Not sure if that attempt at ASCII art works or not. While replying to the "Newbies and MMORPGs" thread in the Lounge, I thought of a brainstorm that''s a little different. Got any ideas for, say, a massive multiplayer online puzzle game that might work? If you want, wander off into massive multiplayer online games of any other genre that are possible with today''s technology. A Liero clone comes to mind as a good one.

What a great question... I will edit this reply and answer tomarrow though. Its 1:30 here and I have an engagement in the morning. Just wanted to let you know that I am interested.

MMO as a paradigm?

Check out Puzzle Bobble Online: <A HREF="http://www.pbo.jp">www.pbo.jp</A>

I played it while it was in it''s beta stage and it is well done. Might give you some inspiration.

hmm... My link didn''t exactly work for some reason. Anyway, the address is http://www.pbo.jp which you can see above.

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Massively multiplayer puzzle games already exists depending on how you define the genre. If you mean a puzzle that everyone in the game can potentially influence, well that would be interesting but difficult to design. But if you mean global competition and interaction then there are lots of puzzle games with global high scores and Shizmoo games titles are similar to that (although they are more multiplayer board games then multiplayer puzzle games.) The global puzzle idea could be interesting.

[edited by - impossible on June 17, 2003 2:04:20 PM]

I think a great MMOG game would be one where you have a real life sports event, say boxing, wrestling, golf, etc., and everyone online has a ranking. Take wrestling. There are different belts: World Champion, Tag Team, International Champion, and so on. New players can work their way up the ladder until they eventually gain the belt they are after.

Say they are the 10th competitor for the World Title. At the next event, they may challenge the 9th ranking wrestler or they may be challenged for their place. If they don''t defend their ranking after a certain amount of challenges, they forfeit it. If they are beat, they have to give up their rank and move back to 11th place. The person in first place has the belt and must defend it against the second ranking person.

Every now and then there are 4-player battle royals and the like where the top four ranking wrestlers compete for the belt. 40-man battle royals allow low ranking players to get up there quickly. Players learn new moves and build their skills from competeing.

Of course you could do this with any sport. A MMO baseball game would be very fun, with players coming together to create their own teams and compete for the top spot in their league. They start out as a local team and can get moved to national. Chess and Checkers are even possibilities. You have ladders and tournaments in real life, after all.

The only problem I can see with these games is the fact that you have to be online at a certain time to compete against another person/team, with the risk they might not even show up. Of course they would forfeit their place if they are absent too long.

Anyways, thats just my brain dump for today... back to work!