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What do you want in an MMO?

Huntn

Huntn

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
May 5, 2008
24,578
27,686
The Misty Mountains
I absolutely loved WoW playing it for about 16 months. Eventually I burned out on it, after committing about 20 hours a week. Before that I played Planetside for 18 months- a great game while it lasted. It was even better because I only had to play about 6 hours per week and I never really missed anything.

What I'd like:
1. Fantasy Role Playing
2. Dynamic World with dynamic quests- Honestly I don't know if I'll ever be able to play another static world MMO. This is probably a pipe dream as a dynamic world seems to be very difficult to create for a server carrying thousands of players. It's just that it's annoying when the world resets itself every 10 minutes. The world never changes, only the players change.
2a. Offer a wide variety of quest types. Most MMOs seem to focus mostly on kill and collect quests.
3. Give me a place to live. I've heard Aoc offers guild-built fortresses- a step in the right direction. I absolutely hated feeling like a nomad in WoW being forced to travel zone to zone as I completed area quests. This is also related to playing in a static world.
4. High degree of solo-ability- Wow was pretty good in this regard. The timing of the leveling instances were just about right for me.
5. Open world consisting mostly of public space. WoW is incredibly open, you can run all over a very large land mass without visible scene loads and that includes entering large cities. I loved it. In contrast I disliked Guild Wars which besides the towns for gathering party members, it was all instanced space.
Added: 5a. Giant World focused on exploration, not endless end-game raiding.
6. Charge a reasonable price- Wow bugged me in that I think with the level of participation they reasonably should have been charging at most $10 per month.
7. Somehow, I don't know how, avoid the all the end game instances. The last thing I want to do is repeat raid instances over and over, and over, to try to snag the gear everyone wants. This is not why I'm drawn to MMOs.
8. Avoid the level sensitivity- I don't know how. In Wow if your not keeping up, you're being left behind. Planetside was execellent in this regard, you'd never be left behind in that game.


Anything else?
 
1) Reliable Community Management
2) Balance between Persistance/Instance World
3) Balanced PvP
4) Good Lore/Quests/Missions
5) Not 'heavy' Level based game (Like level 65 with skills can beat level 70 without skills)
6) Balanced Economy (No 'Rich gets richer, Poor gets poorer')
7) Good End-Game Content (Reward players please)
8) No Grinding (at least don't make us feel that way)
9) Fun PvP! (Waiting for WAR.. can't wait!)
 
1) Player-driven economy, no items that cannot be player manufactured via trade skills
2) PvP centric game, focused on warring over crafting resources/territory
3) No safe zones or safe conditions, any player can attack any other player at any time
3) No levels or experience, just skills and attributes which increase as they are used, and a limit to how many total skill points a player may have at a time.
4) One character per server, for accountability and to avoid laming like this: "Seems our town is being attacked, and everyone who's logged in to defend are Warriors, I'll log on my Priest!"
5) No instances: everything in the world including dungeons are truly part of the world and you can get jumped by other parties. No magically isolated areas.
6) Full Looting: on death, your corpse contains everything you were carrying, and it can be picked up by anyone(i.e. the person who killed you). Monsters should also take items that interest them, and drop them in turn should you come back for revenge.
7) No teleportation or instant travel, to get from point A to point B you must walk, ride a mount or wagon, or something.
8) Player produced and owned ships, complete with naval combat.
9) Low "Power Range." i.e. a character with the maximum skill/attribute total and best gear available can be defeated by 2-4 freshly rolled newbies with basic equipment, given equally skilled play on both sides.
 
martychang said:
1) Player-driven economy, no items that cannot be player manufactured via trade skills
2) PvP centric game, focused on warring over crafting resources/territory
3) No safe zones or safe conditions, any player can attack any other player at any time
3) No levels or experience, just skills and attributes which increase as they are used, and a limit to how many total skill points a player may have at a time.
4) One character per server, for accountability and to avoid laming like this: "Seems our town is being attacked, and everyone who's logged in to defend are Warriors, I'll log on my Priest!"
5) No instances: everything in the world including dungeons are truly part of the world and you can get jumped by other parties. No magically isolated areas.
6) Full Looting: on death, your corpse contains everything you were carrying, and it can be picked up by anyone(i.e. the person who killed you). Monsters should also take items that interest them, and drop them in turn should you come back for revenge.
7) No teleportation or instant travel, to get from point A to point B you must walk, ride a mount or wagon, or something.
8) Player produced and owned ships, complete with naval combat.
9) Low "Power Range." i.e. a character with the maximum skill/attribute total and best gear available can be defeated by 2-4 freshly rolled newbies with basic equipment, given equally skilled play on both sides.
Click to expand...

Sounds a lot like Ultima Online used to be. Corpse looting sucked. You always had to have backup stuff in the bank.

The griefers, children who had nothing better to do, would farm new players. They'd sit outside of the starting cities, trick somebody who had nothing out into the woods and kill them. Not a great way to introduce somebody to a game they're paying for.

There needs to be some level of safety, but it doesn't have to be server wide.

Perhaps the starting cities and the surrounding area are safe, and then if you venture too far out, you're taking the risk.

Ultima Online also had the player crafting and the home ownership that others have asked for. You just found the place to put it, and it was yours. Only limits were that you couldn't cover trees or build too close to town.

If they took the rules and applied today's graphics, UO could be back and in a big way.
 
I don't play MMO's, none of them have really interested me yet.


  • I want a giant world. Something I can get lost in. Bigger than WoW with more varied environments. I'd like to set up a hunters shop ontop of a mountain, where you'd only get 1 or 2 visitors a day and you could have some proper conversations with them, surprised that they found this little place nestled away.
    I've never played a game where the player has been overwhelmed by the size of the map (I'm trying to do this with my own game).
  • No teleportation, only trains that appear a few times a day forcing people to walk around.

Well I think that's it. I want something epic that isn't made to feel short by transport.
 
Manly wow related but here goes.

1. Exploration and fun quests that don't involve killing
2. Playing with the opposite faction, being able to defect
3. No re-spawning, when i kill an entire village it needs to be repopulate and perhaps better defended not the same lame guys over and over.
4. Much much larger world, it should take a day to get from one part of a map to another and i don't mean the hole world just one area.
5. Guild and player forts and homes, Personal places to invite people for meetings and to store goods. And let the player choose were.
6. Personal alliances.
7. If im ultrapowerful Mage or warlock give me a tower and let me fear some minions into serving me to protect my little fort or home from other players.
8. Even a ?? humaniod boss has a head, if you stab someone in the head they dont have 99.99% HP left.
 
- Not yet another damn fantasy game. We've had basically a decade of dungeons and dragons, let's try something new. Personally I want to see a well done sci-fi one, with a unique feel.

- Huge world. I want cities to feel like cities. Fields to look like fields. Give us a true world to explore.

- More variety of mobs. At least 1 unique mob per sub-area. Make mobs more interesting than just melee attacks. Preferably not debuffs and other things that are just going to be annoying.

- Quest categories. Give healers and tanks the ability to level without it taking forever. Have Offensive, Defensive and Gathering categories.

- Much more difficult quests, instead of many easy ones. Instead of a Kill 30 X quest, defend X point for 10 minutes against 15 elite X and having an NPC buff you and jazz. More epic quest chains. More spawned mini-bosses that aren't just fodder to grind.

- More class quests. Ranged DPS? Test their kiting. Melee DPS? Test their ability to avoid cleaves as an two NPCs tank. Make them steadily more complicated and difficult and award ideal-for-that-level-range weapons or items.

- Broad customization options for your character (AoC does pretty well at this).

- Race versus Race (like WoW's PVP) and also Player versus Player (own-faction PVP) modes. Let us kill that annoying guy stealing our mobs even if he's our own race.

- Expanded item sets. WoW basically only gives you item sets at the level cap. It would be nice to have leveling item sets you'd like to word towards. Preferably not stretched over too many levels. One set every twenty levels (using WoW's leveling pace) would be nice.
 
Decrepit said:
Sounds a lot like Ultima Online used to be. Corpse looting sucked. You always had to have backup stuff in the bank.
-snip-
Click to expand...

I know, I never had the opportunity to play it pre-Trammel though. That and the free-shards are too small/underpopulated to capture my attention(and probably a tad illegal, but I'm no lawyer).

I personally would like EFFECTIVE safety, rather than true safe zones. i.e. start new players in huge cities, with tons of NPC guards of every combat role bearing great equipment. A city enemy players won't really care to approach without reason.

That said I played Asheron's Call on the Darktide server for a few years, and it didn't even have that safety. From birth you could be attacked anywhere, by anyone, and towns had no guards or law, you could be in dialog with a shopkeeper and get whacked. Then you dropped your most valuable items on death(rather than everything). Indeed, there were plenty of people who'd see that you were level 7 and smash you, but for the most part the newbie areas had people around your level, and you could make friends for protection. My fondest memories of that game are ironically gang wars in and around newbie towns/dungeons at no higher than level 25(in a game where the max was 126). :D
 
The only MMO I currently play is MXO (Matrix Online). It is a great game for me because I cannot stand fantacy and lean more to the Sci-Fi side of the fence. The game is still going somewhat strong, and based upon images of an upcoming update, looks to be advancing just enough to keep a mass of us level 50s happy to stick around.

I was really hoping for STO (Star Trek Online) to see the light in the next 6 - 9 Months, but that project appears to be sidelined.

My observations and requested items are more or less based on my experiences with MXO.

1) Ability to have temporary alliances with other factions / crews and use an alliance chat feature. Currently only Faction, crew or team (limit of 6 players) .chat exists, thus limiting the communication.

2) Cap on PVP (Player Versus Player) target ability. There is no need for a level 50 to gank a level 10 that is in a PVP or FFA (Free For All) area.

3) Bring us some kind of multi interlock fighting ability.

4) Announcements on all servers when there is a live event going on within one of them, regardless of the alliance.


That's it, but my view is limited :D .
 
raggedjimmi said:
  • I want a giant world. Something I can get lost in. Bigger than WoW with more varied environments. <snip>
  • No teleportation, only trains that appear a few times a day forcing people to walk around.
Click to expand...

Nothing personal, but that sounds boring. If you had a truly giant game world and you had to either walk, or catch rarely scheduled mass transit to get anywhere, you'd spend most of time traveling, or arranging/waiting for travel and no time actually doing anything. It be like real life, which is frankly what people are trying to avoid when they play games.
 
raggedjimmi said:
I don't play MMO's, none of them have really interested me yet.


  • I want a giant world. Something I can get lost in. Bigger than WoW with more varied environments. I'd like to set up a hunters shop ontop of a mountain, where you'd only get 1 or 2 visitors a day and you could have some proper conversations with them, surprised that they found this little place nestled away.
    I've never played a game where the player has been overwhelmed by the size of the map (I'm trying to do this with my own game).
  • No teleportation, only trains that appear a few times a day forcing people to walk around.

Well I think that's it. I want something epic that isn't made to feel short by transport.
Click to expand...

You're looking for the original incarnation of Star Wars Galaxies. That was freakin' huge and had multiple planets. You had to use a shuttle to go planet to planet.

You *could* use a shuttle to move between towns on the planet you were on, but you didn't have to. You could walk place to place, or eventually buy a speeder bike to make it move faster.

But it was awesome how far into the middle of nowhere you could get yourself.
 
If your into exploration, a giant world fits the bill.

Regarding fast transport I have mixed feelings. For immersion, it's best to have mounts, but the reality is that most players don't have the patience. Lets say you're in the middle of no where, but you need to get back to bazaar to buy or sell something. I think most people except the purists would like to have the option of a transport stone (or something similar).

Regarding PVP, I don't like being ganked. I'd prefer PVP zones in the world vs a PVP server. Or servers divided up like WoWs, where if you want PVP, you got PVP all the time. It's your choice.

It does seem like the vast majority of MMO questing involve killing. Other tasks would be very good.

Instances have a place in the MMO. If your in the dungeon trying to complete a quest with specific hard to do requirements, the last thing you want is it ruined by a gang of spoilers who come in just to cause trouble. In addition without instances you mostly likely will end up with long waits, making it hard to coordinate.
 
Decrepit said:
You're looking for the original incarnation of Star Wars Galaxies. That was freakin' huge and had multiple planets. You had to use a shuttle to go planet to planet.

You *could* use a shuttle to move between towns on the planet you were on, but you didn't have to. You could walk place to place, or eventually buy a speeder bike to make it move faster.

But it was awesome how far into the middle of nowhere you could get yourself.
Click to expand...

Would you say Star Wars Galaxies is well regarded? Last time I thought about it, I remember there being lots of complaints. My question is- is exploration SWG solo-able and fun? Is this the type of MMO ideally set up for explorers?
Thanks!
 
Huntn said:
Would you say Star Wars Galaxies is well regarded? Last time I thought about it, I remember there being lots of complaints. My question is- is exploration SWG solo-able and fun? Is this the type of MMO ideally set up for explorers?
Thanks!
Click to expand...

I haven't played in years. They started changing everything. And it was wrecked.

Somebody needs to learn from SWG's mistakes and release an excellent game.

You could solo as you got better with your skills and had better weapons built by other players.

It used to be the best exploration game because it's the first game I saw that an explorer could make money. To gather mineral resources and energy for the crafters out there, you had to go search for it.

Look at WoW's resource gathering... see yellow dot on radar, click on ore, it's in your bag.

SWG was designed for massive scale production if you so desired. You'd search for the resource, and at low levels, dig yourself. Then you'd build or buy a small mining device (which you would leave and then go play the darn game!), you'd come back, empty out the mining device and keep it running if there were still resources in the area. You could eventually build medium and then large mining platforms.

The resources would run out as you'd expect in real life, so you pack up the platform and move on. So, you'd come running over a hill in that game and see a valley covered with ore extractors. Three days later, it would be an empty valley as the explorers found better stuff elsewhere.

And the neatest thing, was for the truly anal retentive, materials that were called the same thing could have varying quality. So if you found something with poor quality you could use it to grind your skill, and save the awesome stuff for final products. AND there was customization in that you could improve an item beyond its blueprint to do more damage, etc.
 
Shadowrun MMO would be perfect for me. You can easily scale missions for solo to a group of 5-6 or to a full corporate vs corporate war. Players could start their own corporations and try to hack/steal secrets of other corporations.

As for the world PvP, sure make it anywhere. But you could get arrested for doing it, too, just like in the real world. Killing other players with no consequences is no fun for the player(s) getting killed all the time. But, having the risk of getting caught and going to jail/paying a fine or something would keep it from happening abusively.
 
If you guys want a game where races actually matter, where the game is actually a challenge, where the community, the people you hang out with, and how you depend on other people matters, and where the lore and quests of the game are half the game, that's how classical everquest is.

www.eqclassic.org

end of story. it's not out yet, but ask anyone that has played EverQuest from 1999 - 2001 and they will say that beats the living snot out of any MMO ever created, including the current EQ.
 
I remember before WoW, EQ was the fantasy based MMO to play (although I never played it). I'm saying my impression was it was the big cheese among MMOs at one time.
 
Decrepit said:
And before EQ, it was Ultima Online. :)
Click to expand...

Oh how we've fallen... :rolleyes:

Really though, my perspective on MMOs is that the point of a large persistent world with many many players is to allow them to shape it. The natural way of resolving differences in opinion on how the world should be shaped is PvP.

Consistent standards, like no safe zones and one character per sever, are required to avoid exploits. In PvP anything exploitable will be exploited, if "noobs" are protected from ganking they might be sent in droves into or around the enemy town/combat zone to watch what they're doing, or drop tons of trash items to cause lag in the area. Depending on the specific rules, traders could be made to be specialized alts, so they're never at a high enough level to be gankable by everyone, and their resources can never be revoked. Likewise characters who intend to fight will never waste their time to develop trade skills, since every point in non-fighting skills will make the character less useful. Items have to be able to get ripped off of the fallen by the victorious to allow decisive victories to occur, and to keep the player-driven economy moving by creating demand.

I don't understand the current MMOs that focus on having players run along pre-constructed tiers of challenges which pit them against simplistic AI, to an inevitable end-game whose only purpose is to provide gear which will allow them to move to the next tier of this endgame. The fact that so many grow bored while waiting for the next patch or expansion to add new content illustrates how limited this is as a game. Such a game could be constructed equally well, if not better, in 32-64 player servers ala Half-Life 2, basically Diablo 2 with better teamplay and on a larger scale.

Obviously many find them satisfactory, I just wish there was more adventurousness in the game development scene, people willing to venture on an MMO which really takes advantage of having so many human players in a single, persistent space.
 
martychang said:
Oh how we've fallen... :rolleyes:

Really though, my perspective on MMOs is that the point of a large persistent world with many many players is to allow them to shape it. The natural way of resolving differences in opinion on how the world should be shaped is PvP.

Consistent standards, like no safe zones and one character per sever, are required to avoid exploits. In PvP anything exploitable will be exploited, if "noobs" are protected from ganking they might be sent in droves into or around the enemy town/combat zone to watch what they're doing, or drop tons of trash items to cause lag in the area. Depending on the specific rules, traders could be made to be specialized alts, so they're never at a high enough level to be gankable by everyone, and their resources can never be revoked. Likewise characters who intend to fight will never waste their time to develop trade skills, since every point in non-fighting skills will make the character less useful. Items have to be able to get ripped off of the fallen by the victorious to allow decisive victories to occur, and to keep the player-driven economy moving by creating demand.

I don't understand the current MMOs that focus on having players run along pre-constructed tiers of challenges which pit them against simplistic AI, to an inevitable end-game whose only purpose is to provide gear which will allow them to move to the next tier of this endgame. The fact that so many grow bored while waiting for the next patch or expansion to add new content illustrates how limited this is as a game. Such a game could be constructed equally well, if not better, in 32-64 player servers ala Half-Life 2, basically Diablo 2 with better teamplay and on a larger scale.

Obviously many find them satisfactory, I just wish there was more adventurousness in the game development scene, people willing to venture on an MMO which really takes advantage of having so many human players in a single, persistent space.
Click to expand...

I think it's reasonable to have safe zones for those players that enjoy the social and crafting aspects. Using ghosts or characters that are invulnerable to PvP can be dealt with by having them allowed in safe zones. But if you wander out of the reach of the city guard, you can be toast.

I can see your reasoning for the corpse looting, but maybe that becomes enabled after you have leveled up a little. Looting a new player that was out looking around isn't going to make them want to stay playing. And only through higher number of players does a massive world feel lived in.
 
The only reasons that would make me try another MMO is :

1- Dynamic World

+

2- One server for everyone
 
i only have experience with wow, and my list is extremely short at the moment

-balanced pvp

my main is a shadow priest and i get absolutely destroyed in pvp to the point that's frustrating and not fun. i would like to see this change.
 
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