I’ve been designing MMORPGS since 1986

History time: A guy mentioned 640k barrier so I have a story.

Since MMORPGS need more than 640K, I wrote a program that read/wrote scripts off disk… Yes I wrote disk swapping virtual memory at age 15 never even being introduced to the concept… It was awesome too, I was bit jumping disk locations with binary file locations. It was so freaking fast, so when I saw everyone get stoked on People Soft SQL at the end of the 90s, I was like… Dude, SQL is so slow and dumb, why not just binary file index everything, now today people realize SQL is slow and there’s many more speedy disk access like binary and file position jumping… I was doing that stuff when I was 15, lol.

Later I even I discovered and mitigated the Pentium Bug in the wild. I upgraded my quickbasic MMORPG code from my 486 50DX Gecco computer. I think I was dividing 13/7 and then multiplying by 7. I was in like highschool at the time and was like,”I was told all my life that the computer is never wrong. Today I learned that sometimes the computer is wrong.” I fixed it by range checking and being disappointed I couldn’t rely on floats

Been writing MMORPGS since 1992 and theorizing them since around 1986 when I read about Compuserve in Compute Magazines. I wasn’t even 10 and knew MMORPGS were the future. Of course I didn’t call it a MMORPG: I think I called it an graphical MUD. Just like we didn’t call a Mullet a Mullet, but like long hair with the bangs cut.

I still have my old school printer paper with thousands of lines of Qbasic mmo code on it, lolz. Only was missing the networking and no one at CMU wanted to help, lol. It was a pretty ballin 2d engine tho, modeled off Pool of Radiance.

2) Networking that pushes the envelope where no networking has gone before. People laugh at this like it is impossible to innovate, but I marketed it to Midway in 2003, and they laughed too. Meanwhile it was working in house as a Tekken style(3d fighter) MMO with part of what today is known as rollback code. Midway’s manager was mocking what is today’s standard thinking rollback and such was impossible. Infinite action players same zone, limit only by video card and other hardware, networking ain’t a limiting thing anymore.

4) First MMO designed for late game. Everyone enjoys mmos until power capped and then get bored.
There is no power cap to begin with(just a log log logarithmic progression), but there are many many many other end game design elements to make it so want to keep playing end game! The grind is there, but better and more fun things are around too! You can build up a super big fleet and it get destroyed to pieces and you start over again. You have a power floor level that you can’t go below so you’re always building permanent power, but temporary spikes of power surges and galactic dominance for fleeting moments give a rush. The larger the fleet, the larger the fleeting moment.

8) PVP bounty system. Everyone can PVP at all times. Stakes are low if your ship explodes. If you get attacked without declaring aggressive mode or an opponent to duel, the aggressor gets a bounty on their head in accordance with the damage dealt to you. If this bounty gets high enough, and they get caught, they will be put in jail. When they log on for the next few hours or days, their character can play only in jail, and visitors come see him and such. Enjoy roleplaying being a prison inmate, or just use a different crew member on your account. Developing many crew members is a thing for when you fly capital ships.

10) Omnipotent roleplay: Earn your right into a a movie anime by great roleplay! Live game masters in about 6-12 months after the content updates roll through. We bias people with Founder’s RP tokens some and good manner role players who stay in character(we have chat logs and even game logs). This promotes good role play even when not live GMing. Who doesn’t want to bring their friends to a movie and surprise em with their own character in it? So stay in character for a better game! https://www.starfightergeneral.com/live-role-play/

Punky-Pulpy action, Levels, stats, skills, talents, items, fleet amassing, and great apocalyptic space plots, trippy Lewis Carrol level Mad Hatter humor along the way. It’s really weird to see how this synergizes from a game design standpoint. Players naturally want to level up and power up… That’s the twink min maxer in all of us. So when humor, plots, intrigue, or NPCs getting your blood boiling to action vs them happens, you get stoked, rewarded, happy and tossed off your axis. Then when resolved, you look back and get serious about powering up. The core of a RPG gamer is always powering up, it is something we can’t get rid of, but the core of a game designer is to get you out of a spreadsheet mindset temporarily… And then you appreciate both more. So tacky humor, along serious pulp action and serious leveling up game mechanics… It is like a symphony of fun.