In a Perfect World...

This post came to mind based on a conglomeration of recent Stargate happenings. After watching the last couple episodes of Stargate Atlantis, reading a couple interviews on Joe Mallozzi's blog and seeing a new trailer for the MMO Stargate Worlds around the time of E3, I got to thinking - what would a dynamically updated MMO be like?

Most MMO worlds are fairly static the majority of the time. Many WoW players poke fun of how long they've been building the inn in Westfall or the bridge near Lakeshire. Its true, the world environment changes in some way in many patches, but those patches come around once every three or four months, if not longer. They rarely enact large changes to the world environment and the quests that go with them. While this may be a way to introduce these changes, I don't feel its truly dynamic. Truth be told, WoW is a bad example, because of the fact that dynamic content such as I'm about to discuss would be difficult to add to WoW in its present form simply because the lore isn't produced often enough - a few books here and there (most of which cover past events, not current ones) and whatever Blizzard decides to actually add to WoW is about it.

This is where Stargate comes into play. When Stargate Worlds launches, I assume Atlantis, Universe or some combination of the two will still be on the air every week. My whole premise is this: What if the game content was updated weekly and the game world was affected by the changes in that week's episode?

Take a leap with me now. Let's assume SGW is live and let's assume it has Atlantis-based content already in the game. Last week's episode was about an alternate-reality Earth ship - the Daedalus - just "hopping" into the reality of our heroes. The Atlantis team then boards the abandoned ship to check it out and are thus on it when it hops to another alternate universe. The team must then find a way to get back to their own universe while surviving the circumstances they hop into in these alternate realities.

What if, after the episode aired, the game was patched to have a similar occurrence available to our players? Would you make the decision to investigate this mysterious "double" of one of your ships? Will you blow it out of the sky instead? A series of quests could be added based around the plot of the current week's episode.

Another example, if you will. Atlantis is involved in a rather large battle in which it is damaged visibly in the television episode. After it airs, the game is patched so that Atlantis is shown as damaged in the game, as well. But, it won't stay that way. Over time it will be repaired, perhaps by the following episode, or maybe a couple weeks down the line.

This is all incredibly dynamic content. I realize it would also be incredibly ambitious to attempt to meet such an update schedule, but, like the title says, in a perfect world, I think this would be perfect to add to an MMO like Stargate Worlds, that has active lore being dished out on a weekly basis.