Realm switching in MMORPGs. (purely hypothetical)

Holy Fuzz · 2005-08-25T20:06:18

Okay, so I got fed up with World of Warcraft and eventually cancelled my account. I got fed up because my character I had worked on for so long was in a PVP realm, and I didn't really care, personally, for PVP. The reason I chose a PVP realm for my character is that my friends had collectively chosen a PVP realm and I wanted to be able to play with them, which meant that I too had to choose a PVP realm. The solution, it seems to me, would be to somehow allow characters to venture between different realms. This way people who wanted to play together wouldn't be restricted to the same realm. Obviously, though, there are some problems with allowing characters unrestricted access to all realms. For technical and overpopulation reasons, there needs to be some method of keeping each character within the same realm most of the time, while allowing the character to adventure to other realms on occasion. So I propose, hypothetically speaking, a system whereby all characters may move from/to any realm freely (via portals in cities or something), each character is a "citizen" of one realm, and all of a character's exploits in any other realm are taxed. For example, if a character from realm A adventures in realm B, then his experience gained and money looted are both taxed, say, 20%. Additionally, a character would have to pay a tax on any items looted from realm B that are then brought to realm A that is equal to 20% of their sell-price. There would also be a 20% tax on all items bought or sold from vendors in realm B. Also, in the case of a game like WoW, a player could only auction off items in the realms in which they were collected. PVP honor, though potentially taxable, could either be done on a per-realm basis, or only for the character's home realm. There should additionally be a way for a character to switch its citizenship to another realm. This could be a set, constant fee, or it could vary depending on the population of the realm (realms with lower pops would be cheaper). There would also probably have to be a tax on all of the character's items and money so that switching home realms wouldn't be cheaper than paying the normal tax. So what are people's thoughts on this? - Fuzz