World of Minecraft

I’ve been playing Minecraft.  It really is quite a fantastic little game.  Once the Survival Multi-Player mode gets fixed it will be downright awesome.

Anyhow, as I’ve been playing, I’ve been thinking about how this sort of thing could be done as an MMO.  I’d love to see fully destructible terrain in an MMO, but the issue really is one of containment.  Players will inevitably rub each other the wrong way.  So, consider this…

Take Minecraft.  Add in the ability to mark a server as “official”, which means that it passes some CRC checking and other verification (to make sure it isn’t running any cheats or hacks) which it passes to a central server (run by Notch).  Then, allow players, or more accurately server admins, build portals which can be connected to other servers (both servers involved have to create portals to complete the link, both verified by the central server).  Thus creating a network of Minecraft worlds.  Throw in some niceties like the ability to set an upper limit to the number of players connected, or even the ability to “white list” accounts allowed to build/destroy (everyone can look, only certain people can change).

Hmm… better yet, perhaps they should not allow this because I might waste entire days, even weeks, just wandering the network admiring people’s creations.