Founding an old MMO on new ideas

by Mike Schramm on Oct 22nd 2007 5:05PM

World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Culture, New titles, Leveling, Making money

Rock Paper Shotgun has posted an interesting thought experiment: what if you took two of the world's biggest MMOs, EVE Online and World of Warcraft, and combined their best features into some kind of super, Frankenstein, monster MMO? I'm actually really interested in this, because I've been playing WoW for a long time, and have only recently come around to playing EVE. So what would World of EVECraft look like?

First of all, I completely agree with RPS-- the best new MMO feature in both games is EVE's skill system. Instead of killing X rats (rats both in the old standby MMO monsters, and in EVE's jargon for "Pirates") to level, you simply level. That's it. Choose a level, wait a certain amount of time (from a few minutes to a few days), and at the end of that time, even if you've logged out in between, you get that level. It is the perfect system for MMOs, because it really does make your character persistent-- they're leveling even when you're not.

And as RPS points out, it does away with the basic idea of "levels" anyway-- no longer must you wait until your friend reaches your level to join you, and no longer does a foe simply become insurmountable based on a number. The skilling idea also helps in PvP as well-- no matter what your skills are or how good you are, you'll get better over time.

So what can we take from World of Warcraft?

Blizzard's skill at crafting worlds people want to be in, first of all. WoW perfectly balances the old D&D ideas with Blizzard's own spin on the legends, and created a fantasy world that is the best any MMO has lived in yet. And even though skilling should be time based, there is still a place for equipment and gear. EVE's gear is incidental-- if you have need of something, you can probably afford it, while in WoW's endgame, gear is everything (by comparison, EVE doesn't even have an endgame).

RPS is right to say that EVE is an excellent example for MMOs in the future-- even in the short time I've been playing it, I can see that there are some ideas there that really break the mold, and when implemented back into incredibly popular fantasy MMOs, we'll really see something more amazing than either of them on their own.

Source

Tags: commentary, eve-online, featured, pirates, rats, rock-paper-shotgun, skills, warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (1)

An intresting concept.
From EVE, the truely living universe. Player actions change things, borders change, massive mission chains feel as if they actually have an impact rather than "O look, Onyxia's been beheded...again." the Skill system definetly with the bonus that you really can do it all, just not at the same time.
Bringing over the tiered game play would be great too. You don't need to be commanding a HAC to have fun in Eve. You lil Condor and Wolf have just as much to do and can work with groups where as in WoW, it's all the mad rush to endgame.

From WoW, the accessibility. Eve is great but there still remains a massive learning curve compared to most MMOs. Some of this would involve the UI and economy systems getting simplified, some would involve more guards/concord/pvp control.
I would also bring over the diversification fo apperances. One sad thing in Eve is that one ship looks no diffrent from another. It would be great if someone could just visually look at your ship and say "Wow. He's for the new T3 heavy mass driver from the Red Gorgon Pirate base, and those hull markings mean he must have made one hell of an impression on the Kurenai!" Just cause your ship is huge doesn't mean you can impress people as much as when you strut around IF in full T5 or PVP gear. More visible induviduality.
I would also bring over WoW's "death" system, in that players do not loose all their progress (ie: a 19m Isk investment) when they get killed. Ships should be towable like back in Earth and Beyond. But in a world like Eve where new systems can be readilyt purchased, equipment durability would play a new role. For example, you get ganked you can repair the ships hull, but maybe the subsystems and modules get destroyed. A synergy between the WoW Armor repair and EVE's all-or-nothing deaths.

if you did integrate the two games, you could add whole new unseen dynamics: Crews for ships rather than soloing. Boarding enemy vessels to capture them rather than just shooting them out of the stars. Player equipment and face to face communicaton. Lounges on stations etc etc...

(In the end, I you would have E&B essentially)