Rhaegar

I said this last time we had this thread, and I'll say it again: One Piece. The world is amazingly detailed, there are two factions built in (marines and pirates), there's a clear progression path (blues > grand line > new world). And best of all because of the way Oda writes, his protagonists are not gods. There would be plenty of room for other players to have their own stories.

I love getting lost! Unfortunately it's impossible now with maps and radar which show you explicitly where you are at all times. I would like it if some MMO in the future would at least do away with the player locator on the map, if not the concept of a persistent map altogether. This would force you to navigate by sight and landmarks instead of keeping your hand clawed over the "m" button all the time.

Getting lost in EQ1 was one of the highlights of the game, and one of the qualities that still makes it stand out to me compared to the unquestionably better MMOs of today. Some of my favorite (and most dreaded) zones to get lost in were kithicor, faydark, eastern wastes, and emerald jungle. I still haven't had a gaming experience comparable to getting lost in a jungle full of raptors and zombie gorillas.

I see nothing wrong with having good-looking characters...male or female. Obviously it's not going to be realistic, it's a game. Believe it or not, a lot of people like sex and sexualized characters. If you don't, it's your problem.

Depends on the game. In WoW, I found the quest text well written, concise, and often funny, so I found it worth reading. In Mass Effect (not an MMO i know) I listened to all of the voice acting. In Aion, I skip it. Every single NPC tells you their freaking life's story (most of them don't have very interesting lives either!) before they go "oh yeah, go kill 10 mudgoblins for me".

It's not even really an issue of these games being "malformed". I think WoW introduced a new paradigm in polish and playability that was unprecedented in the MMO genre before then. Where before people would forgive MMOs their quirks and eccentricities, they now hold them to more or less the same standards as single-player games, because they've been shown that it can be done.

No matter how fresh their ideas or how skilled their programmers, no small-time indie developer has the resources to produce the level of quality that people expect these days. We just have to hope that the giants become more willing to shell out for interesting ideas in the future.

I'm all for big worlds with limited travel options. The key is to make sure that travel is dangerous. You can't have "leveling paths" like in WoW, because once you've "outleveled" a zone it's basically a waste of time to ever go there again. If the zones are mixed up a little like in EQ it makes traveling a lot more interesting without making the world feel smaller.

I second One Piece. The world is so amazingly detailed compared to any other manga I can think of, and it would be a refreshing and interesting take on the genre (There have been pirate MMOs before, but PotBS is kind of meh and PP is kind of its own genre). Forget fighting the marines, can you say second faction?

Devil fruits could be like power-up items that make you completely overpowered but that you lose when you die.

Because if you have an optional third person view, nobody will use first person view, because third person makes it easier to keep track of your surroundings. Nobody can sneak up behind you, etc.

That sounds cool, not cool enough to make me want to play it, but still...

@andrew,

If you've only played today's generation of MMO's, I can see why you would think that. Travel was definitely difficult and involved serious risk of dying in games like EQ. When you have to traverse a dark jungle full of bloodthirsty raptors that can easily kill you, it's definitely difficult.

In games where normal monsters that wander around in the world are dangerous even to higher-level players that aren't prepared, and can chase you for miles, travel takes on a completely different meaning. I definitely miss that aspect of old games.