Zone Builders?

[Gavry]

I though I'd throw an idea out there for discussion and assessment.

Back in the day, I played, in my opinion, the best text based MUD going around when I was at University. It was called TorilMud/Sojourn and at its peak had a heap of players for that type of game. For those unaware, MUDs, where the forefather to the current MMORPGs that we all love now.

The thing that made TorilMud so fantastic was it had a good group of Zone builders, all ex, or current players, who were continually adding exciting new content to the game, and all unpaid. At its peak there was a new zone being added every other week, and I'm talking BIG zones with extravagant quests, equipment and creatures.

Much like that, I was wondering if Spacetime would ever consider opening up Zone Builder positions? The key points of this would be as follows:

1. Unpaid role. I think there would be quite a few members of the playing community right now who would like to contribute.

2. I'm hoping there is a nice zone building tool that Spacetime use right now to construct their current zones. This would be released to those zone builders who where accepted.

3. Zones Builders would provide their completed zones to Spacetime, becoming their ownership, to sell/give away as they saw fit.

4. Zone Builders would only be able to use the current tile-set and creature/equipment models as the game currently has. Even with what is currently there, there are an absolute multitude of different zones that could be built.

5. Finished zone would be approved by Spacetime before released.

6. Spacetime would add a test phase to new zones. During this period selected players would test the zone for balance and bugs. During testing kill/deaths would not increase when in the zone, as with XP and gold. Any equipment collected would also be lost when leaving the zone. This would make sure everything was balanced before being officially opened.

7. As quests and more tile-sets, creature models and equipment models are introduced by Spacetime the number of different zones that could be built would expand exponentially. Spacetime could then spend time just building models and tile-sets and leave the new zone construction to the builders. Add some Elemental models and air, fire, and water plane zone could be added for example.

8. The added benefit of this is that there would end up being a whole lot of different zones for a particular character level. Everyone wouldn't have to level from 30-35 in the swamps any more.


What do you all think?
What other ideas do you think could be added to this idea?
Any interest from you Spacetime?

[Cascade]

Wow excellent idea.

[Jstizar]

It is a pretty great idea and many games used to do this sort of thing. However, considering the already hard working staff of STS and the fact that they are continually working on new expansions I don't see it very likely that this would happen. The process of actually having someone else create the "zone" and then testing it, on top of other things would take a lot of supervision from STS taking them away from their work on the game.

[Esus]

Awesome...I'd love to make maps or whatever in my spare time

[RedRyder]

People would just put all the bosses in the begging of the level lol

[Gavry]

Then it would never pass testing.

It's supprising. As a player people usually make the best thought-out and balanced zones.

[flaimdude]

I would totally do it. But it would have to be a computer application, it'd be too hard on a mobile device.

[Gavry]

I'm sure their tools would be PC or Mac based to build zones. If I was building this game I would start with the back-end server, and zone building tools. Make future expansion easy and fast.

[maneut]

Excellent Idea, it would fuel interest and attract more players too I think Any comments from STS devs?

[tjornan]

I love the idea of an unpaid role, but it would be nice to get a pink for your efforts