GamerZines just wrapped up a blog series detailing all the ingredients that make their perfect MMO and they want your feedback. They also plan to pitch these ideas to various MMO studios and eventually compile it all as a full feature in their free MMO magazine, aptly titled MMOZine.We wrote about parts one through five a couple weeks ago and since then they have come out with a sixth part. In part six, the author suggests "next-gen" MMOs should become more homogenized in terms of their feature sets. Why re-invent the wheel when you can copy a perfectly working system already, they ask. Somehow, we don't think everyone's going to agree with that one.
If nothing other than one man's (or magazine's) opinion, this series highlights a valid point about game development. Because everyone has different gaming tastes, developers are bombarded with strong opinions from all sides. "You should focus on hardcore raiding." "No, you should focus on casual questing." "I want to experience epic large-scale PvP." "But I want your PvP to be solo-friendly!" That has to be difficult, unless you're so focused on your game's vision that you can tune out most of the background noise.
