Division of community in your pet site.

[FuRom]

This concept is for those that have a community of millions of players that constantly post in the message boards, are constantly creating and deleting guilds, user shops, and other such interactive content. This shouldn't be implemented in stuff like the mailing system or instant messaging systems where they do exist. The idea is to break apart the users into smaller groups of communities that allow for a deeper level of interaction by being able to meet other regulars of the same community. This concept was picked up from playing many different MMORPGs. In an average MMORPG you'll notice that they have main servers that hold character information and such and then sub-servers that holds a maximum amount of players (generally around 2000~3000). No one realizes this, but that limitation of players on a server at a time helps the game experience! If you had a good 5~10 million players all grouped together on one server it would be chaotic! You meet 100s of people, get to know no one on a more interactive level just because of the fact you're meeting 100s of people commonly.

This concept is an idea for pet sites (or any site for that matter) that has an excess of 7,000~10,000 people on your site commonly throughout the day and night. You wouldn't even need to add much code or change your database structure much to do something like this. I would go into detail, but anyone that this article would be relevant to would know how to do this and if they even need to do this.

[cpvr]

What's the point of having other users on other servers? (division of community, yes) I know Powerpets does this and Marapets has servers setup to hold a certain amount of members, then if one's server load is high then it automatically moves the users.

[EatRamen]

I think the point would be that users would interact better if divided based on their interests or something? I'm not quite sure either...

[FuRom]

Well, the point isn't really to put your players on all different servers that are blocked off from contact with one-another, but to divide the players into smaller communities so that interaction is on a more personal level. I've not seen anything many pet sites have really done since 2004 so I wouldn't know about the powerpets thing.

The games with sub-servers and such were just an example. The things like message boards should be the main part of division of community.

[Unlimited Lumpia]

Hm, naming these different "divisions" as "towns" or "cities" so that they can develop into multiple smaller communities would be an interesting idea. However, I don't think having them completely cut off from each other would be completely optimal.

Maybe people from these different "cities/towns" can't post on boards that aren't theirs, but having communities able to interact (ie. by holding competitions, festivals, etc.) would allow for friendly rivalry and "city/town" pride.

I suppose you can say it's like a guild system, but on a larger, fleshed-out scale that every user has to be placed into.

[Sealink]

Hmmm, I get where you're coming from - but you'd need ro be a pretty big site to make that work to it's fullest.

I'd be nice on a site like neopets though :D

[Ole]

Kinda like maplestory then? Where the server has it's own separate econemy and separate users from other servers.

[EatRamen]

Or just have a row in the users table called town/city/whatever you want to call it, then use that to divide the users.

[FuRom]

Or just have a row in the users table called town/city/whatever you want to call it, then use that to divide the users.

That, and you got to consider the boards and all too. You want people to switch between the "town/city/whatever" when they want to switch to one that is not full. This is kinda like adding a crap load more message boards to moderate but this solution is only for huge sites that do have a community that is too active. By the time you reach the community that you need this, you'll already have enough moderators and such for the community.