I think you should just radically change the game-world. You just can''t have a world like our own in a gameworld (yet).

Consider stealing some stuff from the PlaneScape setting. When you build your house, you aren''t just building it in a city. Instead, you place a portal in that city, perhaps a beautifull door, and that portal would lead to your own "pocket dimension". There you would build your house. When you log-off, you could simply close the portal behind you, and nothing could happen to your house.

Though, when you login again, and open the portal, you might find out your portal lies a barren wasteland, because either a) the ''city'' was destroyed, or b) some nice people decided to move you portal around a bit ^_^

-Maarten Leeuwrik
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[Illiad] J.R.R TOLKIEN ACHIEVES 40,000 RPM IN GRAVE

I think I would have to go more along the "don''t hurt the player for having a life" route. Don''t allow wars to burn houses. Don''t allow territory to change hands between factions unless the word was put out a few days, preferably weeks, ago. You don''t have to tell them what is happening, but give them hints that something big is coming...maybe even come out and say "Something big is coming."

I think something that didn''t allow for real life would make no money. I know the original post was for a dissertation, but the topic is games. Remember that quote: "If real life was so great, we wouldn''t play games." I take that to mean that a game can get TOO realistic.

The only penalty I could see is making the player pay the price for quitting in a hostile area where they can''t survive without help.

ShadeStorm, the Day_Glo Fish

I think some kind of "sacred" area is the simple solution. Like stepping into a portal and taking of to another dimension. That does not prevent that the player still can know what''s going on in the world, and be notified about it. Maybe the "sacred" dimension is a parallell one? So he can watch the "real" world even when he is in the other.

Otyherwise I like the idea of having a NPC standing in for you doing everyday work for you when you''re abscent. With some smart programmed AI it could try to save itself if disasters is happening. The player just gets notified about the events, and can then step into the game if he sees he has to. Otherwise the NPC can play the character after some simple rules.

#1 Save myself.
#2 Save my things.
#3 Get to safe place.

All in that order. Donno if it''s a good solution, but still an option.

(drbizzaro sounds familiar...almost like a friend of mine...but wait...it''s HIM!

- Captain_RB

One way to soften the blow of returning to the game world would be to have an email "newspaper" detailing important game world occurences sent to the player while offline, which they can read at their leisure to prepare themselves for world changes before reentering.

This also means they will be warned if something bad has happened, ie a war has broken out, and they then have the option of going online immediately for a short time to take precautions, such as moving their posessions to a safer area, boarding up their house, etc.

Another, more radical alternative(which I just thought of and really like), would be not to have solid buildings as player dwellings, rather large vehicles like ships, houseboats, hot air balloons, etc, which can simply fly away to a place where they cannot be reached or damaged when the player goes offline. Actual permanent ground installations could simply be mooring masts or docks, which could be destroyed, but will probably be defended if some community members are still docked there, and to which a player could return his own home when he reenters the world.

I think the email notification/news paper idea is great!
Even then, I think a nice web interface of the world would be cool, at least for updates. I think that new EQ:lengends thing is going to do something like that.

Getting world information for a web page would only tax the server as much as logging in, concerning querying resources and such.

I also think having a NPC take your place while you are gone is also an incredible idea. That way the world would actually feal as full as it is. It is kind of weird logging into Online games today to see them full one second, and empty the next. Even if the AI unit just sits there, or sleeps in a bed, it will help.

And YEP, having that many 3D people always on will slow down the computer. It just means that the designers are going to have to actually start worrying about resource handling BEFORE they ship the game.

AO had a pretty world with nothing in it, they added and optimised later. Even DAoC people said at that post mortem that they too concentrated on making it look good first, and later worried about adding things. Adding things later means resource issues are not fully realized until it is too late. Oops, sorry, did not mean to get off topic.

Summary:
NPC placeholders are a good idea, along side an email, or web interface for world updates.

A further refinement is that in RL we go away on holiday. In a sense being on holiday is the "safe portal." Thus players perhaps have a holiday option which means they are away in a safe place for a specified period of time and no contact with the game is required. Players in the game or NPCs trying to contact them get a message saying the player is away for the specified time.

They then re-enter the game at an airport, coach station, road or inn and make their way home or to where they usually hang out and get the news.

After the specified time - or if the player has not specified a time - the e.mail and NPCiseing of the player kicks in.

i think that the player and there vehical\house should disapere from the world when they arn''t playing and reappere at the same spot later. There should be no ownership of buildings that is you can rent them or have them built but once you leave the game there just and abondond building, not your house any more. One warning for someone making a game this big expect it to take a long time. Also since its multiplay youd need a very powerful server to keep track of thousands of wars going on through out the galaxy.

I came up with a futuristic idea of not having places where people live, but a place where you can store your items, like a safe deposit box, but less safe deposit boxey, as when the player leaves the game they merely step into a portal(like stargate) and go back to their ''home planet''. This would give the plausable illusion that they have returned home through this teleporter, but have actually left the game. Their posessions they can take with them, but any others they can leave in the possesion of either A) a friendly NPC, who can own a house in this virtual world(make up some faux game rule about only people being born on this planet can have a dwelling if you have to, and these people only being NPCs), or B) this storage facility idea. Ah,.. another idea that springs to mind.. hiding objects, i mean, we all hide stuff when we don''t want other people to find it, maybe burying it. The teleportation idea could be changed slightly for a medieval game, adding a bit of magic you could still use the world portal idea. Btw.. these portals would be public obviously, dotted around like tube-stations.

DarkStar

Well, to solve the exact problem you stated, I would divide the gameworld into zones for logging out. So when Kupa the Krappa logs out in the middle of Midgaard, his logout zone gets recorded as "Midgaard", so that if something happens to Midgaard, his character can be quicly identified as having been affected by the war. Of course, the character''s exact logout coords would be stored, and used if nothing happened -- the usage of zones is only to allow for quick sorting of players. Anyway, let''s say the Kender decide, for some bizzare reason, to invade Midgaard, and the entire city is destroyed in the fierce battle. Since ol'' Kupa is tagged as having logged out in Midgaard, when he logs back on the game has relocated him to a temporary hospital set up by friendly forces. He then wakes up, checks out of the hospital, walks outside, sees the destruction, and screams "OH CRAP!!! MY BASEBALL CARD COLLECTION!!! IT''S GONE!!!", or perhaps he shouts something that makes a little more sense. See where I''m going?

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"It''s groin-grabbingly transcendent!" - Mr. Gamble, my teacher, speaking of his C++ AP class