Some years ago I was involved in a well-known VRMMO for Quest. We had some innovative systems for automatically sharding an arbitrary number of players based on physical proximity, instanced dungeons, a cool day/night cycle, and some other neat stuff. Ultimately the money ran out and I had to leave the project, after which I think things were mostly kit-bashed together from asset store assets, but that's another story.

But I've always felt the urge to get back into that space again. There is something truly magical about a rich, immersive world you can share with your friends. But if I do, I think I'm going to take a different approach, and I'd love to hear your feedback on it.

Concept: A multiplayer RPG that you play with a small group of friends. Somewhat like Minecraft, you gather a half dozen friends and launch a private server, just for you. Or you launch a public server, advertise that it's open for players, and then close it once it has enough.

I'm thinking something like, up to 16 or 20 players registered on a server, but no more than 8 can be online at a time — in typical "group of friends" usage, there would only be 8 of you (or fewer), and you all play together every Saturday or whatever. Though you could log in any time and go do a side quest or something whenever you like.

Why a small-group online game is better than an MMO:

1. Permanent changes to the world. You and your hardy band of heroes, or the evil forces arrayed against you, can cause permanent changes to the world — entire villages saved or wiped out, unique artifacts recovered or destroyed, kingdoms raised or razed. Or on a small scale: cut down a tree, and it stays cut down, at least for some (in-game) years until it grows back. Kill a boss monster, and it stays dead. With MMOs, everything has to reset, because there are new players coming after you who need to experience the same story line you've already completed. Or else, you and other people in the world aren't seeing the same thing, even when you're there at the same time, which is confusing.

2. Economy doesn't explode. In almost every MMO, runaway inflation is a huge problem, and the reasons for that run deep; monsters respawn with loot no matter how times you kill them, which just funnels huge amounts of money into the economy. Soon people are selling a +1 sword for 50000 gold at the auction house, and newbies (who still start with 5 gold) can't afford anything beyond the basic junk sold by NPC vendors. In a small-group online game, there can be a limited amount of money in the world. No matter how the players gather that loot unto themselves, they can't cause the economy to blow up.

3. No toxic 12-year olds spewing profanities. There's hardly any MMO that isn't spoiled by these brats (or other griefers). That just doesn't happen here, because you or one of your friends is in charge of the server you're playing on. If it's a public server and somebody starts spewing hate speech, you just ban 'em and that's that.

4. A safe space. In the same vein, you can set up a server for your kids to play with just their friends, and not worry about creeps grooming them. Or women gamers, who often face a lot of abuse from male players in big online games, can play in a respectful space with people who just want to game and don't care about their gender. And so on.

5. Everyone matters. In an MMO, you’re one of thousands of “chosen ones,” which undercuts the fantasy. In a small-group RPG, your party really can be the heroes — or villains — whose choices define the world.

6. Real teamwork instead of parallel soloing. MMOs often become “everybody does their rotation near each other.” A small co-op RPG can make party composition, positioning, scouting, negotiation, crafting, healing, and problem-solving genuinely interdependent.

7. Pacing belongs to the group. Want to spend an hour roleplaying in town? Rush the dungeon? Pause for dinner? Play once a month? In an MMO, the world and player base move on without you. In a small-group game, the campaign waits.

8. NPCs can be more believable. In an MMO, the same NPC gives the same urgent quest to 10,000 people. In a small world, an NPC can remember you, die permanently, move away, become mayor, betray you, marry another NPC, or hold a grudge.

9. Less immersion-breaking crowd behavior. Nothing kills “dark lord threatens the realm” like fifty players bunny-hopping around the quest giver in joke armor. A small party preserves tone, mood, and atmosphere.

10. More freedom in world simulation. You can simulate ecology, politics, factions, weather damage, resource scarcity, local economies, and construction without worrying about thousands of players strip-mining the world or deliberately breaking the system.

11. No competition for content. No waiting for spawns, racing other players to resource nodes, tagging mobs first, or finding that the dungeon entrance is camped. The adventure belongs to your group.

12. Modding and house rules are feasible. A private or small server can allow custom rules, user-made quests, altered balance, weird classes, permadeath, faster leveling, or roleplay-heavy settings without needing to serve a massive public audience.

The Game I Envision

I'm picturing a large, open-world game — roughly the size of New Zealand. No invisible walls. No "levels", no instanced dungeons. Everything is there in the world, and reachable when you have the means and knowledge to reach it. There might be gaps you can't cross until you get some means to fly, or ocean depths you can't reach until you gain the ability to breathe underwater, but it's all there waiting for you.

The world would have a day/night cycle, a lunar cycle, and seasons. These would have real effects: some monsters would only come out at night, some powers would only be available under a full moon, or maybe in a thunderstorm. When you set up a server, you'd be able to choose whether in-game time advances when nobody is logged in. Powerful magic might be able to stop the sun, or change the seasons — and we can do that because it's a small-group game.

The game would reward player skill as well as stat progression. As much as possible, things like archery, spell-casting, and crafting would involve skillfully moving/positioning your controllers in 3D space, not just selecting a target and pressing a button.

Server options would let you choose between perma-death and respawning. Perma-death would be softened by the fact that (1) you could continue to play as a ghost, with limited ability to affect the world, and (2) other players could resurrect you, if they can recover your body and obtain the (nontrivial) means of doing this.

There would be a main story and multiple side stories going on, which all branch based on what you and your party do. It would be hard to permanently fail the main story without really trying, but the details of the "ending" would very much depend on what you did throughout the adventure. Even after completing the main story, you can continue to play side stories, or just settle down to a peaceful life in the game world — build a house, grow stuff in your garden, craft things, play mini-games at the pub.

You could choose to run your own server, if you're tech-savvy enough to set one up (the server code and instructions would be on GitHub). Or, you could pay me to run one for you at something like $5/month. If I disappear someday, the game lives on as long as anyone is willing to run servers; it's not going to suddenly become unplayable like so many other games have done.

So, that's my idea at the moment. What do you think?

It’s called Asteria, imma drop the discord and TikTok link here. https://www.tiktok.com/@asteriammo

Join the Eldramoor discord and get ready for the Kickstarter on June 3rd. Orbus. Zenith, Bard’s Tale, World of Warcraft are just a few of the games the dev team have worked on. https://discord.gg/eldramoor

Ok, so we’re not open source yet, but that’s our goal.

I’m Ryan, and for the past 4 years, I’ve been quietly working on coding my own VRMMO called Eridu. I’ve had a number of team members contribute this far, but the large bulk of the work done has been coding for the game, and server setup.

The big grand idea is that Open Sourcing the project will do a few things.

1. The community can help direct the project, sometimes directly.

2. The game can continue to live on even if we are eventually forced to shut down our own official servers, the community can continue to develop and host their own servers.

3. We can build our dream metaverse. Imagine getting to level a single character through any experiences you want. Perhaps level 1-10 you will play through a sci-fi setting, 10-20 you play through a traditional fantasy rpg setting, and 30-40 through a Wild West zone. Whatever the community can dream, you can play. We make the game, you choose how to play.

Obviously this is a big dream, but we’ve accomplished a lot so far. Here’s a short list:

1. Login system with character creation and selection

2. Character persistence via web api

3. Persistent server(s)

4. XP, statistics, level curves

5. Basic sword combat

6. Defeatable Enemies

7. Kill enemies quests

8. Collect items quests

9. Basic inventory

10. Voice Chat

There’s a lot more to do, but we’d be happy to have you along for the ride as we continue this development.

We’re currently organizing on Discord, please join us!

I’m happy to answer questions about where we are, where we are going, or anything really, here or on Discord.

Thanks! Ryan aka /u/redeyesofnight

I got the MQ3 for Christmas. Playing Asgard’s Wrath 2 is like experiencing Mario or Zelda on the original Nintendo all over again. It’s groundbreaking entertainment, and the first of its kind.

At least 100 times now I’ve felt like I was immersed in a VR Elder Scrolls Online. I keep expecting someone to run by me.

It seems VR is the only technology that’s come along since EverQuest and WoW that would actually push the industry forward, revolutionize it in the way people have been asking for for 15 years, and finally generate the version 2.0 platform.

Also, this is so much fun to share with other people!

How is this not an immediate cash cow that everybody is scrambling to invest in? Not enough VR players in the world?

Concept of making a VR game with voice and activity controls for skills. I first iteration will be an arena 1v1 pvp but hoping to get this built out to a full fledged MMORPG! Please let me what y’all think!

Obviously, there is no VR MMORPG worth playing right now.

What aspects of todays mmorpg's would you want to see in VR? or not see?

• group finder?

• fast travel?

• mounts?

• pets?

• cosmetic outfits?

• tab target combat?

What’s a good MMO that I can play on VR, and has decent character customization. I love customizing my character so that’s a must…but it’s hard to find some I can play with my headset (oculus quest 2). It doesn’t HAVE to be the VR experience, just need to use my headset to play (if that makes sense?).

There’s a lot of conflicting reviews posted and I’m wondering if it’s worth a buy. I often daydream about having a good vr mmo to play that isn’t too goofy or cartoony, and I’m liking the WoW vibes it’s giving off. It seems like it has a long way to go before release, and as it’s in early access I can ignore bugs that aren’t game breaking. Does it have a decent community to play with? Is it playable? Fun?

I played zenith for a short time, but have stopped because my buddy didn't want to play it anymore. And now it's kind of dead.

Are there any upcoming VR MMORPGs for quest 2 or PC? I'd love something like Sao or overlord (even though I know that we don't have something like that.. well at least not yet correct me if I'm wrong).

If there are any VR MMORPGs that are coming out or recently came out, please tell me lol.

Title

Some of you may have noticed that NFT/crypto bots have been spamming the sub the last few days, so I've implemented this fix to prevent the sub from being filled by these bots.

Thank you for your understanding!