One thing has been bugging me about Eve lately: why are the "shards" tied to physical locations of all the same granularity?
If you made the unit of player interaction a "shard" this would yield inherent dynamic load balancing.
How about a space game that doesn't have any fixed locations of importance? Have space be huge, mostly desolate, scattered with raw resources. Everything is in terms of "motherships" warping between star systems, occasionally stopping at a system to gather resources. Players would berth their smaller ships aboard the motherships or at stations in the systems. However, everything of importance (resource spawns and quest sites) would only be reachable by hitching a ride aboard a mothership.
Most player ships would only be capable of warps spanning in-system distances. Really wealthy players would be able to buy their own "motherships." Motherships would be invulnerable to attack while in-system, due to the use of the drive fields in a defensive configuration. However, while in-transit between star systems, motherships are subject to "warp-intercept," which is the formation of a warp-bubble or "pocket universe" around the two ships when they get too close to each other in warp-space.
Motherships cannot be destroyed, but they can be captured. To capture a mothership, one needs to mount an attack with player ships and destroy enough of the mothership's defensive fields and guns to allow boarding. Boarding switches the game to an FPS mode, with the object of securing one of the ship's "command centers."
Some NPC motherships will be capturable. However, maintaining control of one of those will require a 24/7 presence. At the point that no players occupy the command center, a NPC mothership will revert to NPC control.
If you made the unit of player interaction a "shard" this would yield inherent dynamic load balancing.
How about a space game that doesn't have any fixed locations of importance? Have space be huge, mostly desolate, scattered with raw resources. Everything is in terms of "motherships" warping between star systems, occasionally stopping at a system to gather resources. Players would berth their smaller ships aboard the motherships or at stations in the systems. However, everything of importance (resource spawns and quest sites) would only be reachable by hitching a ride aboard a mothership.
Most player ships would only be capable of warps spanning in-system distances. Really wealthy players would be able to buy their own "motherships." Motherships would be invulnerable to attack while in-system, due to the use of the drive fields in a defensive configuration. However, while in-transit between star systems, motherships are subject to "warp-intercept," which is the formation of a warp-bubble or "pocket universe" around the two ships when they get too close to each other in warp-space.
Motherships cannot be destroyed, but they can be captured. To capture a mothership, one needs to mount an attack with player ships and destroy enough of the mothership's defensive fields and guns to allow boarding. Boarding switches the game to an FPS mode, with the object of securing one of the ship's "command centers."
Some NPC motherships will be capturable. However, maintaining control of one of those will require a 24/7 presence. At the point that no players occupy the command center, a NPC mothership will revert to NPC control.