Well, I noticed there are a large amount of people trying to create a MMORPG. Their biggest problem is the costs to run and maintain the game servers. I was thinking, "How could you get around this problem?", and I have come up with a solution. Why not franchise a MMORPG? Although you would need to create a good game, it might be possible to create a financially successful product following this roughly sketched idea: First, the developer would create both a server and client version of his MMOG. Instead of selling the client version to consumers, you would sell the server version and offer the client version for free or at the cost to package/ship them. Now, I really can't give a clear figure on how much you should sell the server version for, but you could charge a fairly high amount because of the incentive of making money off of the investment. Well, the person with the server version would create a server and register it through the developer. Then their server will become visible to the client software and people can start playing on that person's server. Well, here is where the developer actually makes money. Those clients are registered under the developer's company, and the people that use the client software pay the company to play on the servers. A high percentage of the profits(The money left after costs) are divided between the people that run the servers based on the total number of hours played on their servers. Basically, servers that most people play on and have the highest bandwidth costs receive the largest sums of money. All of this basically runs like a franchise does. So, you might be asking, "Why would anyone want to buy a MMOG franchise to host their own MMOG?". Well, just look at how many people try to hack current MMOGs and run their own servers (Alot of the time at costs to themselves). The person running the server would basically be a DM for his shard, and he could have other people help him out with it too. Instead of making nothing for all his hard work and dedication, he might profit from it. Who wouldn't want to make money hosting their own MMOG shard? [edited by - Zefrieg on June 15, 2002 4:45:43 AM] [edited by - Zefrieg on June 15, 2002 4:48:49 AM]

sounds cool, good luck to anyone who tries to make it work

It''s been done. Or at least, it''s being attempted. LithTech is one of these... here''s another: http://www.the4thcoming.com, although that one is more specifically a particular game that is licensed, and not an engine.

Yuck.

Nothing against the guy who''s charging for you to play in ''his'' world, but once you make the software available to anyone, you''ll end up with people making shards for them and their friends that runs off a DSL line (the communications isn''t that heavy) or their T1 at work. It won''t be rampant, but it will be heavy enough to where a large portion of players will want to play on one of those servers as opposed to your servers.

The best possibility is to sell a limited license that requires a connection to your site for authentication on a regular basis and then charge $5k for one with a 100 user limit (basically 5 months subscription payments) for 1 year worth of license. Insert a dozen ways for it to break, making it a pain to hack and more work than it''s worth. Put breaks that will check the license on each of the clients, on the server in every other module, make some of the game logic dependent upon checks to your main server, but nothing that would bog down your internet connection.