Our playgrounds and virtual worlds are getting larger. This isn’t something that catches people by surprise; it’s pretty much commonly agreed. And they will only get larger and larger.
Donning my prophet hat on, I’d say that at some point -not really far away into the future- these games will become so massive, in terms of their own virtual expanse and number of subscribers, that “business as usual” as it relates to the way these games are managed, just won’t cut it anymore.
Perhaps in 10 or 15 years (no further than that, I’d say) we’re going to see the emergence into the mainstream of two very important things which will shape that generation of games. No, it won’t be the number of polys they cram in there, or how many gigs of VRAM you need on your card to hold all the textures properly, or anything like that. It’ll be something much less technical: The adoption into the mainstream of user-created content and the emergence of the Police Department.
Few things give me more irritation and grief than your common, garden-variety escort mission. Years ago I came to the personal realization that, well, I didn’t have to do them. I like to think my life has gotten better as a result of that. I can say that I’ve been reasonably free and clear for years.
No, no, it ain’t like that. You’d think that it’s just a matter of putting the ingredients together, mixing it up, heating a little and bada-bing, there you go - you have your seven-layer cake of MMO cream.