Social gaming, et al.
http://www.nilretain.org/archives/2006/05/Social-gaming,-et-al..html
http://www.nilretain.org/archives/2006/05/16.html
So I'm sitting here, waiting for a build to finish, and I wanted to get the following ideas out, that started brewing once I started working on Emperor again. I believe Emperor could be well-received beyond just my group of friends, if I focus more on several things, which I already see as strong points in Emperor:
Social gaming: One of the reasons WoW and other MMOs are so popular is that they're drawing on a customer base that wouldn't normally play a fantasy RPG. That customer base is made up of people who like WoW for its social nature. It's the MUD/MUSH addiction factor, but with a much lower bar for entry, because it's graphical, simple, and more rewarding with less imagination effort on the player's part. This is key. Multi-player games should be social. I'm not talking social as in "you can group up with your friends and chat in-game while you quest", I'm talking social as in "you can find and meet people and use the game as a new medium for communication".
Out-of-game information: I don't think this avenue has been fully explored, but I think it's something important, something that can hook people and/or help keep their interest in the game high. I'm talking about in-game information being available to you out-of-game, and in some cases, vice-versa. For persistent games like MMOs, or long-running games like Emperor, this has a lot of meaning. In all but the rarest of cases, players in long-running games won't be playing the game 24/7. Having some way of monitoring their in-game status when they're not playing (web pages, email or SMS notifications, etc) both provide them with information they want, and keep the game fresh in their mind.
I aim to have several event notification options in Emperor, and a couple (email and SMS for cingular phones) are already implemented. The game was very social when it was a PBEM game, and I'd like to find a way to keep that feeling, instead of making it another turn-based strategy game. This is something I'll have to ponder. Suggestions, of course, are always welcome.
Still to come: a post about using jabber and XMPP as an inter-server RPC layer.