Sorry if I seem annoying by stubbornly defending my idea but...

a) Creative skills required to make a new zone with new creatures would be VERY difficult to have.

b) The Settings skills to define new quests, new reasons to explore, etc. are also more difficult than they sound.

I think you\'re underestimating the imagination of people, thousands of people GM games everyday, and the same imagination required to make a good D&D game can be used for this, with some added consideration for the fact that it\'s not a D&D game, but an MMORPG.  If the PlaneShift team can come up with quests, why is anybody else not able to also?

Example: I have 9 years experience with a myriad of RPG systems (D&D Classic, AD&D 2nd Edition, D&D 3rd Edition, Shadowrun, Rifts, White Wolf games (V:tM, WW:A, Exalted, H:tR, etc.), Dream Pod 9 games (Tribes 8, Heavy Gear), Call of Cthulu, Cyberpunk 2020 and a few small-time ones), 3 years experience leading a roleplay guild in Furcadia, called Leirune, where we developped a world from scratch, including a detailed religion, languages, cultures, different magic systems, cities, and invented plots on a weekly basis, and I created a list of items and equipment, as well as their stats for a web-based RPG based on old BBS DOOR games called Drakeville, and I\'m currently creating my own rule system, called ForGE (Forge Gaming Engine, which development is very slow...)

Now, I\'m not part of the PlaneShift team, and I know I\'m not the only one with experience like that, and I know there\'s many who are much better than me to create such things.  But all that would be required for the distributed server, is a background story for the area.  Possibly later you can have the owner of the place have plots, but that\'s if that\'s supported in PlaneShift.

The only problem that I can see is that the PlaneShift team seems like it wants to maintain full control of the official story and events all over the realm.  This is understandable, since they are responsible for their game\'s success, and any failure on the part of the added server could taint PlaneShift\'s reputation.
What I\'m proposing, COULD make it so that the owners of the added world controls the story there.  Notice the capital could.

Having the owners of the map be the game masters for their area or such, if there is such a thing as game masters in the final release of PlaneShift, could make for a world populated with even more quests then the PlaneShift team could do, but they would have to trust these people.

But that\'s only one part of my idea, you can throw out the independent game masters and still retain the distributed server idea.

Also...  Who said anything about new creatures?  The objects in these maps could all be the same objects from the main world, maybe with a few added textures. It does not require new creatures or any thing that would stretch game mechanics.

c) Certification of content to make sure that the content submitted for approval was the same as the content actually running on the server seems impossible to me.

I see no reason for it to be impossible.  I\'m not talking about certifying a server for what is going on there, like, \"This server is operating is behaving properly after watching them like, for a week\", no, that\'s not what I mean.
I mean to certify from the start, as in, \"You have the correct attributes to become part of the PlaneShift world.\"
They could be monitored, as in, if there\'s any complaints coming from these servers, they could be reviewed, and if the server is breaching his agreement with the PlaneShift team to maintain certain rules in his environment, you pull the plug on him, he is no longer certified, and no longer linked from the main world.  

So, in fact, you\'d certify him that he\'d have the required things to become part of the main PlaneShift world, and that certification would also represent that he agreed to operate under the determined rules.

All this being said, there is NOTHING keeping someone from setting up their own PS world just as you say, but using their own content. All the source code is public and you can do your own worlds to your heart\'s content. Your server won\'t connect up to other servers, but if your own world is so compelling, who cares?

Yes, I realize that, but my goal is not to make a new game with the PlaneShift engine, but my goal is to expand and improve PlaneShift.  It makes PlaneShift \'scalable\', in marketroid term.  It might seem like it also makes it \'decentralized\', but with the certification, and the contract, you have rules in place to maintain control, and the characters and such are still all in the official PlaneShift database and such.

If I would be to follow your suggestion, and make a new game,  it\'d simply fragments the players.  I remember reading somewhere in the site that the developers of this game are trying to prevent fragmentation.  Instead of having a world of 1,500 players online, you\'d have a world of 1,000 players online in some world, and 500 in another one.  You\'re also losing some marketing, \"Hey, come play this game!\" without ever a mention of PlaneShift.


If you are worried about having to sit down and think how to implement this idea, I would gladly provide you with clear and concise documents, on which you could improve if needs be, that would contain:

• An analysis on how to implement this feature
• General guidelines on becoming certified (the details would be determined at a later date)
• The contract of behavior

I\'d abstract from the actual technical details of implementing it, leaving that to the developers.

Oh, and I apologize for the word by word dissection of your message, I am certainly not trying to troll, but I am simply attempting to prove my point.  Thanks. :)

Okay.

I just hope the game is being developped so it\'ll be easy to translate later on, I\'ve seen some XML files lying around, I figure that\'d make it easy to translate.

Something I think that would be interesting, make for some more variety without having to make 300 models, would be color customization.  As in, you\'d have weapons, or clothes or something, and you could change the color of it (well, not in-game, but the engine would)

For example, I have a sword, my hilt is red, and the blade is black.  My friend has the same sword, but his blade is silver, and the hilt is blue.

But you don\'t use a different texture, it would just be in the weapon\'s property, this object\'s blade is black, the hilt is red, and then the color would be like, I don\'t know, overlayed over the texture, by the renderer.

Players could even buy paint, or dye, to change the color of items.  You could have entire guild with similar colored equipment.  They could even mark rank by it, like a captain has blue marks on his helmet, etc.

And like that, you could have a huge variety of avatars, without having like, a kajillion textures.  Maybe you could add, patterns that would overlay the item.  I know that one thing I love to do in games that let me, is to spend a lot of time customizing my character\'s look.  I know a lot of my friends like to do the same either.

I don\'t know how much you can already customize your character\'s look,  but I think many here want to be \"unique\", as I can see by posts like, \"More skins!\" and such.

I\'m not exactly sure how hard this is to implement, and if it would demand too much ressources, but I think it\'d help make PlaneShift a more detailed world.

Okay, this isn\'t a suggestion, but I have no clue where to put this.

This is to help the development of PlaneShift.  Some companies do this \"feature compare\" thing, where they take all the features of the opposing products, make a list, and then compare it with the features they have.

I simply need the okay for this, and me and a few of my friends will bring you a list of features from popular games that we\'re familiar with, and give it to you guys to compare, take what you want from it, etc.

Do I have the okay?

Did anybody write those down, because I\'d gladly volunteer to write all those down in handy XML format (I could also make it in text, HTML, etc.), so they can be easily reviewed by the settings team?

Hello PlaneShift people, I\'m new here obviously, I\'ve talked to some of you on the IRC before sinking away in the darkness, and I think this (PlaneShift) is a great idea, and I\'d like to support it in my own way.


Okay, now I\'ll share my idea for it to be reviewed...

Distributed servers for PlaneShift.  As PlaneShift grows, the server will become more strained, as I\'m sure you know, and will make the PlaneShift experience a less enjoyable one.

I imagine you already thought about this, and figured that you\'d have more servers later on.

But what I\'m thinking is that, possibly after the official release of PlaneShift, you\'d offer a world designer, and a server program.

Then, you\'d have a team of trusted inspectors, who would check for the certain criterias to be filled.

Is it a realistic addition to the PlaneShift world?
Does it have a story that matches with the continuity?
Does the server bandwidth qualify?
Is there a way we can link it to the main world?
Subjectively, what is the overall opinion from the inspector of the environment?
Etc.

If the new server is deemed worthy, it becomes \"Certified\", and is merged with the main world.

If not, we simply inform the applicant of what needs to be improved, and that he should try again, with a minimum time lapse (so as to not be flooded, this could be an automated process, queuing applicants)

After a server has been added to the world, the players could be notified of this area by some sort of daily announcement, maybe if PlaneShift would have a newspaper, or a MOTD, whatever.  It\'s not necessary to warn the players so much, but I believe it\'d be nice.

During the game, when players would first enter the new map, he would be warned of the download size, possible time for download, and given the choice of continuing, or returning to the main world.  Something like, \"This trip could take x amount of time, do you wish to travel down that road?\"

Given the map was popular enough, it could become part of the main distribution.  Less frequently used maps could be removed from it to keep the download size down.

If the game incorporates game masters, the owners of the server could be responsible for game mastering, or he\'d be responsible to find himself a game master.  If you want something like, excellence through competition, you could make it so there\'d be a rating assigned to the maps, and somewhere, like on the web site, you could check your map rating, which would push game masters and map designers to make their place the best.  But I realize that maintaining those stats requires some time and effort.

Certainly, the logistics of this are a bit tricky, but I assume you\'ll have an out-of-game police force, much like ops in the IRC, and the inspectors could be a subset of them.  This is an open-source project, with enough interest in your project, you won\'t need to worry about manpower, it\'ll flow in due time.  I come from a graphical MUD, which is kind of synonymous with an MMOG, called Furcadia, where their method of policing is through a group called Beekin Helpers, there\'s a certain status that comes with being one, and it\'s working very well, so I believe that if you can emulate that, it would probably work very well.

So, a short resume of the above, is:
I wish that in PlaneShift, there would be the possibility of user-made, user-hosted maps, who would require to pass certification before being made into an official map.  I see that eventually, you might have an out-of-game social class of talented people who will expand the PlaneShift world into something even more tremendous, it doesn\'t ruin the continuity, offers even more reasons for players to come back (you could have full-time explorers!), adds an important aspect to gaming, customizability, and remains with the spirit of open-source.

Thank you for reading, and I eagerly await your suggestions and criticism.