Well, I don't know what other forum to address this too, so this one seems just as good as any other. Basically, I was just thinking about all the limitations to existing MMORPG's that I wish were different. Let me examine some of these things. First, lets take a gander at Asheron's Call, the latest MMORPG. First off, this game doesn't have any races to pick (3 HUMAN races is 1 race to me!!). It should have followed the example of EQ and offered a whole menagerie of choices. Even UO 2 is only going to have 3 races (at least that's what they have already said), but at least they aren't all Humans. In UO, there is all sorts of player interaction. You can have shops, houses, all sorts of neat things that in other games you don't have. But UO is so darned buggy I never even thought of purchasing that game. Review after review trashed that thing. Then we have games like Asheron, while they have a great working interface, they are really limited to what you can do. No mounted travel, can't own any property (other than stuff you cram into your pack). Owning property isn't a big deal as long as they had SOME type of player interaction. You can't even really PK in the game either. The PK server just sucks, because nobody even tries to play, they just all run around and whack each other nonstop, making it next to impossible to try to do anything unless you go off in the middle of nowhere for the first, oh, say 20 levels of your character. In the regular servers, you have to perform some quest, and even then can only attack other PK's (which are few and far between, really making it kind of pointless, not to mention that combat really isn't terribly exciting). How to address those issues you ask? Here's my answer. First off, the game would have several character races, Elves, Humans, Orcs, etc. that your character could play as. These races would each have their own homelands they would start out in. You wouldn't be able to attack characters of your own race, thus making it possible to start out, so not everybody is running around trying to kill you. BUT, if you venture into the homelands of other races, you are fair game. So say you're an orc traveling across the world, you stumble into the Elven homelands. You had better watch your back. While an Elf player doesn't HAVE to kill you, we all know how PK's love whacking unsuspecting saps. This would add realism, and give the best of both worlds to people who either want PKing, or want to play without fear of PKing. The Homelands for the races would have to be fairly large and allow for all sorts of quests and things you can do there, so you're not ever stuck in a situation like "Crap, I'm bored here, but I'll get killed anywhere else!". Ideally, there should be wildlands that seperate the homelands. Like say the homelands are on the outer edges of the continent, and the center wildlands really don't belong to any race or anything. It just seems like today's games either have no restriction to PKing whatsoever, or use a really cheesy way to limit it, thus making it pointless and no fun. The way I described would fit seamlessly in the world and wouldn't seem so much like PKing as just being a part of the world and realism itself. Games like Asheron seriously are lacking in player interaction features. With the method I described you could have all sorts of cool things going on. What would be cooler than rounding up your Elven comrades to wreak havoc on an Orcish town for having ransacked an elven stronghold? This would be really cool and add a lot of flair to the game. The players actions would practically be the story itself. Something Asheron SERIOUSLY lacks. Sure there IS a story, but you'd never know just by playing the game. You have to check the website just to be aware of anything that even changed in the storyline, that's how little it affects the gameplay. This method would provide all sorts of comradery and great memories for this game. One thing I DO like about Asheron is the allegiance system, making it possible for someone to start their own kingdom if they so wished (now if ONLY you could have a castle to go with it!) They should make it where in the game if you have a huge number of followers, you have the option of building a castle. This would limit the castle building, seeing as how it would be really hard to acquire a really large number of people to swear allegiance to you, and avoid the housing crowding problems of UO, where everybody and their dog can build one. Also, in Asheron, all your skills are merely manipulated by points you earn with experience. There needs to be more quest based things to advance your skills to add flavor to the game world. For instance, your only proficient in using a mace, but you want to be able to use a sword. Instead of just whacking monsters over and over to get enough skill credits to click on a button to give you a sword proficiency, why not have you seek out some famous swordsman, who will train you. He could even have a quest for you to accomplish before he'll consider it. Things like that would be much more entertaining than merely killing a billion monsters to power level. One thing I also don't like about Asheron is the ability for the custom characters. In some ways it is neat, but it makes playing as a specific character class pointless. Why be just a warrior, when you can create a custom character and give yourself the skills of a warrior, plus magic? That's all everybody does. To me, there should be some very distinct differences between the classes, and things that other character classes just can never do. Because in asheron, you can always get skill credits to keep giving yoru characters even more skills, thus honing a super character. It may take you a long time, but in the end, everybody ends up being just the same when they are high levels. I'm not sure how EQ and UO handles this, but I'd wager its handled a lot better. In Asheron, your class makes little difference when you are high level, because everybody will be able to use some for of magic and everyone is strong as hell. The skills you can learn should be determined by your class, and certain things, you can never use depending on your class. For instance, a high level Mage should still need high level warriors to handle melee combat while he whips out his spells. In Asheron, your class is really pointless, because you can crank up your melee defense all you want, so theoretically, a Sorcerer could be just as good as a warrior in melee combat!! That is so not right for role playing. Everyone is the same. The Sorcerer should be able to branch out his magic skills while the warrior branches out his fighting skills. In Asheron, you can give yourself the best of both worlds. There should be a clear division there. Anyway, I'm done ranting. What does everybody think about my ideas? Feel free to use them! I want to play this game!!! And I don't really see any commercial developer doing much of these things. Edited by - CheeseLord on 6/4/00 11:05:57 AM

cheeselord, i agree with most of the stuff you said.

ultima online: a great game, lots of places to explore, lots of people to meet and interact with...but...
YOU GET KILLED EVERY COUPLE OF DAYS!!! i havent lasted more than two weeks. the AI sucks in UO. its usually not people killing me, its those damn monsters. if you come within a screens width of them, they rush you. and if you try to teleport to another place or go inside a bulding, they fallow you in! i had a orc chase me into a locked house once. that completely sucks. and even with lots of armor and great player stats, you only last a couple of weeks at the most.

everquest: i like this game a lot more than ultima online. i like to be taken into a world where i can forget what a crappy world i live in today. besides the fact that the world looks great, the gameplay is alright. i dont mind if a game only has a few races anyway, because i usually end up being the one thats the most reasonable (i.e. a human).

also, i dont really care about owning property (houses) in MMORPGs because i like to travel a lot, and while having a house is good for holding items incase you die, i just dont see the point. i have been killed a couple of times in everquest, but not as many as UO.

i would like to see some other things in MMORPGs, like:

The ability to dig for treasure, instead of spending ALL that money on a house, you could buy a treasure chest and a shovel...you can bury it in the ground somewhere in the forest, and come back to it if you die.

a ''newbie'' feature. this is for newbies who want to actually be able to survive for a while building player stats, so that they can have a snowball''s chance in hell against monsters and PKers later on in the game. the newbie feature would be opional, and it will only be in effect until the player gets up to 25% of their maximum player stats. and you can turn it on and off as you wish.

also, a ranking system. wouldnt it be cool to see your name at the top of the list for killing the most evil orcs?

and maybe a ''instant message'' feature. like if you have a friend that plays the game also, you could keep in touch with them anywhere in the world. ultima online has a feature like this...but it runs on the power of a ''comminication crystal''. and you have to re-charge the crystal, and that sucks.

Gee Cheeselord...you just described the pvp "system" Everquest has on it''s racewar servers. And let me tell you that it SUCKS. Not being able to kill your own race? Well this is basically what happens...mules, mules, mules. What everyone condemned UO for, never even got adressed in EQ...probably because mules are so commonplace anyways. (Can anyone say faction quests?). Instead of working together to do stuff, which prolly was Verants intent, people just make as many mules as they need to do stuff.
Ok but enough ranting and let me get to the facts.
1) You cannot kill members of your own race. Have you ever been followed around by someone of your own race that had "spy" written all over them? Nope you can''t kill em, and meanwhile he''s scoping out all your stuff to see what his bud can loot off ya. Sure you can get rid of him, but that involves training something big behind ya...and we all know how dangerous that is, cause his high level bud''s prolly gonna show up then and help the NPC kill ya, losing you about 5 hours worth of experience. Many same race ppl also work as doorstops, most notably ogres and trolls...to block your exit from a zone so that someone can corner you like a rat.
2) Housing and Allegiance...nice point, I''m actually working on asimilar system in my MMORPG.
3) Skills and Quests....well a dangerous game you play there....takes VERY extensive testing and balancing before you let it out into the real world. Generally, if a player can exploit it, he will...and one botched quest may well screw you in the long run, be careful.
4) Storyline...see 2).

GameProgrammerWiz:
The point with good housing is that it should be useful....all I''ve seen so far may suffice as storage sheds. The bank served that purpose in EQ.
Newbie feature? If I''d ever do that (which I prolly wouldn''t cause it could toss it all out of balance)...I''d only enable it for the first 3 hours of play on an account. Or else people are gonna exploit it....believe me they''ll find a way.
Instant message feature? Only UO went away from that feature, and that''s cause at first they thought it was unrealistic. But you need something like that...I''ve got a few ideas on this myself

All I can think of for right now.


"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."