The few MMO strategy game design attempts I'm familiar with were all fundamentally broken and terrible. It's bad if the winning "strategy" is to spend every waking hour playing 1000 smurf accounts. It's also bad if the winning "strategy" is to spend every waking hour growing an alliance of as many people as possible. Mechanics can't allow one group to take control of the game and hold it forever.

I think a MMO strategy game would have the best shot at being interesting and balanced if it was split into shards of a manageable number of people, if the shards were reset once in a while (e.g. at the victory of one faction), and if alliances were fixed for the duration of the life of the shard to prevent the degenerate largest-alliance "strategy". There would still be the problem of smurfing, including smurf accounts stacked on the same side, and smurf accounts spying on the opponents, that has to be dealt with somehow.

The few MMO strategy game design attempts I'm familiar with were all fundamentally broken and terrible. It's bad if the winning "strategy" is to spend every waking hour playing 1000 smurf accounts. It's also bad if the winning "strategy" is to spend every waking hour growing an alliance of as many people as possible. Mechanics can't allow one group to take control of the game and hold it forever.

I think a MMO strategy game would have the best shot at being interesting and balanced if it was split into shards of a manageable number of people, if the shards were reset once in a while (e.g. at the victory of one faction), and if alliances were fixed for the duration of the life of the shard to prevent the degenerate largest-alliance "strategy". There would still be the problem of smurfing, including smurf accounts stacked on the same side, and smurf accounts spying on the opponents, that has to be dealt with somehow.

The few MMO strategy game design attempts I'm familiar with were all fundamentally broken and terrible. It's bad if the winning "strategy" is to spend every waking hour playing 1000 smurf accounts. It's also bad if the winning "strategy" is to spend every waking hour growing an alliance of as many people as possible. Mechanics can't allow one group to take control of the game and hold it forever. And there has to be<br /><br />I think a MMO strategy game would have the best shot at being interesting and balanced if it was split into shards of a manageable number of people, if the shards were reset once in a while (e.g. at the victory of one faction), and if alliances were fixed for the duration of the life of the shard to prevent the degenerate largest-alliance "strategy". There would still be the problem of smurfing, including smurf accounts stacked on the same side, and smurf accounts spying on the opponents, that has to be dealt with somehow.