Hmm... MMO GTA.
Everyone beating the crap out of eachother for the best cars.
Sounds fun ^_^.

^^^

You''re missing the point again. People that play GTA do not want to pay a monthly subscription, and therefore will just play GTA online with X-Box soon instead =]

thats exactly why i''ve never played mmorpgs unless they''re at a friends place on their account. I don''t feel like i should have to pay to play a product that i''ve allready paid to buy. Most people I imagine feel this way to. Also I''ve never met any MMORPG players that have not played UO. Mind you i haven''t taken a national census on MMORPG players, just in my personal experience, if i''ve met someone that enjoys playing MMORPG games then they allways mention they''ve played UO.
I find that any other game genre other than RPGS that try to break into MMO, end up failing in the end. The market population for games other than RPG''s are more tied into their reality and not in their RPG reality, so thus money is a big issue for them. They don''t like seeing some monthly expense on their bills just for some game that there''s probably a free less bloated normal multiplayer version out allready.

Imperil,
We''re just talking about it. Just because it''s not financially feasable doesn''t mean it''s not interesting

Anyway, you could avoid charging people a monthly fee by selling advert space on race tracks, like in real life.
I doubt if this could create as much profit as just charging people would;
But I also doubt that the average fee for a MMOG nowadays accurately reflects the actual cost of keeping the game online.

Instead of charging pay to play, do advertising as stated above AND allow people to convert real cash into in-game cash (but not vice versa). Each palyer starts with some amount of in-game money, and each time they race they have to pay an entry fee. If you get one of the top X spots, you get money back. When you reach $0 (or some low threshold), you get the option of starting over with the beginner equipment and money amounts.

Clans could share money and resources. So a team of people could more easily afford to build a racetrack than a single person.

You could update the game with new "technologies" too. For example, the ability to go underwater. (So new, underwater/amphibious tracks and vehicals could be made)

I think anything that keeps new tracks and racing styles coming will increase the playability.

I used to play Motor City Online before it was cancelled. It wasn''t really your standard MMOG, you could only have four people per race (and the net code sucked, so most people either only did drag or time trials). It was pretty fun though, they had these car auctions where most of the cars were bought and sold from, looked like ebay. They had auctions for parts too, but most of them were bought from the store (except the rare, valuable ones). They stopped it though because there weren''t enough players to keep it alive, and they weren''t attracting many new players.

I would like to see someone try again though, more like you guys were saying about making GTA MM, where there would always a city you could drive around looking for races. I think this is much easier said than done however.

An idea just came to me.

A MMOG where you have a somehow big city. The race host has a map of the city where he defines the route of the race. when players join the race they would be shown a map of the route. All of the races would be held in the same city, so some courses would intersect or have common parts, turning it into a chaotic traffic simulation. Maybe it would work.