The Future of RTS

My favorite genre is Real Time Strategy Games, a field where user generated content is already employed quite liberally. As we discussed in class balance issues have arisen in RTS content, from Warcraft II's lack of random player placement on custom maps, and has been resolved... mostly, in more recent games such as Starcraft and Warcraft III. So where does user generated content go from here? With the push for consistent worlds a whole new structure in RTS could arise. Player created maps are uploaded at their creation, in a manner similar to Spore creatures. These maps become small planets that spawn randomly several places in a vast universe. Once A player conquers a map it becomes part of their "permanent" empire, A player can fight any player on any map to try to win that map from another player. Maps that are battled more often are perceived as more popular, and thus more iterations of that map will be spawned in the universe. The end result is a universe with self regulating map selections that is completely user generated.