I was brainstorming on a design, and was thinking about something I had asked about in the earl stages of Ultima online, and that being farming in a MMORPG. I know that it has never been implemented, and the closest thing to it I've seen has been in the Star Wars MMORPG. Do you think it is feasible to have farming in a MMORPG. Maybe something along the lines of the Harvest Moon series? I'd really love to hear other people's takes on his.

http://www.harvestmoononline.com/
Might wanna look around there a bit. They have some interesting ideas. In most MMOs, though, I think farming would go against the flow of monster farming and questing most seem to stick with. It reminds me of when I used to play Tibia. In Tibia, wheat grew, and if you were there when it was time to harvest, you could cut it, mix it with water to make dough, and then mix it with various other ingredients to make bread and pasteries. Till it went commercial, I really liked that game.

There are Ultima Online freeshards with farming systems...
one is http://www.oldworld.de, but its in german.

There is? I haven't been on for a few years, so I didn't know. I guess there's another reason to give Ultima Online another chance.

Im adding a farming system in my RPG and if the game is good, it will go MMO. A little known MMO called Dransik had a farming system that worked well. There were community fields, so anyone could plant there, and crops grew within a day or two of in-game time. I think its a good idea, and I plan on using farming as one of many ways to make a business in my game.

The real problems that you run into when you start allowing something like that, is that you either make it a professional option, or you end up with the normal "who planted this wheat and what do they think of you coming by and just stealing it?". Increased realism leads to questions that question things when you don't make it real enough.

That being said, I think it would be great if there were portions of the game world that had wheat or corn growing (or whatever form of grains you want to put in the game) and during harvest season it gets all cut down, then during winter it's short. This would allow you to have a relatively dynamic landscape and wouldn't be *too* hard to implement overall.