BlueMatrixBinaryCodeSmallIn MMO development terms, a head end is any software program that interacts with the server side of a MMO.  The 3D client application  is the traditional example of a head but in reality, a modern MMO architecture and all future MMO architectures will be multi-headed.  It’s only a matter of time before a MMO is presented to the world ala Twitter.com’s API.  If you’re building a MMO today, I’m of the opinion that today’s web standards and social networking should permeate every aspect of your design.

Off the top of my head, these are a few of the ideas we have for Ages of Athiria.

  1. You should not have to maintain a separate account to play AoA.  OAuth, Windows Live, Twitter and Facebook all have open authentication methods.  Odds are, you already have an account with one of those services and don't need another account for ours.  We'll save you the hassle of remembering yet another password.
  2. The official web site should be available in the 3D client.  Not only should it be available but it should be integrated.  With today's MMOs, the web site and the 3D client are application silos that do not know how to talk to one another.  Simple example: Guild Management of member ranks.  Today, a guild leader has to double data enter a promotion, recruit or demotion.  Best case scenario is that they perform the action on the web site and use some custom Addon to perform the same task in-game.  It's clumsy and completely unnecessary.
  3. If a player wishes to receive a notification of an event that happens in game, they should be able have it sent to any number of clients.  Mobile phone SMS, Twitter Direct Message, Facebook mail, traditional email, Windows Live, Yahoo, you name it.  There should be an option for all in-game correspondence to be relayed to the user's device/application of choice.  It would be even better if all of these heads could interact in the other direction as well.  Please tell me why I can't put my guild leader into a list somewhere that has all of his guildsay or tells to me sent to my mobile phone?  Why can't I confirm my spot in a raid from my car while I am driving home?  In today's networked world, there's no excuse though the entire behavior needs to be controllable by the user to prevent overload.

The point is, I believe that the virtual world server is simply another data feed running on the web.  The technical hurdles for this sort of interoperability can be overcome.  Services like Twitter and Facebook prove this every day yet MMOs are largely walled garden applications.  At best, they provide read only feeds of data from the world simulation which short sells all that the MMO medium could become.  If there's anything we can learn from the rush of Facebook games is that users want their games available anytime, anywhere and on any device.  It's about time for the multiple heads of a modern MMO architecture to expand out beyond the developer desktop and the server room and into the public application domain. 

We’ve started this process with our new Facebook page and our new Twitter page.  Once we get funding, we’ll integrate the Ages of Athiria web site with these two sites and begin working on mobile phone integration.