Still dose not exist even to this day. The purpose of this thread is partly a fun little game I just came up with, and partly curiousity to what you will want in an MMO.

First off, with starting any games, you must have rules...right? Well, just stick with the forum rules and you should be fine.

All you gotta do is post what you would think will be an awesome MMORPG in addition to the previous post.

I'll start out with saying I want blood in The Best MMORPG...Ever. I never seen blood in a MMO before, unless it's matted on the wall or in some kind of textures. But when I slay an orc, or a cutthroat, I wanna see that they're either incapacitated or slain.

Every MMORPG should have Sauron / Balrog as a playable character.....that'd be sweeeeeet

Every MMO should have Guild Wars in it. Nuff said. End thread.

Quests with interesting and involving story lines which feel like you're making a difference to the world you're inhabiting, and more of them than you can ever hope to complete on a single character.

A good rewards system for investing time in the game. I want my character to look cooler and do more impressive things the higher level he gets. There should always be something I'm trying to get more than xp.

The only way to make people feel like they make a difference in a MMORPG is to let them do things/have encounters that other players can't have. I mean, think about it. That way, your story is unique. But I fear a system like that would be impossible to implement due to whiny people whining about it too much.

Basically, I want MMORPGs to go away and I want developers to spend their resources on real games.

It has to have have leveling and some sort of crafting system (a system where the players believe they're making items) that require a massive timesink. It has to be tedious enough that the players will have to spend years in persuit of their goal(s), but not tedious enough as to drive them away.

Random number generation works wonders on the crafting system; if a player only has a 5% chance of successfully crafting what they want, they'll spend the time getting the items 20+ times until they succeed. Depending on component rarity, this could take several months. Lowering the chance to succeed can be used instead of component item rarity being as high.

Max level needs to not be the end of the use of experience earned. Some system for spending experience gained after reaching max level is a must; whether it be a system where experience is spent on non-enduring rewards, or just an alternate system of "levels" to dump the experience in to.

The ability to affect the environment needs to exist (instancing is BAD at this); enemies that take multiple days or a week to reappear are a prime example of this. Places where players can create buildings or leave some other semi-permanent mark also help. Requiring players to maintain what they've done is important to keeping them playing.

Death needs to be a penalty that sets the player back enough that they'll have to spend time recovering; not so ahrsh that it'll upset them and make them log off, but harsh enough that they'll have to spend an amount of time recouping their losses. Raw experience loss works here; they don't see the loss of experience constantly, and if they did log off and return later, they won't see anything that specifically shows how much they lost. Experience debt systems leave a much more painful mark on their screen showing that they screwed up. Allowing deleveling is a tough call, the drawbacks and benefits don't balance well.

Items should be the most important thing to the player, especially in creating a unique appearance for a player. Equipment colors and to a lesser extent styles will let players create a look other people will recognize them by. Item progression is important, but a formula needs to be created from that start that will avoid over-bloating of high end items.

Abilities and spells (assuming fantasy) need to not be automatically available. Whether they're a moneysink or a timesink, they need to be as defining to a player as their items.

If it's a MMORPG, PvP needs to be a sort of joke addition to the PvE reality of the game. A dueling system will keep those with eTestosterone issues placated; possibly even arena areas. I would discourage the use of PvP server(s), as random number combat really makes combat versus other players obnoxious, and a world where random numbers combined with people with wang insecurities decide if you're going to have fun today will just cause more harm than good.

I dunno, I guess that's it for now. Keep in mind this is my idea of both a good and successful MMOG. "Fun" is extremely subjective, and tedium is very important to a persistent game, whether people can deal with that or not.

I would love to see a MMOFPS that followed most of this; at current PlanetSide is the only viable MMOFPS and it lacks character customization and itemization. PvP is perfectly acceptable in a FPS environment, though PvE would be REALLY nice to have also.

QM

The max level thing and the raw loss of XP is in FFXI. Once you hit 75, you start getting merit points that you ccan spend on abilities. And you lose 8% of your XP if you home-point after a death.

Anyway, I'd like to see an MMO with some sort of physics engine, like WoW to an extent. It's a pity that it doesn't seem like any good amounts of minigames, either. Something you could spend a bit of time on, make a bit of the local currency, have fun on, etc. to take a break from the grind, or what have you.

I played MMOs for 5 years or so until the tedium and absurdity finally drove me to quit them altogether. I played Asheron's Call the longest because it had the most enjoyable gambling system (loot, not crafting.. craft gambling irritates me quickly).

I wish these games were about creating an atmospheric world where everyone and everything is unique and interesting, but they aren't. They provide players with illusions (of uniqueness, power, importance, etc.) and behavioral addictions in order to keep their money coming in. Forced grouping is a must, this forms social bonds and dependencies among the players... ridiculous obligations disguised as friendships (friends of use at best) that keep them logging on, consistently. The obligated tyrant and their sycophants... er monarch and vassals.

Then there's the addiction to increase in any form. Whatever you have/are, it would be better if it were +1. A lot of people are obsessed with this one IRL too of course.

The only productive use I see for MMOs is as social experiments where interactions can be observed with less risk than real world scenarios. Daedalus, at any rate, has realized some of this. Some interesting social experiments could be conducted if profit and the personal whims of the devs (see Shadowbane's "It's our vision, quit if you want to" mentality) weren't at the helm.

Eh... blah.

A decent MMOFPS/RPG. That's all! Military themed, preferably!

Something that has twitch combat over point and click. You could integrate the two rather well I think. JO sort of does that, just with out level ups. If SWG were like that I would buy it in a second.

[QUOTE=Quib Mask]It has to have have leveling and some sort of crafting system (a system where the players believe they're making items) that require a massive timesink. It has to be tedious enough that the players will have to spend years in persuit of their goal(s), but not tedious enough as to drive them away.

Random number generation works wonders on the crafting system; if a player only has a 5% chance of successfully crafting what they want, they'll spend the time getting the items 20+ times until they succeed. Depending on component rarity, this could take several months. Lowering the chance to succeed can be used instead of component item rarity being as high.
[/QUOTE]

This sounds ridiculously boring. Forgive me, but why the **** would ANYONE waste so much time in pursuit of an imaginary item in an online game?

Then again, what am I saying. These people buy game money with real money and pay a monthly fee just to play a game.

Well, that's actually the point of a MMOG. Keep in mind there are over 8 million MMOG players out there (number based off WoW, Lineage 1 and 2 subscriber bases, the 3 biggest) so this type of gameplay reels in a pretty big audience. The more action-packed MMOGs like City of Heroes only have a couple months of playability in them because they lack good itemization (or itemization at all) and have a type of gameplay that's exciting at first, but becomes annoying after X amount of time.


This is sort of a silly generalization. The monthly fee is negligible and more people don't buy/sell in-game items for real world world money than do. Consider that a MMOG should take a year to play, during which time you'll buy almost no other games. Assuming the average new games costs $50, and if you weren't playing an MMOG you'd buy a new game every 2 months, you're saving yourself about $10 a month. I've saved more than that playing MMOGs, as before I started I used to get a new game every month.

QM

There is blood in WoW, especially if you're playing a warrior and are using the rend skill a lot. Strangely enough, I've seen blood come out of rock elementals when playing as a rogue o_0

Um, Quib? Monthes on making an item WILL turn people away from the game, and make the company lose money. All your ideas are terrifyingly horrible, and would cause any sane person to lose said sanity. You might want to rethink what people are spending money on monthly for.

And to savage, old WoW had blood splattering on the ground as well, and staying there from normal attacks.

I'd like to see WoW with Rune-style fighting, but much improved. I guess I'm more into the idea of a hybrid action/rpg game, so we can have epic battles that take skill (like you find in action/fps games). Planetside is similar to what I'm refering to, but with old world weapons instead.

I want an MMORPG where I play a god and no one else does. :p

I want everything.

I want the end all be all mmog.

I want to be able to join one server and play in the present day real world. I want to be a hitman for the mafia. I want to be a race car driver. I want to be a soldier. I want to be a stock broker. I want to be a mechanic. I want to be a professional athelete.

I want to be able to join another server where there is a futuristic alien invasion of earth. I want to be a General who decides how this battle gets won. I want to be able to actually take control of provinces and countries after the aliens have taken them. I want there to actually be a point where the game resets the map because one side won. You still keep your character, but you just start over from the beginning. I want the game to actually progress.

I want to be able to join a server where I can fight in Alexander the Great's army as he takes over asia. I want to be a swordsman, an archer, or a cavalryman. I want to fight for the Indians and ride a bigass elephant. I want to be a blacksmith or a engineer. I want to be able to ride alongside the great warriors of the past.

I want to be able to join a server where I can kill orcs and dragons and **** like that. I want to be able to do all of the stuff I can do in Everquest, but actually have it real time as opposed to turn based. I want real life skill to have some part in my in game skill as opposed to just knowing which attacks to perform next.


I want all of that in one game. The first server would be the best. Real life. Kinda like the Sims, except realistic. You actually have to go to work. You can pursue fantasy careers like a football player or whatever. Get all of the best dev studios to develop this multi-engine game so that when I am racing it's like Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport, when I'm playing football it's like Madden, and when I'm playing as a hitman it's a cross between Codename 47 and playing Bounty Hunter in SWG.

The great part is these all connect. Say a wealthy businessman character bets on a race or football game. He loses alot of the money on it, so he hires a hitman to kill the player responsible for beating his team. All of the professions would rely on each other much the way they would in the real world. We'd have policemen and race drivers, football players and firemen, hitmen and marines and mechanics and engineers and anything else you could possibly want. My god that would be amazing.

Someone important please read this someday.

Hey Bill, you'd better get started working on that, it will take you 2^1000000000000000000000 years to make it.

And Bill, EverQuest is real-time. I'm not sure where you got the idea it was turn-based.

QM

Bill is referring to twitch vs. skills. He wants a twitch-based MMO game.

That makes absolutely no sense to me. Elaborate?

Personally, i'd love to see the following in an mmo:

• The development of a merchant class (might stop the kind of extreme inflation Guild Wars is going through right now).
  
• High-speed complex combat based upon player skill+numbers rather than just numbers alone (throw the speed of combat from Dynasty Warriors, the complexity of Jedi Academy's saber system and the combat system of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and throw them into a blender).
  
• A full character customization system based on genetics and birthplace (tell the system what region your family came from, and what region you were born in/grew up in, and then choose your physical and character atributes from there).

Twitch games rely on the player's skill. (think CS, DOOM, Super Mario World...)
Skill-based games rely on the character's skill. (think Morrowind, most MMORPGs, etc...) And no, knowing when to use skills isn't what I mean by player skill. Reflexes.

Thanks.

This has been available for quite some time in Ragnarok Online. Instead of a swordsman or mage, you become a merchant. The merchant is the only class able to open a shop. They can buy items at discount from NPCs, and sell them cheaper than people could normally buy them. You also get a cart, which allows you to hold a heck of a lot more items, and some interesting skills for combat. Finally, once you get to a high enough level, you can become a blacksmith, where you can make weapons that you cannot normally find (such as elemental weapons and such).

But the most important thing is that the merchants control the market. Prices can fluctuate wildly sometimes, having some good items worth 1 million on monday, and 100 thousand on friday.

SWG has a merchant tree too

I'd like a futuristic mmorpg, with ships that you can take seamlessly from planet to space. And then maybe bouty hunting, trading etc could take place. You could maybe get a price on your head for killing players...