Like I said before IMO the WOW like model is the way to go. Blend PVE and PVP, use instancing (with special rules), and make it less hardcore than say Travian.

One great thing about RTS games is that you can create a wide assortment of scenarios for the players to take part in. For example in Warcraft 3 the DOTA maps are one of the most popular and IMO best maps in the game. There is really no reason an MMORTS couldn't work in a similar way where there is a wide variety of instances for players to take part in, both PVP and PVE.

Different games can reward the player differently. Also with different games the player could have reason to pursue a wider assortment of goals which will help extend the end game.

Re: DOTA

I think DOTA is better designed than WOW. The concept of contested areas
is a tug-of-war where no side can really win.

When a battle is declared, players could choose to play against players or
against AI. When the battle period is over, the game would calculate the
rank of the AI based on the results and determine the overall outcome of
the battle.


Re: One world

Players created scenarios

Each faction can have their own governing mething, the game itself would
support various modes, such as allowing the leader(s) of a faction to set
up officer ranks, hierarchy, or to set up a polling or voting system. It
is a set of customization of the organization of a faction. Each faction
will decide, in their own ways, how resources are spent, what to build,
and where to fight.


Players created battlefield

Towers, walls, moat, trenches, barracks, lumbermills, farms, houses and
standing armies that exist on a battlefield are placed by the controling
faction of the area. When an area is attacked, all construction of the area
halts. The game takes a snapshot of everything that exists on the area and
creates a battlefield. The game then declares a battling period where eligible
players can join and battle until the period is over. When the period is over,
the game determines the outcome, make changes to the area, and reopen the
area to the faction that now has control.


Eligibility to participate

Any player that had contributed to the war-front for the faction are eligible
to fight when the battlefield is formed and the battle period is declared.
The battle period last at least one day so that players of different timezones
could join the battle. The typical type of contribution is by stationing your
unit in the area. It grants you the right to participant in battle. The
collection of units present in the area is the set of units that every other
eligible players will be able to use. If at the end of the battling period,
the game determines that the unit did not survive, it dies.


Matching players

When a player decides to play a battle, the player can select one of few
options: 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, 5v5, 6v6, etc. This is subjected to the tech-
nological feasibility of the hardware. The composition of the match can
have any combination of human players or AI players. There is no difference
from the typical way to start a multiplayer RTS match. The players will could
check the stats of the other players and must click on "Accept" before the
game would begin. Alternatively, a player could define a team and let the
game auto-matches them based on the rank of their team.


Computation of outcome

When the battling period is over, the game computes the overall outcome of the
battle. The game considers a match important when there are many human players
on both sides, and each side have high ranking players. In addition, the game
will compute the case rank of the AIs and assign each AI a rank. Once the AI
ranks are determined, the game will first compute the changes in rank of the
players based on their individual performance (win/loss), and then compute the
result of the overall battle.


Field commander and experience of units

The field commander is the character that is in command of the battle. Each
battle with standing armies will have at least one. These commanders belong
to specific players just like how each unit on the battlefield belongs to
someone (in fact, each soldier has a name, either automatically generated or
assigned by the player who created it at the village). When a soldier survives
a battle, it gains the exp it got from the battle. It is better for the faction
as a whole to retain the experienced units. But if the experienced units don't
fight, it would make the inexperienced units die and stops the growth of
experienced units. When a unit survives enough battles, the player that owns
the unit can declare it as a field commander, and assigns allow soldiers to be
assigned under his command. The player that owns the FC can assign new skills
and abilities so that his regiments are more powerful. The catch is that since
the battle outcome is determined by a collective effort, it is a common
courtesy to take care of commanders even though they are not of your own. This
is an incentive for players to be creative and come up with commanders that
other players would also like to keep. Popular commanders survive longer in
the game world. It is interesting when players start to like some other's
players' commanders.


Choosing which battle to fight

Every time a player completes a fight, an attribute (say, "allowable battle
time") of the player decreases. A player with negative ABT cannot join a
battle. The ABT of a player naturally regenerates up to a certain number
determined by the rank and condition of the player "character". Negative ABT
takes longer to regen. So when a high ranking player decides to join and fight
a high ranking battle with ABT at 1 minute left, he is allowed to fight in the
current battle, but he also forfeits his participation in battles in the
immediate future (because his ABT will be negative for a good while).


Revisiting battles

All players are allowed to replay old battles against other players or
against the AI as practice. If you were not there when the actual battle
was fought, and you win, you would think, "If I were there I would have won
the battle!" If you lose badly, you would think, "this is out of my league, I
will make sure to stay out of battles like this in the actual game until I
become better at it."

Quote:

Original post by Wai To say that PvP is not dominant would be to say that most people who got StarCraft got the game to play single player campaigns.

You might be surprised. I recall reading an article by the Unreal Tournament guys which revealed that only around 10-30% of the UT purchases had been played online. UT doesn't even have a single-player campaign, so most of the copies were played only on LAN or vs bots. I imagine the stats for a game with a very rich and robust single-player game, like StarCraft, might be even more skewed.


Re: Unit customization

Fully customizable units are not a problem. It requires some heavier metrics to balance properly, but is completely doable. We did this with Shattered Galaxy. Had we the mechanisms to support delivery, we could have implemented a typical MMO loot system. Instead, due to technical and time limitations, we opted for a simpler route.