Most of my gripes are regarding lack of realism. I like to keep things close to simulation in a game. When any feature or event is exposed which deviates from that, I find it bears a negative impact on my suspension of disbelief.

Instances

I was out of the MMORPG loop for a while; I played UO and EQ, took a vacation from them, then played WoW and the recent LOTRO weekend stress-test. I was appalled at the 'toyish' feeling of the more recent games. Less like a realistic fantasy-world simulation, more like a "press the bar, get a cookie" machine. Instances were the icing on the cake. I can understand the need to load-balance, but instances are a severe violation of the "acceptable realism" threshold, as far as game design goes.

Statistics

I find statistical representation in games caters to the 'achiever' type of player who likes to see numbers, and likes to see them increase. If game focus is less on achieving numbers and perhaps more on community building and improvement of immersion, then I feel a game could surely benefit.

Floating Names

Part of the fun of online games is the element which their offline counterparts lack: other players. Interaction with said other players includes introduction, which floating names, in a way, fast-track, thus losing a little of the interactivity of such games.

Lack of Fog-of-War

Granted, it takes only a short period of time before every map, secret, item, creature, and location are posted on a web fan-site, but for those folks who appreciate exploration of the unknown, with the return of fog-of-war comes a suitable goal: exploration and discovery!

Non-continuous maps

Some games do this, others do not. I enjoyed UO (and every Ultima since VI) for this reason: I don't like seeing a "Loading..." screen.

Equipment based advancement

God, I hate this. What a lazy, cheap, hack of a system.

Same gameplay in different clothing

The only thing that ever changes in most MMORPGS are the numbers involved. There is no difference between killing a rat at level 1 and killing a dragon at level 60. And if there is a difference, it's superficial.

Strip off the fancy graphics, and you find that you're doing the exact same thing except the underlying numbers have just gotten bigger.

Enemies never get smarter. They never require different tactics. In fact, the only "tactics" available are pathetic non-sense. See below.

Pulling, tanking, kiting, buffing, crowd control
Holy crap, what a bore! The same 10 year old non-sensical contrived BS repeated endlessly.

"Uh oh, there's 2 groups of 3 orcs standing in a circle for no freaking reason...what are we going to dooooooooooo???!"

Quick, put 25 magic spells on me! I'll shoot the left group with a FIREBALL, there's no way the other group that's 20 feet away will ever notice!!

More cheap laziness on the part of developers.

Absolute linearity, Cliche, and insularity

Pretty much every MMO out there has a simple setup: linear progression. You kill things/do quests. This gives you experience. You also get gear. You level up, you get better gear. You get to the level cap. You screw around for a bit. They raise the level cap.

Rinse and repeat. Old content disappears as time goes on. Ultimately, the game only really exists right after an update.

No respect for suspension of disbelief

Killed that bad guy? Well, behold! Two seconds later, he's popped back into existence. Not even an attempt at an explanation is made. In WoW's instances, for example, you kill the same bosses and mobs over and over again waiting for the RNG to spit out your loot. Hardly a shred of story is provided, and no one cares to read that even. It's just kill, get loot, get experience, move on. Everything else is just loosely applied dressing.

Insularity

Cutscenes? Nope. Non-RPG genres? Nope. Something other than random and statistics based combat? Nope.

Classes, crafting, crowd control, /random, cooldowns, mages, spiders...

Why does it seem that every MMO is an MMORPG and every MMORPG has these cliches? The entire market is small and still remarkably insular and inward focusing. You're not trying to innovate, you're trying to do what that last guy did, because he was really successful. That last guy is always WoW, and nothing is going to topple it by trying to be more like WoW than WoW is. Nothing will likely topple it without an even more insane collaboration of forces to gaurantee market success. Maybe it's time to stop trying to be the next "big one," with more classy classes and more auto-attacking random throwing super-fun combat and boring raids and focus on a more modest but innovative approach to the genre? Everything is reinforced in immitation, but the flaws in particular stick. It's easier to copy something badly and magnify the flaws than it is to extract its pure essence.

Something new is gauranteed to either flounder or succeed at least somewhat on its own merits.

Slot-Machine style Gameplay

You may crit/hit/miss/be blocked/be dodged/be parried/be resisted. Pull the level, put on auto-attack, mash two or three buttons, and off we go!

WOOO BIG NUMBERS! OMG FUN.

Oh wait, you've been crowd controlled by eight people. Now you get to stand here and die.

Rinse and repeat.

Remember those games that they had on those...what were they called again...

Consoles? Yeah...those. The ones where you press buttons to do everything. And some even had jumping, and collision detection, and actual combat manuevering, and evasion. And you had to aim. Hell, you COULD aim. You could actively try and apply manual dexterity and wit to influence the outcome of the game while engaged in play. How old fashioned.

Impermeable barriers

You invest alot into MMO's. Your time, your energy, your effort. You can't get that back. That's understood and accepted.

Of course, to add salt to the wound, you can't even shift it around within the game world. You have picked your class which will perform one of the three main roles, which apply to the Cliche and stereotyped section: Tank, Heal, Do damage. You may only do one of those things with your character. Some characters can only choose one option.

There is no balance here. If there are too many of class x, you can't just make more. It's a huge investment for one person to shift their class on a personal level. Lets talk about some entry-level economics here: the supply of any given class is inelastic: it costs too much to switch classes for it to be a viable method of population and functionality balance. You have no way of reliably knowing exactly what your role will be at endgame, and this is only a problem because the game is linear to begin with and endgame is where you will spend most of your time. The class issue is only a problem because of the cliche'd "Tank/Damage/Heal" stereotype and the class stereotype. If you had a game where players could specialize their characters with only skill restrictions and no class restrictions, you could allow for elasticity in player roles because the investment into the character would be shiftable.

In laymens terms, you can change your role easily, and your role isn't so game-breakingly significant.

WoW brought soulbound items as a way of economy balancing into focus. You put on your gear, and it's out of commision. The only thing it's worth now is a small vendor payout. And now it's become popular to circumvent the economic system to avoid inflation. You have to pay repair costs to curtail your gold gain. That entire thing is riddiculous, of course. The value of currency is the efficiency of the economic system. Everything in that game seems to be arbritrarily tacked to some value. Laize faire works well in videogames if the economy is modeled realistically enough. Of course, it's much easier to try and peg everything down and prevent horrors like inflation/deflation. That worked so well for Russia.

Where did inflation in these games come from though?

Well, a lack of economics. Players are supplied with a simple and linear motive and are placed into an ignorant world with more impermeable barriers: you can infinitely kill monster x to get drop y. You are creating currency every time you do so. Drop y is a static good: it, like classes, has only one role. If people stop wanting whatever drop y gets them, it is now completely worthless.

This naturally happens over the course of the game. Everyone gets different batches of drop y's, and then they level/get better gear. Drop y is useless. The crap stacks up. The only reasonable economy is at the endgame. In WoW, a good example of this is the mining profession: not only are crafting professions that use its reagents severely undervalued yet overpriced as drops are the main form of gear progression (Which is, in itself, another tired cliche), they lose value automatically as you progess. Copper is worth absolutely less than iron is worth absolutely less than mithril, etc. When everyone was stuck at level forty, mithril must've been cool beans. Now it's crap and worthless. Your mithril is devalued because it is not used for anything at the endgame.

This problem stems from the linear progession model and the simple world. If character development focused on efficiency rather than absolute power, gameplay involved more skill, and economic interactions like harvesting, crafting, and trading had more relation to player goals, things would be better. If copper was used more in the way it is in the real world, where copper semiconductors are now the NEW thing all over again, things would be better. You wouldn't have the barrier of absolute worthlessness in dealing with materials. You wouldn't have the barriers put in place by leveling progression as a level bracket becomes old instead of end-game.

Technical Flaws

Gameplay is hindered because servers can't take it. No technology is developed to address the problem: "well enough" is left alone. No innovation.

Technology is developed to be just good enough for release at the current time. Plans for the future are made hastily if ever. Example: You can't fly in Azeroth in World of Warcraft. You can fly in the new continent of Outlands, but Azeroth is made only to allow flying by Gryphon points. No systemic design included. Even the development team seems to work with the same linear development paradigm that their design team reflects in gameplay. You can't build an evolving thing like an MMO with such static paradigms.

Unless you settle for "good enough" and no one else beats you.

Involuntary Play

No, not that tired "games are addictive argument."

I'm talking about required grouping for progression, random drops requiring repeat runs, grinding for experience with no learning or new gameplay present. The entire thing is built to extend playtime while providing as little new content as possible. You play to get stuff even though you'd rather not play in a certain way so that you can enjoy yourself later, hopefully.

My two cents. Hastily typed out in one sitting while I have low blood sugar and haven't eaten in awhile, and I'm too lazy to look it over. Good luck.

Quests that suck. If a quest is one panel of text no conversation just "OMG THE FOREST IS UNDER ATTACK KILL 15 GOBLINS AND SAVE THE DAY" rewards are .... Useless pare of boots useless pair of gloves minimal amounts of money. Quest rewards shouldnt be shown it should be a surprise at then end. Non of these tiny awful quests because someone wants u to talk to someone. Have some story thats the point of a quest. (I'm looking at you W.o.W)

Player shops get me ticked too I dont want to leave my machine on all night use an auction house or something that doesnt spam an area with people and fill servers up!

Horrible inflation! If there arnt enough money sinks as to money creation theres a problem in the future and things will become inflated. And sooner than u know your gonna have loaves of bread that cost 1000 gold...(Runescape anyone?)

Combat only games. Mini-games provide a contolled alternate source of fun within the world. Not everyone wants to fight fight fight all the time. Its a world full of people you should interact with them other than the occasional chitter chatter Minigames that require teamwork within the world will build the sense of community inside the game.

Overuse of the same 3D model. (*cough* WoW *cough*) The art team should make new monsters not reuse the same models... It just looks crummy. Same for icons... 2 Icons that are the same not only are confusing but look really really bad on the developers.

Travel between major towns and cities not supported for quick access. All major towns of the same Faction should be linked by teleportation or some other fast mean of travel no one wants to wait half an hour for a group member to make its way from city 1 to city 2 Its rediculous wasted time in which you feel very on the edge and it makes people grumpy!

My beef with EvE is the lack of a life cycle for characters. There are just higher and higher plateaus of ability, and whenever the top tier starts getting populated the developers patch in a new ship or technology that only the creme de la creme can gain access to, which means any character under two years old is utterly inconsequential in the great scheme of things. Heck, in 0.0 wars you need a T2 equipped battleship just to be a foot soldier, and it's a year of training to be worth anything in one of those.

Sure, you can fight in a HAC after seven or eight months, or pirate in a Thorax after just two, or even go out and ransom barges after one day of skill training, if you know what your'e doing, but in order to really be participating in the fights that decide the future of the galaxy, you need to be in the elite fraternity of players who joined in 2003 or 2004, or buy one of their characters from them. It's their world, and everyone else is just visiting. I suspect that the gulf between veteran players and the gankbait newbies will be the downfall of the game.

There should be a life cycle, a way to graduate from nub skool and get your teeth into the meat of the game, a point after which character skill grinding becomes far less important than cooperation and organization with others. That plateau should be reachable within four to six months of starting the game, and should have an unfettered carrying capacity.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage My beef with EvE is the lack of a life cycle for characters. There are just higher and higher plateaus of ability, and whenever the top tier starts getting populated the developers patch in a new ship or technology that only the creme de la creme can gain access to, which means any character under two years old is utterly inconsequential in the great scheme of things. Heck, in 0.0 wars you need a T2 equipped battleship just to be a foot soldier, and it's a year of training to be worth anything in one of those. Sure, you can fight in a HAC after seven or eight months, or pirate in a Thorax after just two, or even go out and ransom barges after one day of skill training, if you know what your'e doing, but in order to really be participating in the fights that decide the future of the galaxy, you need to be in the elite fraternity of players who joined in 2003 or 2004, or buy one of their characters from them. It's their world, and everyone else is just visiting. I suspect that the gulf between veteran players and the gankbait newbies will be the downfall of the game. There should be a life cycle, a way to graduate from nub skool and get your teeth into the meat of the game, a point after which character skill grinding becomes far less important than cooperation and organization with others. That plateau should be reachable within four to six months of starting the game, and should have an unfettered carrying capacity.

The difference in practical fighting between a one year old toon and a three really isn't that much if the newer player specialized his skills. The three year old player can do much more, but you can only do one specific thing so well. What you are talking about is perma death, which would be pretty bad in eve considering how often you get podded.

I agree with Iron Chef Carnage one the problems with MMO is that they arn't cyclic. I'd much rather see the situation where the games are played in cycles so that during a 3 month cycle players build their characters and do all the usual MMO but then at the end of those 3 months it time for those characters and all players have to create a new character for a new generation. You could add clan building to it to add more long term development. So that the players not only build their characters but how they performed during a cycle determines how much their clan improves or declines. Add in clan upgrades to bolster and give advantages to future generations. For example your clans wealth and business rating would determine how much starting money the character has and how money in terms of support funds they are given at the start of each day.

That way you newbies and veterns can compete with each other and you still have a form of progression. Also it makes it easier to deliver new content since you have three month development and release cycles.

I'm not suggesting perma death, just an upper limit of capability. The argument that a one-year old character can be competitive in exactly one field if he's dedicated all his time to specializing in it isn't a very strong one, because it's true. Knowing what I know about how the game works, if I set about making a character that would be a worthwhile member of the game world, I'd have to tweak him in creation and set him up with some twinked implants and go a full year of objective oriented training, without experiencing any other aspect of the game. Only then would he be useful as a grunt combatant alt.

That's no good. It makes the world smaller and leads to class-based injustice. A "top level" at which you stop developing a character and either develop a new character or just keep playing with the one you've got is the solution I'm looking for.

Yet another bizarre thing with avatar gender - Maple Story allows for a player to be one gender and have avatars of the opposite gender, BUT all your avatars must be the same gender. Why???

Dating back to the UO days (I was online on day 2 only because I was on a business trip day 1), I was always annoyed that the skill or experience advancement was such that you could walk through town and see EVERYONE being "GrandMaster". If you were to chart the incidences of the skills in the game, a significant portion of people were maxed out in not one skill, but maybe 5 or 6. They attempt to limit this with skill caps but that only made people specialize more and ignore the rest.

My solution would be that, just as in the real world, there should be a normal distribution of skills, etc. Running into a TRUE grandmaster should be very rare (and therefore awe-inspiring).

On that same note, why is it no big deal to have magical weapons, armor or items? Because everyone has many of them. Again, there is the idea that EVERYONE who plays should be able to be the creme de la creme and have top notch equipment. This, of course, has the effect of normalizing all this stuff so that it doesn't really matter anyway.