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[waldo]

i'm not sure if there are already plans for this but i was thinking that maybe when there is more work done on path finding and speeding up the game the game could morph into a sort of massive world with many player controlled fortresses.

the idea is to make like a login, possibly the one used on the forums, then use that to get to your fortress. the program you would download would only be a viewing and commanding client along with a connector program that would run in the back ground, and all the processing would be done at the server. since that is an extremely large amount of power needed i was also thinking of making a sort of processing management system where the server would send packets of information to be processed, which after doing so would then be sent back, and arranged correctly by yet another program installed on the server. sort of like the SETI program that hijacks your internet connected computer for it's processor when your not using it.

of course this is going to take money so you could set up a payment plan where you can spend money to play or donate hours of cpu time. and in the end if you decided you didn't want to play a massive dwarf fortress with a ton of real players you could just download the normal single player dwarf fortress.

requirements would be a relatively speedy computer, and and internet connection would have to be something faster than dial up.

you would not be able to pause like in a normal dwarf fortress game, however if you wanted you could put a designated pause time every hour, the ability to trade, declare war, and make alliances would have to be made, and also in game dynamics fortresses would have to be more resilient to famine, drought, disease, and depression.

another thing that would be needed is the ability to look around the entire world, i suggest a zoom out ability, instead of your entire fortress residing on the entire playable map you would stake a claim to an certain area where you would have permanent rights to build, you should probably also have the ability to claim more land off of your original fortress and have branch fortresses, that are their own entity that would trade and give taxes to your original fort. this is all proportional to your payment plan. this would also be a cool feature in the normal dwarf fortress either way. if you wanted to build on someone else's land you would need to get a building permit, in exchange for anything that the other player would want, probably continued royalties on anything produced in that area.

since there will be messaging you can talk to other people and set up trades, noob protection would be in the form of incognito building, where your protected because people don't know your there yet. also a few more designations like steal, pillage, and destroy, maybe even kidnapping would be helpful for your soldiers to carry out maybe even have a separate labor menu for soldiers and workers.

I think that if dwarf fortress does become an mmo like that then it'd be freaking awesome^4 since it's already awesome to the second power

[LegoLord]

Actually, there might be a reasonable way to implement this, as long as actual fortress making wasn't involved as part of the interaction.

Everyone's an adventurer, each server has a different look to the world, you can learn all sorts of skills other than military skills, and visit sites that become random fortresses that have been uploaded (an area surrounding the site being altered to smoothly integrate it).

Of course, Toady doesn't want to make multiplayer games, so the whole thing is a moot point.

[Derakon]

The first thought that enters my mind whenever I see someone say "How about an MMO for X game?" is "You must be joking".

So are the second through fifteenth thoughts, usually.

I know MMOs are all the rage, but there's a reason why there's only 1 really phenominally successful MMO, and less than a half-dozen merely successful ones. MMOs are bloody hard to make! They're a logistical nightmare! You have to make some very robust networking code, you have to write the client, you have to write the hosting code, and basically all of these become massively more complicated as you add more players.

[Sowelu]

I don't see how a persistant world could possibly be fun, since your dwarves would be unmanaged once you logged off.  I'm sure not going to sit there for hours at a time.

(Blissfully ignoring technical issues.)

[Tormy]

but there's a reason why there's only 1 really phenominally successful MMO

Yeah WoW. I am surprised that it's STILL so popular. Class balance was bad pre TBC and in TBC also, now it's just plain horrible. Sure, the PvE content is still very diverse and huge, but pretty much that's it.

On topic: DF MMORPG? Perhaps a MUD..but AFAIK it's in the works already?
*edit*
Yeah, it looks like that Tahin is working on it. Here is the topic.

[LegoLord]

but there's a reason why there's only 1 really phenominally successful MMO

Yeah WoW. I am surprised that it's STILL so popular. Class balance was bad pre TBC and in TBC also, now it's just plain horrible. Sure, the PvE content is still very diverse and huge, but pretty much that's it.

Well, they are constantly working to improve existing features and make things more balanced, rather than just adding in new ones all the time.  It's much less of a pain to level up now, for example.

[waldo]

yeah but in world of warcraft you have an avatar, and that avatar can't really change the world. i mean influential players might bring together a good strong alliance or guild, but you can't really take that guild and go blast an entire section of the map into the ground until nothing is left except fire, brimstone, despair, and ruin. unless they just happen to put modify-map attacks in the newest release.

with the dynamics of dwarf fortress you can do that in an mmo, you can take your fortress' army and decimate an entire section of the map. or you could even relocate an entire fortress taking only the most valuable of things to escape attack. or you can make a bustling trade route.

[Sowelu]

And all of this is meaningless.

I'm going to argue that playing an ineffective character in WoW is more fun than changing the world in a storyless MMO.  With the former, you get to read about stuff and follow a plot.  With the latter, there IS no plot.

"No plot but the one you create," you say!

No actually.  No plot at all.  None.  There's nothing you can do to write a better story in a DF MMO than you could with single-player DF, and you have even less people to share it with--kind of ironic...but in a PVP style MMO where you control a whole faction, who exactly is on your side, and what do they care about your stories?  The people you loot don't want to hear it.  The leader of the Mountainhomes you come from probably doesn't care all that much, because he's busy being greedy and trying to expand his empire.  Story falls to competitive gameplay.

I don't think you can create any meaningful story out of competitive MMO stuff.  The fun stories are the ones created by people with no stake in the outcome beyond the story itself--Imagine if community fortresses were populated by people trying to WIN, instead of just playing around for a narrative!  The competitions we've had weren't very fun because, well, winning is boring.  I don't think even the grand long-term scale of an MMO type of thing here would improve things; when you hear about the twentieth squished goblin camp, it starts to become like reading a history book.  Very dry.  And chances are it's something other people have already done.

Don't believe me?  Look at Wurm.  Now take Wurm, and remember that you're not working alongside another player any more--you're playing your own little single player game that happens to interact with other players sometimes.  You lose what little camaraderie you had.

[Mohreb el Yasim]

i think the main problem is in that, and the fact that anyone wants to play differently ... waldo told for example, "in WoW you can't destroy a part of the world", actualy i would be a quite angry if someone tried to distroy the nice fortress i made last nigth ... (not on the person but on the fact that i spend time playing something wich will be destroyed so i would left soon ...) and the interaction means less real interaction too ... like Sowelu said ... it is always this way ...
For example in RL, since anyone speaks on his mobile phone, they put mp3 players in their ears ... you can even speak to people (i hate that in trains specialy ... it is really bad to not be able to chat on trains ...)

[profit]

LOL!

This topic again. 

Anyhow.. my 2 cents....

If I wanted to play an MMO... I would play an MMO.

If I want an excellent single player game that I can play for days without being bored, without lag, griefers, and kids using l33t speak...  Well one hasnt been made yet, but I am hoping Dwarf Fortress will be that.

[Squeegy]

I find it amusing people still suggest multiplayer after the FGRP description.

[praguepride]

Not only would a DF MMO be a horrible idea

But cycle scavenging (your "spare CPU hijacker") would NOT be appropriate in this situation. Cycle scavenging really only works when the program is a) highly parallel and b) not critical that it can be interrupted.

DF is neither. Some things might be able to be scavanged, but as a whole it's a lot of variables running together with a LOT of player input.

[waldo]

ok so it's a bad idea, still, i have in all the pc's glory, power, and history i have yet to see an RTS MMO that isn't some website. personally i think dwarf fortress would be an excellent choice to be the first.

[G-Flex]

The first thought that enters my mind whenever I see someone say "How about an MMO for X game?" is "You must be joking".

So are the second through fifteenth thoughts, usually.

I know MMOs are all the rage, but there's a reason why there's only 1 really phenominally successful MMO, and less than a half-dozen merely successful ones. MMOs are bloody hard to make! They're a logistical nightmare! You have to make some very robust networking code, you have to write the client, you have to write the hosting code, and basically all of these become massively more complicated as you add more players.

And in between all those things, they usually forget to, you know, design a good game.

[Folly]

I played a game called Travian for a while, a simple web-based mmo civ-game. I can imagine something similar for Dwarf Fortress.
A constant connection to an online server would require a ton of expensive bandwidth, and would also require some major reprogramming of Dwarf Fortress.
But what if the client only connected twice per play session; once at the start to download the online image, and once at the end to upload your updated fortress data?

What I'd most like to see is fortresses being sieged by other fortresses. The size of the siege would be based on the size of other fortresses' military, and would copy dwarves from their games complete with equipment and skills and everything.
The frequency of raids would be based on their proximity; so if you try to start a new fortress right next to an existing fortress you would likely be overwhelmed before you got very far.
Players could also register some sort of clan's with the server, so their fortresses don't attack eachother. Working together teams could build up massive kingdoms spanning many map tiles. The more forts they build, the more sieges get sent against opposing kingdoms.

Well, I think it sounds fun anyway.