Most monsters/Bad guys will freely roam the world over a giving distance. Where appriate they will guard a giving location or patrol however most will freely roam.

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Original post by wodinoneeye Having monsters that do more than stand around like mannekins (or patrol the same pattern endlessly) til you get within the exact range which then scream and charge at you. (Even better dont lay them out on the terrain in a nice minefield pattern.) Ones that run away and you have to hunt them would be nice. Not having them respawn immediatetly -- especially right next to you -- they should crawl out of the woodwork offstage (and logically) -- might need more special instances that the monsters/baddies dont respawn at all. Fewer number of monsters (but many more kinds) in their appropriate environment which use that environment and act in groups (when appropriate). Have them actually use tactics (even if it has to be a selection of canned choreographed scripts). Tactics using skills instead of the same old sequence you always use because they all basicly do the same thing and certain ones deliver the most damage(or you have to fire the attacks all off because they have reset timers which forces you to go thru most of your 'special attacks' before repeating. Incremental crafting which adds value/improvements to items instead of the endless making of stuff (which noone except the venders usually get) to level 'crafting'. Many more crafting variations so that everyone doesnt go down the same path. Components being produced by more searching (more possible substitutions) -- with fewer repetitions -- better if you actually make something for a specific purpose/customer -- more subcomponents which can be substituted/customized/fitted.

I get bored easily if it is repetative.

I want new challenges, so i wont have to do same instance grind over and over. In raid encoutners, for instance, the boss is usually fought in the same room over and over with the same tactics. If, say, it was possible to meet the boss in different locations that altered the gameplay for the boss it would be something i would welcome.

The main feature in MMORPGs for me is the Massively Multiplayer Online part. I love joining in groups of human-players and try to work together in some dungeon or solve some problem in the gameworld. I love clanning/guilding, and doing guild vs guild competitions or activities. I love being a part of holiday/special events in MMORP gameworlds. Though you could play these games just by yourself, soloing in the wilderness, but what's the point? You could probably have a better solo-RPG type of experience with a single-player RP game rather than one that has to be built within the many restraints of the MMO genre.

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Original post by hplus0603 I want to be able to quickly find a pick-up group of sane, funny people, and then quickly find an area suitable to our group for hunting. I want the combat of the evening to be varied (not just grinding the same mob over and over), and the rewards to be reasonable for an evening's work. I want the session to be 1-4 hours in length. I don't want to grind. I don't want to level much. I don't want to spend months before I can play the "nice" parts of the game. Meanwhile, I want the environment to be dangerous enough, and matter enough, that good teamwork is required. Think the death penalty in EQ: it was very harsh, but that meant that dieing was a real problem, and your group had real incentive to work well together.

Lol total opposite of me. I want lots of quests and a small cast of deeply-characterized NPCs that I interact with many times, not see once and forget about. I don't want to be forced to group or penalized for soloing - if anything I should be rewarded for killing a boss all by myself. I want to die when I don't pay attention or have bad luck, but I don't want the death penalty to be worse than needing to hike back to where I was. The group-play I want is a nice regional/global chat, worldwide marketplace, out of game messageboard, lots of emotes, selection of clothing and appearances for avatars, and maybe some facilities to help people get together in private, possibly monster-free areas which allowed conversations of R-rating or higher. Preferably clothing should not have stats attached to it, I want to wear what looks best.

I honestly couldn't care less if there was no leveling and all the normal monsters were one difficulty and all the bosses a bit harder. Combat should be their either as a strategy puzzle which must be solved to advance a quest, or as an arcade-style activity to gather monster parts for crafting. Farming could be a similar minigame which produced ingredients for crafting (assuming you mean actually farming vegetables). Crafting would result in creating clothing, might be necessary to complete quests, and might produce other things like machines, buildings, animals, etc. I'm not sure what would constitute village building - I'd like to build my own house or help NPCs build/rebuild stuff in my particular instance of the game, but activities where all players have to donate junk to make something happen for everyone suck. World events as a whole suck unless they are festival/holiday type things or humorous things.

Territory ownership by enemy NPC's/Monsters. I suppose following up on the enemies that do more then just stand around AI.

Suppose the towns themselves can be taken over by whatever fiend is in the area if they are left to over-spawn. Then that may create the need for actual patrols to keep the town goblin free, a mild reason to grind. Shopkeepers who were killed in the raid will only respawn after the town is cleared.


Monsters that use the equipment that they may drop during the battle before hand. Adjusting their difficulty by some amount so as not to make them all the same.

balanced pvp.

I know its one of the hardest things to get right, but it erks me when its wrong. And I dont just mean a perfect rock paper scissors balance between the classes, I mean each class, in their own way, needs to work about just as hard to kill stuff.

Take world of warcraft for example, some classes need timing, 6+ skills and a little bit of luck to kill other players. the mage needs, on average, like one spammed spell and 2-3 support spells, thats it. And they slay almost everything.

Full loot, Full PvP. Like ultima online, or darkfall ( coming soon! ).

Full freedom to do as I wish wish no classes or levels.

Honestly, most time is spent talking / attempting to organise things!

Communication is key, particularly when raiding! Make group activities easy.
Combat is important, PvE & PvP
Crafting is important
Farming is dull, make it quick or minimise the requirement to farm
Faction grinding is dull unless combined with something more fun (dungeon running, PvP)

You say farming is dull how about if we made it take a long time lets say 12 hours to 1 day however once you plant the seeds your pretty much free to go off and do other things because you could like hire a NPC Gardner or something like that?

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Original post by Martin Honestly, most time is spent talking / attempting to organise things! Communication is key, particularly when raiding! Make group activities easy. Combat is important, PvE & PvP Crafting is important Farming is dull, make it quick or minimise the requirement to farm Faction grinding is dull unless combined with something more fun (dungeon running, PvP)

The number one thing I miss in MMOs is a clear and meaningful overall purpose.

For example, in the non-MMO game Diablo, the clear and meaningful overall purpose is to defeat the end-game boss Diablo. In order to achieve that goal, you need to achieve two subgoals:
1) Traverse the dungeons, catacombs, caves, and finally hell
2) Become powerful enough to defeat the end-game boss

Unfortunately, most MMOs do not provide such. Instead, they play more like series of puzzle minigames, except that the game gives you the excessively tedious solutions but requires that you execute them. I don't want to "Kill 10 orks" 15 times, and most games that don't specifically mention such silly solutions still require the same kind of play in order to become powerful enough to progress to the next area. On top of that, the only reason to get to the next area is so you can rinse and repeat. A few games supposedly have something more interesting at the endgame (raids, etc), but why would I want to invest so much time and money in a game if it will only be enjoyable after so much suffering?

In case it wasn't clear, the above was talking about quests as they're currently implemented in MMOs - pointless and simple tasks that serve no purpose whatsoever and yet serve as the pillars of gameplay for at least the first many levels.

Contrast that with Diablo, where quests are not something that drives you to certain areas but rather are something you stumble across on your journey. You may find out about quests from the townspeople or the tomes, but you don't have to, and certainly none of the quests involve tedious repetition.
You don't kill monsters in Diablo because of quests. You kill the monsters because they're in your way, and some of them just happen to be special monsters that give a bit more of a reward than the others. You return to town when you're ready to sell your loot, not because you completed quest N and need to pick up quest N+1 so as to complete quests as fast as possible.

If you can't have more varied and more unique quests for whatever reason, at least adopt the auto-quest system that both Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 had, where you couldn't miss out on a quest reward just because you didn't talk to the right person to get the quest before completing it. If random townspeople want me to kill 10 orks, then the next 10 orks that I kill should count for that quest whether I know that killing 10 orks is necessary or not.