Metaplace to Open to Players Next Month, Fully Open in April

I'm not sure if this has come out before, but I hadn't seen it: It looks like Metaplace will be opening up a bit more in February for players to test out the worlds that have built and then it will be completely open in April. "Well the plan is that we’ll be letting people as players, not having the full building tools, but just allowing people to play with what the alpha testers have created, in February," Areae President Raph Koster told Rock, Paper, Shotgun. "Then hopefully by April anyone will be able to come to the Metaplace site and make a world."

As Metaplace ramps up, the company has released more and more information. The developers are looking to hold a public chat for a question and answer session, but in the mean time, they've posted a list of FAQs.

Here's one interesting sample:

2.  Is there a way I can work on my game without making changes in realtime for the people who might be playing it?

Not just yet, but that has rapidly become one of our most requested features.  We have intentions to implement a full version control system that will allow script editing without impacting anyone currently logged into your world.  Details on that to come.

3. How many simultaneous users do you expect will be able to play a game at a time?  Will I be able to make a gigantic MMORPG with hundreds of people per “zone”?

We certainly think so.  We’re still working hard on things like optimization, bandwidth consumption, load times, and all the necessary factors into making a smooth gameplay experience for a large amount of people.  We expect hundreds to be in the same place (the equivalent of a zone) at a time with no issues.

Check out the Developer Blog for the full FAQ.

Comments

[Al Williams]

This is an interesting development, despite being quite an old idea now ("Metaverse" started this around a year ago). VastPark are now doing this also and are in closed Beta. The question seems to be whether this will fragment the Virtual World market and lead to a fall in user numbers present on each as the niche Virtual World takes the place of large VW's. On the other hand with Open Social there is the possibility that in the future this may aggregate different virtual worlds, which means they are less fragmented. This is without the issue of mobile and how this all fits into the equation. I explore this on my site www.alistairwilliams.co if you are interested.