If I could fund/organize/finish an MMORPG, I'd set it up like this: The newbie registers and chooses one of 3 major continents he would like to live in. Then, he can choose which town he would like to be from. There will be a 4th continent and many islands where no one can "live" in, but there will be sort of, evil NPC towns and stuff there...not to get into that... Each continent is massive, and there is sort of an Olympic tournament held each month or maybe half a year between the first 3 continents (4th is not allied with them). Different events are available (such as solo, 3-person-team, and 6-person team, and magic/no magic etc.). You start by signing up for an arena tourny in your town. The winners go on to the section of their country. The sectional winners go on to fight the other sections in the country. The national winners advance to the regional tourny (between the other countries in their section of the continent) and those regional winners face the other regions for the continent title. Then they advance to challenge for the world title. If you LOSE a tourny anywhere along the line, you can adventure into the world and level up for the next one, and gain better equipment. The winners of the tournies will be so busy travelling to their next arena for battling in the next tournies that they won't have much time to fight monsters and power up. Winning tournies won't give them much EXP or statistical advancements, but for every tournament they win, their names will be engraved somewhere forever, and their continent all the way down to their village will have a mark of their victory. They may win a few prizes too. OR you can choose not to fight the tourny and just explore the beautiful world, and do the monotonous things in MMORPGs. Plus maybe there will be a story to actually involve in. Maybe. Basically does the tournament idea sound good at least? BTW I haven't played much MMORPGs. --Sylon

PK'ers would hate it because it's too organized, not chaotic enough.
Carebears would hate it because someone might get their feelings hurt.

Then there's the problem of getting all these people on at the same time, what if Legolas231 is next in the tourney, but he hasn't logged on in for a few days.

The technical problems with link-deaths, dual-logging etc... are there too, but rules could be built around that.

Perhaps this could be simplified into an ongoing gladitorial system. Where players could go to an arena and fight people (if anyone's there), thereby building up points which would open up larger venues.

Just don't know if it's possible to base that much of the game on a dueling-system.

i wouldnt enjoy it.

Its like a level 23 player is going to be better than a level 22 player. You have to allow for skill during the fight. Some twitch fighting maybe.

I would only fight in a tourny to level up. I would definitely want a story and lots of other things. This alone would not be enough.

Good points...! I guess I should have explained a little more, though.

Nohup, the PK system wouldn't have much to do with it. There will still be PKing outside of the tourny system, if I can arrange one that would work. "Carebears" opinions don't matter. Hehe.

Riviera, I want it to be a 2D "skill" game like you said. Not something one-tactical like clicking and letting the CPU take over (like in Runescape). It will involve blocking jumping slashing magic and more, like Mortal Kombat!...it might lag because of that but then again the 2Dness should make up for it right? :) I hope. By then CPUs will be so fast anyway, though. A level 22 may not lose to a level 23, or a level 25. Or, a level 30, if he's super duper and the lag ISN'T super duper.

But Riviera, the purpose of fighting in the tourny would be to championize your hometown. You will score sort of, a medal, a point, for your hometown and section, nation, region, and continent. In this way the 3 continents will constantly battle for who is the best at the games--who produces the most skilled fighters? Each nation within each continent will compete the same way. If you love your land and your fellow people and you fight for them you will feel comaradery like in other MMORPGs. I will do my best to make the land look gorgeous and have the music sound fantastic, unique to each continent. I'm not personally targeting anything towards you Riviera, particularly because it is only a fantasy. Just sayin' ya know. PKers can kill their own continental allies because the "OLympics" are not restricting PK action. It will be separate. Even in the events the competitors won't really die, they'll just "lose" when their HP goes out, but it will replenish afterwards. Would any of this be more enjoyable now? However far-fetched?

Nohup I think when you said the problem with getting the people all to log on at the same time, in time for their match...is the strongest problem. I could think of ways around it...but they might be a little overboard. What about, instead of matching up challengers in an organized fashion (thisguy vs thatguy, him vs her, bum vs hobo, the winners then face themselves), make it so they are randomly selected to match up. So if 9 players from 9 towns are supposed to show up for the sectional tourny, but only 5 do, then #1 vs #2, #3 vs #4. Then #5 vs the winner of 1 and 2. THAT winner then vs the winner of 3 and 4. If no one shows up at all, then the tourny in advance after that one will only have 1 less competitor. Maybe we would need a high amount of registered users, but if the game is good enough that should work out!! Depends on me I guess. If a world champion is a false one, the tourny-missers should be that much more determined to make it for every event next time!!

And it might seem far-fetched but I plan on making the world HUGE. The game will not solely "focus" on the tourny. I will not allow my game to be played until I make a humongo world chock full of secrets so hidden you're bound to find many that no one else will. Items, temples, riches, beasts, passageways, entire LANDS, anything, there will be plenty of secret stuff. I wouldn't compete with today's market if I left that out, especially if my game is 2D. Besides I want my game to be cheap, too. I don't know much about much yet but I'll learn soon, especially since I came here to gamedev.

A story will be there, too, a deep one where you can research things about it in a library. Also you can find secret quests by reading books as well as by doing other things. The actual events of an in-game story might be hard to employ, though, if that's what you mean, Riv.

There will be a job system as well. Maxing out in all jobs will take a lot of time, and new abilities will be available (overused RPG idea but good nonetheless).

I want "world jobs" as well as battle jobs, but I will make sure they aren't boring.

There will be puzzles to solve, where you as a level 50 might pass a temple's puzzles and advance while a level 100 will have no freaking clue how you did it.

The 2D animation will be fluid, not a puny 3 frames per movement. More like Metal Slug animation.

The point is I want my game to have much of everything within my range of creation and development.

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Nohup, what's link-deaths and dual-logging? I never played MMORPGs. Are link-deaths disconnections? Thanks for telling me all this good advice and stuff.

--Sylon