso, but I also regognize that my native tongue isn't the easiest to master, nor does everyone learn it.
I have no idea what the in-game economy might do. So many people are shortsided now and only pay attention to daily average prices that the market on anything could become volatile at the drop of a chirpy.
In any case, increasting the playerbase by anything over a factor of 2 would change the nature of the game in ways we could never imagine. Some might be good, some might be bad. I think we could count on Marco to say it would be dynamic.
AG
AG