Yeah, I didn't exactly design a whole MMORPG idea or anything... I was just wondering about that feature and how it would work though.
I don't know, maybe the game wouldn't rely on fighting outside of arenas. Maybe the game is more of a real life simulation, and arena fighting is the only fighting available.
Perhaps it could be an mmorpg set in gladiator times, and the only fighting is in the gladiator arena. Outside the arena is more of a life simulation. Owning a home, business, crafting, whatever.
There's possibilities.

I don't know if this is the kind of thing you are discussion, but would it be possible to have separate "arenas" for the player versus monster combat as well? It sounds a bit like the console RPG style battles where you can sucked from an overworld into a special "combat zone" for the duration of the fight.

While it would only work for a cartoonish MMORPG, you could represent the fights in the overworld with those cartoony "fight clouds" (I'm sure you've all seen one: big cloud of dust with the occasional limb flying through that cartoons use when they can't be bothered animating the fight [smile]). People could join the fight by running into the cloud.

The scale you're thinking on is all wrong.

First of all, you're talking about a massive. Massives have tens of thousands of concurrent players (across various servers/realms/etc) - The numbers vary of course, and for a hobby project, it wouldn't be likely to be more than a few dozen.

But let's assume you have the standard 1-2k players on a server, but you want to shunt them off to another 'server' when they enter a PVP zone/arena... That's no different than instancing, which has been around for years.

You have two major considerations when you're talking about lag. The 'real' definition of lag is due to network activity, and the pop culture definition of lag is due to processing, whether it's the server not keeping up with the logged in players (like WoW for weeks after it's initial launch), or the client not being able to process everything coming in.

Your idea doesn't touch the network lag issue (on the server side) because even if you shunt players off to another physical server, it's likely going to be on the same network, so it's going to be going through the same process. From the network lag issue (on the client side), it COULD help because you're assuming that loading a smaller map with less players is going to generate less messages. This is only correct btw, if the server code is poorly designed (like sending you updates that aren't in range, or are wasted for other reasons).

I'm only barely touching on this subject, and there are a ton more factors (massives are massive) that make this even more of a headache, but the end result is... Consider the scale ; )

Oh and lastly... Permadeath is a bad design consideration in a massive... In part because most massives are subscription based, and when you take something away from your clients that they earned, they get pissed off... You don't want to piss off your clients... Like the global friends list that broke in City of Heroes/Villains recently... I've quit due to boredom a few times already, but now I'm never going back because they pissed me off heh ; )

-Alamar