The top ten features of MMOs

by Michael Zenke on Mar 14th 2008 11:00AM

World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Sci-fi, Screenshots, Dungeons and Dragons Online, EverQuest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Culture, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Opinion, Star Wars Galaxies

A great article over at the Time Well Wasted site about 'spiffy' MMO features made me stop and think. What are the back-of-the-box bullet points that make MMOs great? The field of Massively Multiplayer games is so large now that there's no one feature we can point to that shows up in every single game. Which ones stand out? What features are there out there among the many, many MMOs that really speaks volumes about the potential of this game genre? Check out our gallery feature to explore the Top Ten MMO Features with screenshots, historical footnotes, and witty observations. And please - hit the comments to tell me how I'm wrong and what features I've left out.

Top MMO Features #10: Collections ==>

MMO Top Ten Features

Tags: cox, eq2, featured, joystiqfeatures, lotro, swg, top-ten-mmo-features, wow

Reader Comments (8)

WHAT????? WHAT???

WHAT ABOUT INSTRUMENTS!!! How can you NOT put music at the top 10? ;_;

I think the user-generated music in LOTRO is keen, but top ten? Is music really better than pets or raiding? :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu9bVHIl0dY

Minigames win out over things like, say, player housing? I'm slightly shocked that housing's not on the list. I know that some implementations have been better than others, but it just adds so much to the game.

Thats open for debate. Until they make a housing mechanic where it actually adds more to the game than allowing you to simply play with a doll-house of non-functioning furniture and instead having it serve some real purpose I don't consider it a MMO standard.

I'm hard pressed to come up with some sort of hypothetical functionality to future-MMO home ownership but at this point I can't think of any game where there is an actual advantage to buying a house over a player who skips it. In fact I don't know anybody who actually bought a home again after their first character wastes the money...

Great list, I think it summed up the essential parts of MMOs as a whole very well.

Sure, there's some aspects that are specific to certain MMOs that truly differentiate those games (LOTRO's music system as noted above, I was thinking about the lore aspect and the progression of a storyline beyond just quests - primarily scripted events used heavily in FFXI and to a lesser extent during instances in DDO, LOTRO, and WoW), but this list of ten surely hammered lots of important nails in the head.

Excellent read. Tho I don't think I would have included cosmetic pets in there because I think they're a total wank. They don't do anything to add to your character and since there is no customization involved there are a million other people with the same pet as you.

All in all its good to see something written about the current Gen of MMOs that isn't 99% wow-centric. Some other stuff I would have included in my own list: Deeds from LOTRO, the (tho somewhat flawed) vast improvements in trade and commerce (auction houses) and maybe legendary items like Sulfuras and Thunderfury, meaning 'crafted' items that take a guild effort to produce ONE legendary item for one lucky member. I always thought they were a breath of fresh air in a genre where 99% of people are only in it for personal advancement.

sorry for any miss spellings.
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