How to Revolutionize the MMORPG

[hannibal]

What if the game were designed so that 'levels' and 'skills' were more like stats, simply reflecting your actual abilities at the game (giving you "feed-back"). For example, when shooting a bow, the game would record your hit %, it could take into account many factors like how far away the enemy is and how strong they are, if you were moving during the shot, etc... Thus your 'skill' with the bow would simply reflect how good of a shot you are. As you progress through the game you will naturally get better with practice and your skill will advance, allowing you to survive more difficult encounters, to advance your skill farther.

The same could apply to shooting out spells. I love the spell system in Oblivion, because you actually have to AIM your fireball. This added so much more challenge and excitement to the fight for a spellcaster. Furthermore, magic could require more then just a mouse click, maybe harder spells could be boosted with a synchronized mouse movement and keyboard combination.

I apologize if this leveling system already exists in some game, but I have never encountered it (and would love to play it if it does exist).

The old Dungeon master had skill based system. When you hit something your hit skill increases and so on. Many % based games are allso skill based RQ for example.

I like skill based system better, because it allow customization. If you sneak a lot, you are better sneaker, and can became an assasin type of character. If you do a lot of fighting you become more "tank" type character, so no need for leveling, no need for classes.
So what classes are good for. A class can be basics for starting character. In your youth you have maybe trained some skills more than others. So if your father was a fisherman, you can have good harpoon throving skill, and good fishing skill etc... at the beginnig of the game, but after that you can do what ever you like!
I would like this kind of freedom a lot. LOTRO traits are a little move to this direction, but not enough.
There should be very good thinking about starting skills. It's guite stupid if you cannot hit with club without training. You are not master, but I know that if I pick up baseball batt, it can be dangerous even in my hands. But if I try to fight with that against skilled figthter I would be quite dead very soon...

The one thing that is missing though? The dungeon master...a good DM was a boon to RPG players. Making it hard but not impossible, ultra easy or capricious, but best of all UNPREDICTABLE. Anything could happen, because there was a human imagination at work.

This is what we really need!
Big multiplayer world where we have DW:s for playing groups. Maybe they are only in some adventure area, bay they run campaings for individual groups inside huge multiplayer environment.
I am sure that that kind of personal servise would cost more, like going to barber, or any other personal service.
It's very good for adult players, who has the money, but not a time for long time playing. They pay for good DM triven MMOrpg session with good characters, real interaction and so on. When we now pay 15$ / mont for MMOrpg, it would cost something like 60$ / hour / playing group of 4-8. Expensive, yes, but you would ged really good playing experience instead of general scripted adventures.

Yes, games with, "i block your attack from the left side corner of my back, with jumping in the air and holding my but with my shieldhand" are needed. For some of us. But not for most of the people in MMOrpg.

I agree with this. I like Oblivion fight, but there is nothing wrong with "rolling" the dice thing either. When rollign we need a lot of different animations, something like Role monster (read Role Master) kritical hit tables. When you managed to roll really well, you get special kill / hurt animation based on you weapon.
What we also need is some tactication. If you are in higher ground, you get bonus, if you are partially covered, you get defence bonus, if you are in shadows, you can get surprice bonus etc. A good flag based bonus system can add a lot to "dice rolling" combat, if the bonuses are big enough and people try to put themself to a posiotion that gives them advantage!

 

[RandalierBaer]

2nd point.


Changing world!

We like to explore different things, this is the reason, why we play rpg. Some of us go to places in MMOrpg which are not build for us, to see what they look like. By entering high lvl ground or even using glitches to get to land not ready yet.
So we NEED a changing world.

I. Computer rules the world, and changes it.

As suggested before, it WOULD be cool, if several AIs could fight over the virtual land, and we could be in the thick of it. Well, even the best program today, is not an AI. Computers don't get ideas, they cannot think, or even react, they can only do what someone told them to do, if something happens. It could be done, so it would feel, like there were AIs, but it would be extremly difficult, even today, because...there are a bunch of stupid things called "human players", they tend to destroy, the best AI plan, by something called "thinking".
AI controlled realms, are a playground for abuse. The computer cannot defend itself, from mischeavious players. But it could under care of GMs add fun to the game.

II. GMs rule the world and change it.

Well, well, to some degree, it is, what we see now in MMOrpg. GM generated content, gets to us players, via updates, patches and addons, or events.
GMs playing around with a realm, would be cool, but it would be also expensive. How many players, do you need, to feed a GM, beside, the server costs, and costs from making the game, or and you know, some companies, want to make profit, maybe to make annother game sometimes in the future or just to buy a golden humvee.
Cool, but way to expensive. (or is it? we could use all the gold farming chinese/korean/malaysian for this, they are cheap...*badjokemodeoff*)

In some extend, it is doable, would cost more per month, and as Hannibal said, forget the idea of 1 DM per player group. You cannot even just take what 1 hour work would cost, this GM needs to be on standby. What if more people want to play then usual? You need to have backups. What if people want to play at night? Do you close the dungeons at night??? Those people sitting around waitig for their group would need payment too...

III. Some Players rule the world and change it.

Also suggested by some people, what if we give players, the power to implement their own content. Maybe, custom dungeons. Custom PvP maps. Or player driven events.
Even more dangerous, than PCs changing the world. Abuse, abuse, abuse.
You cannot, controll such a feature. It WOULD BE COOL. But, as good, as it sounds, most people are selfish.
Sure, if a DM makes his dungeons too difficult, no one will play it, but what if someone makes it too easy? How to tell, which loot to give away? I make a dungeon, that is almost impossible, and build in a glitch, to beat it with one frost shock.
The only way, to do it, would be with "trusted" players. How find them? How distinguish between them? How compensate them? (they are not playing the game, they are working. yes, most of us would like to do such a thing, but you would need to do it a lot of the time! or it would not work)
They would be halfGMs.

This could only work, if you had the DM as a faction vs. the adventures. It would be a whole different game, more like Dungeon Keeper. Or if those trusted would to some extend realy work for the company.

IV. Anyone can change the world.

Been there, done that. Any game, with player driven economics, does it. It has not been done to much extend, but it has been done.
Most of the time, it tends to ruin the game. Because, there is always somone who wants to abuse it.


So, which way would be the most, realistic but fun one? A nice mix of all, maybe. You cannot do much to change a world in the nutshell, that is WoW. A world this small, needs smal changes, and they can go way wrong. It would need, 24/7 care, and only very carefully executed changes.
A bigger scale, like in 3025 with GM or trusted Players, controlling the overall strategy of realms could be fun, and is doable.

Also, changing characterictics of the world could be fun. Why not change the monsies in one big dungeon, from dragons with fire resistance, to worgs with an affinity to poisons? (they raided the place and stayed^^) Just, for one week, one day, or one ID. It has been done in WoW a little, with resistence in BWL. But it did not change the "experience" much.


PS. This whole, changing world thing would be way cool. Any company which does it, combined with a real good game would be for me the next big winner in the market. But i do not think, that anyone would even try it, because of the costs involved. And MMOrpg are costly enough (they can bring in much money, but if they don't they are wastland to dollar crops). Ad it as a new feature to a succsesfull game. Then you could maybe pay for it.
Or offer deluxe servers, which cost more.

 

[pdizazzo3]

I think that when you hear Dungeons and Dragons you cringe too much and it is keeping you from trying DDO. I understand that you are fed up with the confinement, but I a a legend on my server for the character that I play and I have Seven that I play regularly. Each of them a legend and each tied to each other. If I want to play and someone needs a lvl lvl 9-12 caster I have a 12 Sorcerer, but I also play a bard/ rogue and a Cleric and a Fighter and a Barbarian and a Ranger.

You can play solo or you can play with groups of up to Six (but as few as 2) and as large as 12. Sometimes I just build a party and we totally die, then we go into a tavern and laugh about how we really sucked and how it was funny because the developers changed the AI on us and we didn't expect to get party wiped by a smart rogue that kep running from us hiding and backstabbing us to death.

The fun is in the community and that is what lacks in other games, but the fun is also in the game. I am a legend in my server now for my character but for ME. I am alsoways me, whether I am playing a song to encourage my friends or fascinate my foes or swinging an Axe twice the size of my Dwarf.

The other night there was a major technical fopa on several servers and the Dungeons were almost unplayable so several hundred players went into the market place and staged a SIT-IN and they had fun doing it. Swapping stories and showing off equipment and such.

ITS ALL ABOUT THE COMMUNITY POEPLE IT'S WHY WE GO ONLINE. 😀

 

[NapoleonTNT]

I recommend playing Guild Wars. It overcomes most of the complaints I've seen here and lacks only a persistant world (Which Guild Wars 2 will be sporting in 2008-2009). Theres no fees and runs with a fanastic engine. I've seen many leave WoW to find a richer experience in GW. It may not be a true MMORPG, but who cares what its called as long as it does the job and applies more enjoyment. It may not be for everyone. Its not a WoW chaser. Best of luck to those searching for a new experience.

 

[zak_mckraken]

While I agree with everything the author said, I don't think every next gen MMO that might come out need to follow the same guideline. Some people like to gind and level and raid. Some people like to to the same thing over and over again. My cousin plays his car game every night, on the same track, trying to beat that lap by 0.1 second. The fact is games, like movies, are made to please different people and that's why we need different game. Now here's the game I would have liked to like:

Star Wars Galaxies.

Don't get me wrong, this game sucked real bad. But it could have been the greatest game ever. Here's why:

The setting. Like a lot of you, I am a Star Wars freak. Being part of the ever-expanding universe I love is the greatest feeling ever. It's a bit complicated to be in this universe because of the timeline (teaming with Anakin to kill Darth Vader would be messed up) but, then again, let the designers settle that!

The skill system, while flawed, was the most logic. Like Dungeon Siege, you got good at what you did. You use a pistol, you get good at pistols. Logic. You're bored with them and wnat to switch to swords? Okay but don't expect to be a pro at it on your first swing. It's a grat way to mold you character without having to choose from that start and not be able to switch back.

If they could redo the game with better graphics, maps that are not endless and boring, a more efficient dynamic and quest system, a redesigned skill system that doesn't take months before you're be able to succesfully shoot a Wampa with a blaster, a good space combat system that would not overshadow ground combat, I would probably drop my job and girlfriend to surrender my life to that game!

So maybe it's for the best that such a game doesn't exist after all... 😛

 

[pchan911]

What can I say that hasnt been said by every poster here =P.

Its weird so many people mentioned LOTR, but from the same peepz @ codemasters they have their first mmo.. RF Online.

For me its not the "perfect" mmo, but in my opinion there isnt another mmo like this out there.

Lets get the Cons out of the way:
It is a grind.
Yes you need to farm.
Yes there are farmers(the non english speaking type) but the world will respawn enough mobs so they really dont get in your way.
There are bosses but they spawn once very 6-8 hours (i forget).

The pros
3 Races
PVP just about anytime anywhere except Home base map.
3 All out wars a day between the 3 races.

And why it does fail.. but heck maybe it'll be fixed in the patch after the upcoming patch....
There is a Humongous Race imbalance. Simply you want to win in the end game play the Cyborg race. If your squishy... your squishy =P

With all that said. The community is great (this is all 3 races too), game play is your run of the mill timed skill/magic attacks. Pretty much RF Online the game has a solid base for gameplay mechanics but ultimately it is the players that make "most" of the content.

I dont think there will ever be a end all be all mmo, I tried wow, it bored me. I rather play the 2d Ragnarok.. -_-

Like i said its not the "perfect" mmo, but I cant think of one better =P IMO.

Turning an MMOrpg into a fps... would make it a fps =P I happen to like the cool downs and levels. It is a rpg after all, and i've been gaming since bbs's were around with Tele-Arena on Gcomm bbs's, and then Clarion fields when the internet just started to hook up=P. Anyone Remember MUDS? =P

 

[Ananan]

Refine solo play.

As some of us get older and try to maintain a professional and social life in the real world we just don't have the hours to commit to a full-time social MMORPG experience anymore.

I tried WoW last year and managed to get up to level 47 before I quit. I found myself having less time to devote to those marathon sessions and was playing in smaller and smaller doses.
When you only have an hour to play you don't have time to wait around for a group to get together. I was getting pretty frustrated that I usually had to log out by the time everyone got together.

So...

Every MMORPG should allow "hermit" characters (I can't think of a better description right now). These characters would essentially swear off Guilds and factions and grouping; they wouldn't be allowed to join and social order. As a trade off they would be granted extra powers that would potentially allow them to survive quests that normally require a group if they were skilled enough. Leveling would be much slower than normal. They could only fight one another in PVP. That would eliminate the necessity of having to balance these types of characters with the rest of the players. They WOULD be able to participate in crafting and other such skills, and auctions.

It would really help people like me who still want to experience online worlds but just don't have the time to play we used to.

 

[GrandAdmiralThrawn]

I think it might be fun if they incuded a good game editor so that you could make and run your own quests, maybe just as an option instead of playing with thousands of people you have an option to play your own campain with say around 10 or so friends and one of your runs the campain as a DM or somthing. (simalar to getting together with a group of friends on the weekend to play an old pen and paper RPG)

The other thing I hate about most MMORPGs is having to pay every month to play a game that I already bought, I just wouldn't get my moneys worth.

 

[jeb1517]

I played WoW for about 2 years and got sick of it but now I want a replacement. I've been following this article very closely for the past few days and have honestly read all the replies posted.

I looked into all the other MMO's that were mentioned here and the one that drew my interest the most is Age of Conan. It seems like they're really trying to do some innovative things. Also, it's in open beta right now which means the game is still new, which I like.

On a sidenote, I just wanted to QQ a little about how LOTRO just seems like an exact replica of WoW. If that's what you're looking for than why not just play WoW? Now, I haven't played LOTRO so if I'm wrong about it being an exact replica then sorry but it looks stupid to me.

 

[Gneisenau]

I would like to see the following implemented in future MMOs

I would like to see a world where you can choose a life on a planet or in space, you can travel from planet to planet for different things. You could invest in a ship, make it a cargo ship or a war ship, or maybe invest in a company and roam around making money and improving your ship/company. You woudn't have to loot, but would be paid for jobs you perform. You could trave farther out from the core worlds to more less populated worlds where you can take on more jobs but have less chance of getting help or stay close to the core worlds where there are more players and a better chance of finding help.
The jobs available are based on your class/abilities/equipment and are never quite the same. (I mine copper ore, you mine tin.) If you share your quest with someone, your pay is split too. Jobs (Quests) are more chain driven, and maybe even designed that the more you do for the same NPC, the better/harder the quests you get from him. You can still share those jobs (quests) with anyone you want, but the pay still gets split. Have jobs (Quests) where let's say you are a miner, you need to "Hire" protection while you mine. You will have to pay the other players (or maybe NPCs) to protect you.
You can choose any race and be anyone of several classes with the ability to learn from other classes. (I.E. warrior with a smaller healing ability.) You wouldn't be as strong maybe as a hybrid but you could customize your character more for your playing style. (warrior not as strong as a pure warrior and healing not as powerful as a pure healer, but you can at least heal yourself a little during solo missions. Kind of like First aid but better.) The longer you play a class the more powerful you become. So eventually the warrior can become a powerful healer too, but would still be a weaker warrior than if he spent his whole time as a warrior.
Crafting would be a class, not just a subclass. Something you can devote your time to instead of fighting. You would have to gather in safer places or hire players/NPCs to protect you. It would be just like any other class so you could become a warrior who makes guns instead of healing.

The idea is you can go where you want, do what you want, don't have to fight for jobs. Not everyone gets the same job.

 

[mordenkhai]

Games I've played: UO, EQ, DAoC, AC, SWG, Planetside, EQ2, WoW, AO, EVE, LoTRO (EQ the longest, since launch w/ 12 months of breaks scattered in and EVE being about 3 weeks having fun so far)

I'll be using EQ primarily as my source as I have the most experience there.

Raids

In most MMOs time and difficulty are used to determine a value of reward. Raiding typically consists of the greatest time investment, be it flagging/keying/access or time for actual content/events. Difficulty can vary but for the most part, the end-game raid encounters are the most difficult due to their ability to add so many facets as you are expected to have such a variety of class/skills/people to deal with them. This is the primary reason the "best" gear is located in raids.

I think the real problem for most people is that it seems at times, games which do have raids and pay a fair amount of attention to them seem to neglect the rewards for the group/etc content. A better balance has to be struck between the two. If raid content rewards are so much better then group players feel cheated (regardless of the merit of the opinion) and sometimes it makes their transition to raid content overly difficult (having 1/2 the entire stats of a raider). If Group content rewards get to be right on par with raid content, then raiders wonder why they put in the time for access or the long complex event time to get a similar reward for someone soloing even a very long quest and they feel cheated (regardless of the merit of the opinion). So there has to be a balance. Both groups of players need solid content, with appropriate rewards, and the fact is much like "class balancing" chances are there will always be groups of people who thing the other side has it too good/easy.


Truly Dynamic Content

This is another tough mark. See, theres a hidden catch with dynamic content, that is events that change things tangibly for others aka unique bosses who die forever etc. The article talks about "wanting to be the hero not cog in the machine" and "making content that only few people get to see" and those two things can certainly become enemies, so to speak. If I want to be the hero, I want to kill the Red Dragon, then its dead and the whole world should know I killed it. However, since I killed it and it aint coming back, well uh I guess I am the only one who got that content, and I guess you just get to be the cog in my machine?

In EQ when the Sleeper was awoken, it sounded cool. Yeah it could only be done once and then that area was going to be different.....oh wait. I didnt get to do it yet! I have been working hard to get there but GuildXYZ got there first! It made a lot of people upset. When it came down to it, in many instances (not talking about instancing content here) people dont actually want dynamic content if it means they dont get to do it as well. So how do you make an MMO with dynamic content, a dragon that dies and then its dead, without other people feeling cheated out of the opportunity to experience the same game content? Its hard, I guess you could have a pink dragon next week, then blue etc. However thats just the illusion of dynamic content, and not even a very good one at that!

Now perhaps, just perhaps this could be overcome by simply telling folks up front some content will be dynamic, once its done, its done. It might work it might not. however I think the best solution and others have mentioned it previously is....

The biggest missing piece from MMOs

The DM/GM/Storyteller/whatever ya call them, there isnt really a PnP RPG w/o them. What we really need, is someone to make a new model of how an MMO is RUN, not made. For some time I have wanted to design and develop (yaya what gamer hasnt wanted to make a game right?)a game based on this model. Instead of "Developer" makes game, launches, and game runs itself w/ minimal human interaction for errors/problems only, why not try this.

Build your game from the ground up, with an included toolkit (DMTools). While the game runs the latest expansion, like it always does, there is a team of DMs each assinged various "levels" in which they may affect the game world. They can design their own content, and add it dynamically and run it as often as they can, during everyday play. You might hear a town crier call for help, meet and NPC who is actually a DM-PC whatever the inital hook. Now you need various levels of DM powers. Say new DMBob he can run events but he can only add items of XYZ power/value cause he is new. He may have to get aproval for anything above his paygrade. While 4 year Veteran DMTom he runs events which can be long, very difficult and even reward players with some of the best items currently available. Finally you have LeadDMRob he can drop Artifacts more powerful than current rewards if he feels its worthy. In addition, while Bob can add instances, and Tom can add zones, Rob can add or REMOVE zones vua his giant metaplot driven roleplay sessions. All the DMs events go into a database and they can each choose to run others stuff, perhaps on different servers etc. They should be graded on their performance, not just quota style cause you dont want 1000 kill mob X "events" w/o any real meat. Theres a lot more detail to hammer out, I wont include it all here, but I think thats the basics.

One last thing, I said DMTools BUT I think it wuld be best if the players had access to tools that did essentially the same thing BUT didnt add it to the live servers. Instead they could submit their content, giving up any claims to it beyond the item named after them or whatever, and the DMs could peruse and use it as well. Maybe post their charnames on a page as Content Contributors or something. Now DMs could allow instancing where a "PlayerDM" could spawn mobs etc, but no rewards would spawn with them and that would allow the players to run their own stuff and hand out rewards they brought with, so theres no freebies, but that might really be complex, but workable.

So those are my ideas, I kinda wanted to make a Vampire: TM MMO using the above DM/Storyteller system as I think thats the only way it could work out. However I dont own White Wolf nor am I rich enough to make a game or propose one with them!

I'm sorry this got so long, I do think its worth the read, however I may be biased! 🙁

 

[jonathanrhunter]

My suggestions for a revolutionary MMORPG are as follows, some of these have been covered already by other people but just the same here they are:

1.) NO LEVELING/CLASSES: I've always thought that skills should be based on skill use, similar to Ultima Online. You can build whatever template you want for that character. Since their were no levels, you had to find more practical ways to estimate your opponents capabilities. This added more excitement to the game, by adding an element of the unknown.

2.) DYNAMIC WORLD: Things change over time. A tree or plant may be indigenous to one area of the game, but due to deforestation may become a rare kind of wood. Additionally some trees and plants may be replanted in other areas of the world and may bring new life to that area. The type of trees and plants may also define the wild-life in that area, if the animal/monster is dependent on it's resources. Rivers may dry up or could be dammed by players, or even used to fish, or travel. Maybe you don't have the money to buy a boat but you have time and resources to build one. I think you should be able to. Mountains would lose their resources and only new resources could be found or would develop over time. Resources are not infinite in this world, they are created and happen like they do in the real world but maybe a little faster.

3.) DYNAMIC ITEM CRAFTING: Similar to how real life is, a crafting system should be put into place that is dynamic allowing a vast amount of item possibilities, much more than is available in today's MMORPG. Advancements in a skill would require your knowledge of the technology required to make the object. There should be a way to allow me to craft what ever I want with a combination of the resources I have collected. If I have an axe maybe I want to separate it's components so I can attach a different axe head or maybe attach a different bladed weapon to the wooden head. No more cookie cutter items. Not all items should be equal. A weapon that I create may have entirely different item properties based on my skill and which resources I used to make it, then a person selling a similar item.

4.) LOOT: If I kill a monster I want everything it has! I hate killing some monster that is wearing an awesome set of armor and only being able to take 500 gold from it and some crappy items. I think the next evolution of loot should encompass everything the monster or creature has. If it's a rabbit, I want a rabbit foot, fur, and meat. If it's an orc, I want it's armor, weapons and clothing, plus the bag of gems it was carrying.

5.) DYNAMIC COMBAT: Why not combine traditional RPG game play with some more dynamic combat system? Why should all attacks be either normal or critical? This isn't D&D... Combat should calculate all things not just min-max damage, speed, etc. How about where you actually hit your opponent? Wear they protected in that area? What material is being used to attack? What part of the weapon your attack hit with? Did your weapon break? Maybe actually being able to control where you hit your opponent. If they are running away maybe you can put a well placed shot on their leg to slow them down til you can catch up. Being a big FPS-player, I'd like to see a MMORPG that might rely more on a players accuracy of a skill than having the luck of the dice come in to play. Maybe the combat range should be increased as well. Maybe my character isn't good at close combat and would opt for some long range cover and attack i.e. sniper, or maybe my character would like to shape the environment around him to create cover for an surprise attack.

6.) RISK VS. REWARD: I think that all MMO games should make things more challenging when you die in the game. In WoW you just resurrect and take sometimes a long route back to your body and your good to go again. What did the player learn? And what did the other player truly accomplish by defeating that player? Neither has gained anything from their duel. Maybe some bragging rights and PVP XP, but is that all gaming people really want? I think when you die everything you have should be available to the player that killed you to take. If not maybe someone coming by would see it as an opportunity to steal your stuff and make some money. I can't say that I enjoy losing all my stuff when I die but it certainly kept me on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next. Nowadays I just press a button, find my body, and I'm back in the game again. If players knew they could lose their stuff, maybe their wouldn't be decked out lvl 70 players running around. If they actually were challenged by losing their stuff occasionally it might make for a better trade economy and the auction houses might have more stuff in them. There are some players that want to experience the game where there is no PVP and people can't loot them, make a version of the game for these people, isn't that why Trammel was created? The good thing about that was that you could travel between the worlds and you could exist on the same "realm/shard/server" with your other characters. Now I have to make a PVP only character or a Non-PVP character and they can't even interact with each other.

 

[dreams411]

There is a very good game out there that does not throw out all of those things but does throw out some and it is very Godd. Try DDO (Dungeon and Dragons Online).

The problem with DDO is that most people that played pen and paper AD&D remember the rules and worlds of 1st and 2nd edition. Playing DDO doesn't feel like home. It may as well NOT be D&D as far us a lot of us are concerned. The rules, the places, and the stories don't make any sense to us old fogies. I know they want to push the new rule sets, etc so that people continue to buy their new products, but I have a strong suspicion that it would be a lot more popular with an older rule set like 1st or 2nd edition in campaigns like Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, etc.

 

[shadowmaster625]

The author of the article admits that UO started the genre. And WoW now leads it, despite being a completely different game. Does that make any sense?

You have to look at the game that best carries the torch of UO. That game is Shadowbane, and has been for a long time. The problem with Shadowbane is that it is buggy and lacks development resources, and is now 4 years old. But despite all that it is STILL the best comparison to UO. A modern, highly resourced version of Shadowbane is what the genre needs right now. Yet the author of the article fails to even mention the word Shadowbane. Why? Because of its technical issues? It's either that or it's because the game is flawed. Yet Shadowbane has minimal leveling, an advanced character creation system, and a total open book endgame. It's a sandbox game. Players make their own conflicts, instead of killing countless lonely hours on leveling and dumbed down quests.

The problem with the genre is very simple: it's all about money now. Games are designed to make money, to the point where they are not enjoyable at all. WoW is a joke. There's no skill in the game. It's just a timesink. The pvp is completely dumbed down, it does not take after Warcraft 3 in any way shape or form. I think WC3 is more of an MMO than WoW, not to mention a whole lot more fun. But WoW? That game is designed to make money. And people these days are so used to it that they dont even realized they're being hoodwinked. Every aspect of the game is an attack on social interaction. You cant communicate with those on the opposing faction. You cant form large groups to xp with, unless you want to get hit with a massive xp penalty. There is no endgame, aside from the eternal grind. There is no asset destruction, hence no personal stake. It's a joke, but people buy into it. Why? Because we're stupid, obviously, and we get what we deserve. It's an irrational addiction. All my friends who played WoW admit that it was an addiction. The author of the article does not do the genre any favors by failing to mention any of this. It will not change until enough players know the true nature of the problem.

I don't want to play a game to be a cash cow for someone.
I want to be able to group with 10 other players without a significant xp penalty.
I want to spend more time fighting in wars, and less time fighting in instances, tyvm. (Instances are the antithesis of the mmo concept btw.)
I want to be able to spend more time planning large battles, and less time running/hopping around in circles trying to get behind each other like a bunch of fa****. Did I mention WoW pvp sucks?
And for god sakes I don't want to be insulted by the sheer stupidity and repetitiveness of the quests. Why does a game need quests anyway? Join a guild. Make enemies with another guild. Go kill them. There's your quest. lol.

 

[dreams411]

I think some people have hit on what the real issue is here. Developers have the unenviable task of making electronic, what makes pen and paper games like AD&D so good. It's nearly impossible to replace a good GM with an online game that has little dynamic human intervention to the environment. I've been playing online games since the days of text-based BBS dungeons on my original C-64. It may be that the idea of an online game was shiney and new then, but I had better times playing MUDs that did not have a GUI, or a more rudimentary GUI like Ultima Online. Give me good game mechanics over eye candy. Even though it's nice, it does not make a bad game good.
And now that I've created my soapbox, one more point. WoW is not a good game for one glaring reason besides those points others have made. CRAFTING in that game is practically non-existant. UO is still running circles around most games for crafting and player homes and the game is ancient by most game's standards.

 

[xXDracoXx]

I'd like to throw in an idea for choosing who you play with.

An MMO could have some official large servers that could host thousands of people at a time where you would play the game like you would a standard MMO, but it would also allow users to host these kinds of servers, with as little or as many players as they choose/their connection can handle.

Characters would be allowed to connect to any server so you could choose to play public with the rest of the world on large official servers or play private with your guild only on a dedicated server.

This sounds a lot like an expanded version of D2's Open Battle.net for which the character is saved to your computer(because it's your single-player character). This kind of system allows people to modify/hack their character data files and play unfair online. As a solution, I suggest that no matter where you connect, your character is saved to and loaded from an official server who's only task is to keep character-data.

 

[jonathanrhunter]

I would like to see advancements in FPS-MMO's. There has to be a way to have hundreds of thousands of people online playing.

The max I've read about is 128 players with Starsiege: Tribes.

Can you imagine a World War FPS-MMO that supported millions of players? No more storming the beach with 16 people, instead hundreds... enemies everywhere.

 

[erloas]

The dynamic world/player created content is a great idea but is unfortunately not practical to do.
The biggest reason why is because just about any successful game is going to have 50-60k players online at the same time and there is no practical way to host that on a single server. Even that is at the lower end of players to make a profit. EVE is doing well with 30-35k players (online at one time, I know they have closer to 100-150k total players) but they have to have an incredable powerful server and even then it gets bogged down a lot. When you consider a "successful" game now will probably be seeing 250K+ players (the 50-60k online at once) and most will hope to have 1million+ there is just no way to do that on one server.

Why does it have to be on one server though? Because the world is dynamic and changing, it has player driven and changed content. What players do and create is going to be different. So if you have 10 servers hosting these dynamic worlds then after 6 months to a year of player driven content changes then you don't really have 1 game and 10 servers, you end up with 10 different games with the same mechanics. Most content that the developers want to add has to make sense in all 10 different settings, which isn't likely to happen. So then they have to make several different versions of all content they want to add to make sure it fits with their diverging servers. Or do the same thing on all servers reguardless and ignore the dynamic world that was evolving before that point. The first option simply isn't econmically feasable for a company to do, the second defeats the whole purpose of the system in the first place.



In terms of procedurely generated content, it takes an incredible amout of time to program and has a much higher probablility of failure because it is less controlled. The computing power required is also greately increased. While games like WoW have a lot of processing power that could be used before they drastically hurt their market share by removing users from their player base, most MMOs have much higher requirements already and they can't increase all that much.
Here especially the hardware people are using is more on the high end and they have power to spare, but that really is the exception and not the rule.

 

[jonathanrhunter]

What about a player generated quest system? Just an idea.

Lets say that I need particular items and I'm offering a reward to complete it. I guess this could be similar to the UO bounty system. But every quest shouldn't be about hunting down a PKer. I think it could work kinda like an auction system. Maybe I'm making a quest to retrieve 20 cow hides and I'm offering money in return. If the player completes it maybe they could get XP and money (or what ever item I'm trading) for it and I'd get the cow hides. This could create a fairly dynamic player ran quest system.

 

[gahleon]

Wow, its sounds like half of the suggestions are things that the folks at origin did or thought of doing years ago with ultima online. WOW is for newbs. There are no high stakes, extremely repetative gameplay, and boring point and clicking. UO had so much more flavor than WOW. Revolutionize MMO? Thats easy, scrap all the fools that are in management at the companies creating these games and let the actual creators have fun and create something they themselves would like to play rather than some bug infested piece of crap that they rushed to get out on time. Lately it seem that this has been a HUGE issue with almost all computer games. They are buggy, lack original storylines and gameplay, and generally aren't fun. I saw some worthwhile suggestions but any of those on here that have been UO gamers would know that many of these things have been done, tried, and generally failed. This genre has very little room for expansion because everyone is jumping on the band wagon. See the problem with MMO's is that everyone forgets that consumers who buy these games are living breathing human beings who don't have 100+ hours a week to put in on a game. Although some people actually manage to do this they aren't going to try the dozens of MMOs that keep popping up and failing. Warcraft did well in this respect since it didn't fail, however, I think that it will be almost inpossible to revolutionize this type of industry any time soon.

 

[ashabbas]

Hello everyone. I'll do my best to keep this short. There are a lot of great ideas out there. I too have played video games for about 20+years and have played A LOT of stuff. As I get older I have less and less time to play. As much as WOW is great MMO, it takes a lot of time to play. There are a couple of things I'm going to touch on, time, leveling, and genre/content.

Time: current MMO's take too much time to get things done. They need to focus more on the fun aspect instead of wasting time with markets, flight paths, reparing, etc etc. The games are TOO big so basically minimize all that fluff - its not *fun*.

Leveling: players need growth to "show" off achievements, so something needs to be designed to signify how much time a player has played. keep it simple like, number of kills, medals, achievement points, etc. there's nothing i hate more than a stupid level 70 char that sucks and kills my level 62 char. the playing field should always be equal.

Genre: okay enough of the RPGs. I grew up playing AD&D and with all of the recent MMOs its all fantasy and stuff (except for a few). I would like to see a Battlefield 2 type MMO.

bottomline point, simplify the game, not everyone has 20hrs a week to play the game and to walk in and get your butt kicked by someone who does isn't fun.

 

[helms]

Well in the case of online games where combat is more first person shooter style and not just point and click i've played a few and they all have their own problems.

First i'll talk about savage since it was mentioned about before. This game involves 2 sides and 1 player on each side playing as commander in real time strategy mode and the rest of the players are in first/3rd person shooter mode.

positives:

-unlike your run of the mill mmorpgs where you get a gigantic overhead view and can see 360degrees around yourself for a distance of 1Kilometre, this employs the first person shooter experience where you are limited in what you can see in your immediate vicinity. This is favorable since the limited view adds immersiveness.

-combat is first person shooter style

negatives:
-combat is too much like fps style, the melee/sword combat is broken - melee is not as good as the combat in the jedi games.
-there is no gigantic persistant world, its counterstrike style arena.

Next up is rakion

positives:

-has the view limitation mentioned in savage

-combat is first person shooter/ jedi knight style (I think its melee combat is even better than the ones in the jedi games)

negatives:

-as listed for savage no gigantic persistant world, but its worse than savage since it is more arena like, Savage has a much bigger world compared to counterstrike, whereas rakion has a smaller world than counterstrike. Savage has a world where you don't notice the symmetry, Rakion on the otherhand you notice.

-the movepool for melee combat is somewhat limited in the fact that if you block an enemies attack you gain the upperhand and can immediately do dmg to them e.g. the block grip.

-due to the peer to peer nature of the game there are problems with lag and latency.

-there are 4 game types in this arena type game,

The first one is a free for all where everyone atks each other. This free for is inherently flawed. Unlike counterstrike where you respawn after everyone has died but akin to wolfenstein enemy territory you respawn immediately. The problem: to get the kill you just wait for the other players to do sufficient dmg to each other and then jump in and finish the player with low health off.

The golem war. In this match players from both sides fight to kill the non aligned golem in the middle before the person who lands the finishing blow to the golem gains the item which allows him to kill the enemies golem at the enemies spawn location. Problem 1: the person who lands the finishing blow gets the item. Problem 2: It is unrealistic and you gain more from playing this type of battle than the others e.g more xp, more gold e.t.c. By unrealistic i mean in almost no situation in a rpg world will this happen, where you have to kill something in the middle so you can kill the other sides golem. There are however situations where killing the other sides commander will lead to victory. This would be fine if there was no golem in the middle and your sides golem merits the title commander, sure the golems have significantly more health than the human players and can do more damage however the AI controlling the golem is essentially an idiot.
Yes i understand that this type of match may have been created intentionally as a capture the flag scenario and that both savage and rakion were never intended to be mmorpgs so most of the negatives I listed aren't really negatives

NOW FOR IDEAS:
-some of you are saying that twitch based combat requires too much bandwidth and will put too much pressure on the server to allow millions of players. Possible solution: every 100 square kilometers in the world is handled by a different server.
-someone said that in order for everyone to look different the software developers have to create hundreds of different faces themselves. Possible solution: it has already been implemented in a asian mmorpg, i have no idea how effectively since i haven't played the game. Everyone uploads their photo or uses their webcam and the game automatically creates a digitized version of the individuals face for use in the game world. Another possible solution: mmorpg's should adopt the face+body customization available in online worlds such as second life
-for the problem that some gamers don't like twitch combat and prefer the simple combat used in WOW, possible solution: As mentioned by a previous poster have an option for the computer to control combat.

what i consider most important: No more 360 degree views for a distance of 1km around the character, however this creates the problem that it will be considerably more expensive to create the world since more time is needed.

Games that may or may not be revolutionary since I haven't played them:

The chronicles of spellborn is currently in beta testing and from the description of the game its not your run of the mill mmorpg.

Darkfall is another game which doesn't seem run of the mill however its a long wait.

 

[KermNelson]

Thanks for your comments I enjoyed reading them.

I'm not sure there are any solutions. I think the 8.5 mil WoW folks might not be represented here but it obviously has numerous players.

As Bartle's player types (Acheiver, Socializer, Explorer, Killer) just starts to demonstrate different players have different desires, we seem to also show fairly great diversity of ideas even though we're a self selecting group of TG geeks. However the more selective "specific" your game style desires are the smaller your audience. Niche games don't have the masses so can't make as much money. Companies in capitalism want that bottom line. Some may make a niche MMO since WoW has the market but their budget will limited too.

I prefer skill based systems to avoid the cookie cutter class systems. But if any system improves the levels, skills, or even just the stuff, players will grind to get better. The key may be to make the content more dynamic but we will spot the patterns and optimize our time to maximize our rewards and whatever we seek will eventually become boring and 'grind'.

I'm personally an explorer. I desire to experience the system but sooner or later the views, the mechanics, and the player interactions just aren't novel enough and I leave. Relationships with players sometimes keep me in game a lot longer but the virtual world doesn't have the appeal there that old PnP games do.

Greater tech will evolve things but I think the only thing WoW has done is appeal to the more general crowd pleasing the niche players less.

 

[Luieburger]

If you change the formula you don’t have an MMO, you have a whole different animal. You can’t re-make god of war by mixing it with Neverwinter and Diablo 2, slap a sticker on the box that says MMO and expect people to be pleased. However, I’m sure we can all agree that a “new animal” as stated above is something that we are all dreaming of, and would love to sink our teeth into.

WOW has made the "perfect" MMO as related to the other MMOs that came before it. It was built around the lore of previous Warcraft games. That along with the highly skilled and inventive people at Blizzard is what made it a success and has kept it a success.

I suppose now that WOW is the only model upon which MMOs can build upon; it is true that we will see nothing but WOW clones for time to come. That is because WOW has defined what an MMO is plain and simple. Back in the days of EQ and SWG we were having fun but never really knew what an MMO could be. WOW showed us.

You could definitely have a game where there is no leveling, no raiding, and where the monsters die immediately and where you are not thrown into a server with thousands of people, but it wouldn't be an MMO. It would be like Baulder's Gate, Diablo2, or God of War.

I think Travis Meacham is just someone who did not enjoy World of Warcraft. No there is nothing wrong with that and I'm not shouting "care bear" or "noob" at all. WOW and MMOs in general are not for everybody. The people that play WOW in my experience enjoy two things, raiding and community. It is true that you really don't need the leveling grind, nor do you need the pre-raid content to make WOW a fun game. The same may go for other big MMOs, but (for WOW anyway) that part of the game couldn't be sacrificed because the 1-60/70 grind is what allows the player to experience the "World" of Warcraft, the stories, the people, the characters from the book. It is part of what makes it so immersive. It doesn't matter if you are a raider, the game wouldn't fit as well if it was just Onyxia, Kharazan, Molten Core, and Black Temple.

That said, I have always said that the game doesn't start until level 70. People would ask "you want to make a 19 twink with me?" I would say... "I twink 60" (70 now). The game was all about Raiding. The majority of players have a 70 character now and a large portion of them raid. So says the blizzard's statistics. (no citation) Raiding is FUN (not for everybody). I was lucky enough to enjoy some of the raiding content in the game before I quit. I value those memories with friends and I value the story and the content that helped me complete my view of the Warcraft Universe as depicted by Chris Metzen.

In this way, WOW and MMO are synonymous. You most definitely could have a game that follows the ideas described in the article by Travis Meacham and it actually sounds like it could be a fun game. But it wouldn't be an MMO.

We gamers are always looking for a new fix, I understand. We want to see another Genre. It is also easy to say at a time like this when games are sparse and we are dusting off our old games hoping that they aren't mad at us for leaving them in the dark. (Starcraft is my poison of choice)

In the meantime WOW is what it is and imitators will swarm around like buzzards looking for carrion. The MMO genre will be defined by what people are willing to pay for, and right now that is WOW. We should not try to paint an ugly face on the current MMO lineup just because we didn't enjoy the games like everybody else did. Let them be. Let them play out. Let Blizzard continue to rake in the dough (so they can make Starcraft 2 better) and let the fight against MMOs die. Those of us not playing MMOs (myself included) will find our next feast soon enough.

The power is not in anybody's hands to define our gaming experience, it is in the community's hands and we shape it with our dollar, not with idealism. Such is life.

 

[Acro]

It wasn't a very much played game, nor was it an MMO, but it had some damned good ideas: Freelancer.

Basically it was the age old model of buying a car, driving a race, buying a better car, etc. However, it was also a story driven space combat simulation. So instead of driving races you'd fly missions, then come back to base, where there'd be some stuff for you to do, like catch up on the latest gossip. Certain missions would advance the story, others would just give you cash.

The great thing was that it also had a multiplayer component, in which you could fly cooperatively or shoot each other out of the sky.

Key components were:

You advanced by buying better ships and weapon systems (or swords/guns/vehicles/spells/superpowers in some other game), while the missions also got progressively harder.
The story line progresses, both in single player and multiplayer mode. Obviously in a cooperative game you'd be the people doing the advancing, but there's no reason to not have the advancements happen anyway.


This takes one of the best components of WoW and WoW-clones: story driven quests, but rather than using them as a means to an end: level 70, rep and epic loot, use them as the engine of the game. In addition, don't add such monsters as Kel'thuzad and Illidan, that everybody feels left out on if they don't get to participate in the kill, but make it some feudal universe where there's battles going on all the time. If you miss out on killing boss X, well, there's still bosses A, B and C who are just as interesting. That way you can achieve persistency in the world too, because although not everybody will be able to assist Tirion Fordring in redeeming his son, there will be plenty of other events which are just as interesting.

To achieve this, I agree with you that each 'realm' would have to be on a much smaller scale: otherwise there's either far too much content that needs to be created somehow (computer generated based on some large set of examples, eg). It has the added advantage that each server becomes a far tighter community.

I disagree with your idea that playing with just any John Doe is a bad thing. Sure there will always be some Gundolphs and Sephigolas tools running around, but in general I enjoy MMOs BECAUSE it lets me interact with random people from all over, all trying to simply have a good time playing a game.

Another thing that needs getting rid of is the possibility of even selling gold (or whatever currency equivalent is available). Have a system like in second life, where there's an official exchange rate and people can buy gold from the developer. Goodbye professionals ruining the game by camping farming spots and spamming you with tells.
Would this create inflation? Possibly, but it hasn't in Second Life.

I just hope some prospective game developer is out there looking at this free brainstorming session!

Cheers,
Acro