How big a PS world is too big a PS world?

[zanzibar]

Hundreds of maps and zones - perhaps thousands - are planned.


I like running into other people, having discussions, travelling with others, engaging in group activities.  I even enjoy the conflicts that happen between people as long as they\'re colourful and in character.


When the planeshift world is 100 times as big, or 200 times, or 500 times - what will the PS community be like?  How many population centres like Hydlaa will there be?  What proportion of the PS world will be like the laanx dungeon - a place where you wouldn\'t expect to run into other people?


I guess my concern is that once the PS world is huge and once it starts to meet its potential, will it still feel like a multiplayer game.... will we run into other players more often or less often, how will the community dynamic be affected?  What advantages are there to things being smaller and closer together?  Does the PS world as it exist now represent a single unit, and will the PS world later on consist of many such units acting independantly?  Or will it be expanding out from Hydlaa, with everyone starting in Hydlaa or Oja and then travelling out from there?

[lanser]

An interesting question and additionally how many players will it take to fill it?
And seeing as PS is firstly RP orientated will it end up with the rpers congregating in certain areas while the players that just want to rathunt and level take over the rest of the world?

[Kixie]

First off I must say that I don\'t believe the expansion will ever stop. As you know, there isn\'t a planned \"stop\" date where the developers will step away from their giant sand castle with a content grin only to walk away forever, never to add another grain. Planeshift will always be expanding. Bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. Untill we all forget about it.

That being said I can\'t see a problem with the idea. To bring an answer to your proposed question which I believe went something like this, \"If the world is just too big, won\'t the community get stretched out too far?\" But to that, all I have to say is: Look outside your window. Right now.

We live in a huge world. Even when we overlook the infinate reaches of space, the area located on Earth is just staggering. There is no possible way of traveling to every inch of it. Yet, even though we have not met every single solitary person, nor have we even met a great percentage of them, we still have rich and interesting lives.

Planeshift will indeed be massive one day. So massive, it may even begin to rival our own world in stature. When that happens, I don\'t think our community will have taken a change for the worse. It will have taken a major change, one so radically different from the one we exist in now, that we will hardly recognize it. But, I think this change is a great one.

So for better or perhaps in some others\' views for worse, planeshift will get bigger. So just hang on and enjoy the ride.  

[LinkN64]

I\'m sure that new cities and other places will be added as more and more people come along, but it wouldn\'t be smart to make a huge world if there aren\'t enough people. Along side that, the Death Realm will be a REALM, so that will help people get a general idea of where you are with 2 letters. LR or DR.

[Drey]

I\'d say anything between 9 and 12 should see it fine.

Though you must remember to take into account things like the population density of dogs, and the french (ou est le ...)

Basically, I am asking are cats and badgers naturally enemies like Mr T and Chuck Norris are?

Should I leave the creatures to fight next time and not interfere?

[miadon]

Well the land of the azure sun can only be so big, its limited to size due to the settings and the 8 levels. But the world outside of it will be infinite. But usally online games expand more land when more people play.

[DaveG]

As the world gets bigger, we\'ll need to add more ways to get around.  Wagons, flying stuffs, teleporting, etc.  And, we should expand as we get more people, such that as things get crowded a new map is available.  If the world gets too big, too fast, yes that\'s be a problem.  However, I don\'t think it\'ll be an issue we\'ll have to worry about too much.

[dying_inside]

Along side  that, How big space wise will this game be when it  is  100 or more maps big?
There are things you have to consider in things like this.
What will you need to play it, what will become of such a game? ]
Will it be too big for itself and die, or thrive on its enormouseness?

[Mentak]

Im guessing, from all i have read and heard, we will have player controlled kingdoms.  And thats when we have alot of players :3.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by miadon
Well the land of the azure sun can only be so big, its limited to size due to the settings and the 8 levels. But the world outside of it will be infinite. But usally online games expand more land when more people play.

Well, there are the levels of the cavern, but the stone labyrinths stretch outside the cavern for a very long ways.  And there are possibly other caverns to be found as well.

[Pestilence]

Well indeed with the octarch discusion I was thinking of how large the world would actually get (I guess the same as Zanzibar).

If the community would be the same size this might mean that we get that some areasaren\'t visited much.

Right now only enki\'s spawn in Akkaio for example and thankfully this is a popular race but otherwise this would be a pretty dead area for a city.

Something the devs will have to take into account I guess when expanding.

But having the spawnpoints more spread so not just one race spawns outside Hydlaa might help it being founf more normal to have a party somewhere else then Hydlaa.

[Goldir]

I\'m all for PS being MASSIVE.  I\'m talking you wander for an hour and a half and never see the same landmark twice.  Like Microsoft or Siberia huge.

 I just have one caveat on that.  A compass!!!  Don\'t need a map or anything, but without a sun (kinda hard to have inside a stalactite), it is impossible to figure out which way you are going if you are off wandering in unknown territory.  Not only that, a compass is also pretty good when NPC\'s give you directions to go somewhere.

[defender43]

Heck, who knows? It might get soo big that it spans multiple servers. You know, like \"Entering second level. loading...\" then you continue on your way. Should help lag, right?

*edit*

Well, you don\'t have a sun, but you have that big, glowing crystal in the middle of the cave.

[Baldur]

Guess it\'s good to have alot\'a maps. Just thin of this. When the world had just gone through the plague and the peoples of Europe were decimated to 2/3\'s the humans living there would pack into masses, hiding from the plague[Pretty stupid, but that\'s the way the cookie crumbles] and large areas would be left out. In a matter of generations people would forget of big land areas which where they once resided[Krans, caves. Dwarves do not remember either.]

If all the Races are gathered in Hydlaa from, say, The Black Army[Read the Dragon Council\'s history] vast areas would be left, and as we hav elived in this city for more then a century, wouldn\'t you think what happened to those poor people in Europe would happen to us?

Now we only need NPC\'s like hermits, lone hunters, fishy merchants in a dark shire. That\'s what we need, they world is full of magical events, you just need to EXPLORE:)

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by Baldur
Guess it\'s good to have alot\'a maps. Just thin of this. When the world had just gone through the plague and the peoples of Europe were decimated to 2/3\'s the humans living there would pack into masses, hiding from the plague[Pretty stupid, but that\'s the way the cookie crumbles] and large areas would be left out. In a matter of generations people would forget of big land areas which where they once resided[Krans, caves. Dwarves do not remember either.]

If all the Races are gathered in Hydlaa from, say, The Black Army[Read the Dragon Council\'s history] vast areas would be left, and as we hav elived in this city for more then a century, wouldn\'t you think what happened to those poor people in Europe would happen to us?

Now we only need NPC\'s like hermits, lone hunters, fishy merchants in a dark shire. That\'s what we need, they world is full of magical events, you just need to EXPLORE:)

The history that the DC wrote for themselves is not \"cannon\", for lack of a better word.  I know what you\'re saying though... but there is archetecture planned for each of the different races, so I would imagine that they\'d each have their own city as well.