Cyclopean: an MMO with depth, Part 1

Here's an idea for an MMO in which the game world is actually interactive and dynamic. To anyone who's played an MMO, you'll know that rare are the ones which allow players to directly interact with it. You'll be able to build a house or a castle on a hill, but won't be able to carve a trench into that hill or grow crops on it.

This could be possible by adding layers upon an underlying, unmoveable game world on a gigantic, worldwide grid. On the X and Y axis tiles, the players can move along as in any other, traditional MMO. But on the Z axis, the players can actually dig their way down to the lower layers.


The top-most layer offers the classic MMO experience - questing, exploring, killing mobs - but, along with the usual crafting skills, they are offered an original one: archeology. The higher the archeology skill, the faster a player can "dig" shafts and tunnels into the underground. And, as archeologists dig their way down, they discover many different things:

• Treasures - As time goes by, many adventurers and creatures bury their treasures and often die or forget about them.
• Caverns - Underground networks of caves and faults filled with monsters, rare minerals and other salvageable things.
• Abandoned mines - A vast network of underground mines, long abandoned, can be discovered. Monsters have long since established bases there.
• Cyclopean ruins - And finally, within the bowels of the world are scattered ancient ruins of a long vanished advanced civilization. The best and rarest items can be found there, along with priceless records and relics, providing the adventurer can survive exploring the ruins and bring them back.

Sometimes, archeologic "hot spots" will require expert archeologists to bring along a host of mercenary bodyguards.

Exploring a new world, again and again

To ensure that the game stays exciting, the game world changes dynamically over time and from one server to the next:

• Cities, towns and monsters - Their locations change from one server to the next. Also, if they are "popular" - i.e. if a city is visited by lots of players, or if a specific monster camp is being farmer by lots of players - they grow stronger. Cities will grow, NPC merchants selling better goods and guards becoming more powerful, and monster will defend themselves more desperately.
  
• Underground features - Caves, mines and underground ruins are also placed at different spots from one server to the next and have completely different layouts, being modular; one expert explorer on one server becomes a novice on another.
• Regrowth - As holes are dug by the players and abandoned, they eventually fill up again over time and vegetation grows back to assume their original state.
• Player-generated features - And of course, players are able to build their own cities, mines and dungeons. This will be the subject of my next post, in a few days...

Stay tuned... :)