[shadowfyr]

You know... I keep thinking that the #1 reason that Second Life (or OpenSim, and it where) won't work as a platform for this has got to be two things:

1. Protection of user made content requires all generation of data on the server side.

2. There isn't anything "in" the client to support RP.

The irony here is, if someone wanted to make an OpenSim grid where all content was "owned" by the people running the grid, i.e., you can rez objects, do some limited building, etc., but not upload or "own" any of it, then you could eliminate the #1 bottleneck in the system by allowing all content to be cached on the client machines, and only the "location/rotation/physics" of objects sent to the client, once the main content is "local". Mind, the cache system is buggier than hell right now, so fixing that would be a pain. The second irony is, issue #1 is being fixed for CCS (community combat system) players, where the "data" server for combat stats is being integrated to a custom version of the client, so that, when finished, nearly everything involving that stuff will be handled "client side", not in world, which makes it much more efficient and stable. Some talk has been going on of including "restrained life" features into it too, which means ways, when you allow it, for your avatar to be prevented from moving, knocked out, possibly even blinded, etc.

As for NPCs.. Well, if all you want it to do is stand around and respond, no big deal. If you want it to fight, that is a bit trickier, but not impossible (just have to use something like the combat models in modern 3D games), and in principle, a modified client might be able to "log in" 4-5 NPCs, maybe more, at a time.

Basically, limiting attachments, scripts, etc., keeping the prim limits down (instead of allowing the max per region), and having a way to make sure the number of NPCs/players isn't so high its unworkable, you could do some crazy stuff with it. The whole problem with the design, right now, is bottlenecks. Everything from how much stuff has to be constantly "calculated" server side (which something like WoW doesn't need to do at all), to bandwidth, DB accesses, to whether the guy on the client end has decent hardware or not. If you rewrote the server and client "explicitly" to work as a user modifiable "game" world, not one they "own" and "sell" things in, you could reduce probably 50-60% of it almost immediately. EQ2, WoW, etc. run as smooth as they do because, even when you have them set to "download new content as I play", for some things (though not the big zone patches), they don't need to server to *know* anything about what is going on, including the physics of the world, other than where things that "can" move are at any moment, so other players know what is happening. It's SL/OpenSim/Legend City/Whatever's achilles heel. And its entirely the result of "content protection" and "IP ownership".

Kind of makes me wonder. Would modding OpenSim and the clients, that far, be possible... Remove the #1 issue, and gain both user design "and" WoW performance. Heck, without all the extra stuff going on server side, the script system might even be functional enough to run the NPCs itself (since it wouldn't be fighting with data retrieval and physics all the time to get things done).