Your Ultimate MMO... in 10 Bullet Points

[Blackguard]

What 10 features would exist in your ultimate MMO? Features that currently exist and features that don't currently exist are all fair game. Discuss.

Note: You can list them all in a few words or elaborate as much as you want. I'm just interested because I know everyone has an opinion on this sort of thing.

[MineForFish]

I'll have to give this a lot more thought, but my short cop out answer is that there really isn't an ideal feature set, I'll enjoy it as long as the features integrate well together.

Back for more later this weekend, going to need to ponder this...

[lordebon]

Lets see, 10 idea things, in no particular order...

*An item creation system allowing essentially every item to be modified and transformed, and pretty much every non-quest item to be created.

*A system that allows players to affect their world in some way on at least a weekly basis

*A land/home ownership system allowing characters to use their land for whatever they wanted. Plant a garden and harvest raw things. Actualyl have to build a house (or have it built) the way you want and live in it.

*A political system allowing players to be as involved in game-politics as they want, from not at all (completely ignoring it) to running for and being elected to a position in a city's or kingdom's government (and having to serve the duties of that).

*The ability to have a bunch of smaller game-worlds that were all interconnected, yet different, and explained in some way (thought example: a game of parallel universes that folks can switch between with some difficulty that have a small max population -- say 1000 active (logged-in within last 30 days) characters per universe).

Lets see, thats five...

*The ability to create completely new things, and recieve credit for it (IE, an invention system).

*The ability to make/place signs and books/notes with custom text. (Example, UO).

*The ability for players to create and run methods of travel. If I buy 4 horses and a carriage, I should be able to transport some folks for a fee (and they don't have to do anyhting, they can go AFK or whatever).

*The ability to write notes that are saved and accessable later... and notate anything from an item, to a quest, to jsut having a "notes" spot.

*Who knows what else!

[#20blade]

10 Things if I Were an MMO God and people had to play my game and I had no bottom line and coding were as easy as Hamburger Helper!

1) Your character will eventually die but will be suceeded by offspring and no longer be available to play on that shard. Not right away, but once you reach top level, the clock starts ticking until you get a no_res and no_respawn flag, and you don't know for sure when it's coming because there is a bit of a random factor to it. Not terribly short, but shortened with each resurrectable/respawnable death after you hit top level. You can turn it on sooner if you like if you're tired of that character or something, but say not before level 30 outta 50 and then only if you have an heir (see below). You can't have a kid at level 2 and then suicide. No kids having kids!

Once the no-res hits you, you are told: your next death will be your last.

So, be a wuss and play it safe, try to increase your kid's inheritance with safe PvE and let him mature a few more (auto) levels? Or stay at top level minus one, always suffer a moderate but significant disadvantage in PvP, and never get to use the top level type items like the Uber Katana of Ginsu Potter but otherwise kind of live forever? Probably have to have a limited amount of time you could spend at level top minus 1, say, 50 days played in game or something really long, but you die if you don't level by the end.

Or, go out and charge the enemy shouting 'Follow me!' or like the Sioux (I think) fix your sash to the ground with a spear and shout "Here I stand! Here I die!" and create an epic moment for yourself and those around you.

It's up to you.

Even Odysseus came home after 10 years at Troy and 10 years wandering to kick major butt, take names, fight side by side with Telemachus, and we never hear about him again because presumably the rest was boring as an infomercial on aging in the greek world. More likely, with his diet of roasted chines of suckling pig and wine and lotus eating and stuff, he croaked soon after he got home.

But in this MMO you get to write the sequel, and the sequel to the sequel. And a some billing cycles down the line (just 'cause I don't worry 'bout the bottom line don't mean all your 13.95 a month US dollars are not belong to us), you could say, this is my character Nerfherder. His father stormed the beaches of Normandy. His grandmother infiltrated the enemy town and slew the lord of the keep but was caught. His great grandfather helped build the great castle of White and fought with the Hundred Heroes Guild (who only had 43 members, actually). And it would be true, not an RP background you made up. You could have family trees. Family Crests? But more invested with each successive character than simply I went through the grind for the 5th time, you know how hard it is to make myself do it a 5th time?

Some people want to play the same toon forever. They can. See below.

2) Your character can have children/heirs, whether an expensive clone (pay the priest a pretty penny to pray for a divine gift of another bawling knee biter that looks just like you with baby stats within 5-10% of your current character as a lowbie), adopt an orphan with limited knowledge of 'attributes,' (finder's fee, but get a degree of choice in stats) or chose a player partner and roll the biological dice (Doctor's fee? Random stats and choose class later based on it?).

This opens a can of worms, same sex partners? Ogres mating with elves? Maybe a bad idea. Perhaps avoid that part and decide the world will be somewhat Spartan, you pick up a kid from the baby creche to call your own or get yourself cloned.

Once your current active character dies, the kid becomes your active, say, at medium or low level. Depends on how early you had the kid. He/She could start out at say, age 18 levels outta 50 instead of 2, but will inherit a lot less. Raising a kid costs money. You don't think the kid was drinking rainwater and foraging while you were off adventuring and fighting wars did you? He had training equipment. He totaled his warhorse. He had tutors and schools and trainers. He blew plat after adena after credit on barmaids and at the orc track and now that mommy or daddy have gone to Valhalla the bookies want what's theirs. You can't have the kid too early though. No dying and ending up with a level 45 outta 50. The kid's max 'starting' level once the parent dies will have some sort of reasonable max cap, maybe 1/2 of max or something.

Have him too late, and you end up with a level 3 kid with a buncha money and equipment he can't use (no twinkies). You can play the kid toon till the parent 'dies' but only on a social/RP level. And time passes for both parent and kid while you do that, just as when you are playing the parent.

3) You can play the 'dead' parent character on another shard, or perhaps some sort of afterworld zone, Valhalla, Hell, Elysium, or a combination, and fight your way back to the land of the living. But it would be a PvE grind and harder than taking your 'living' descendant up to max level. Remember that old old D&D map from like 1983 Dungeon Master's Guide showing all the differnent alternate planes and how they connect? Would be limited to encourage people to play in the 'main' world. Once the child shows up in the afterlife, he or his predecessor become available in a social only zone. The other is stays in the afterlife and you can work towards resurrection. But in the meantime, the honored dead could quest or fight mobs or fight old enemies also now dead for what, the chance to send a small gift to the living, a charm that allows them to make a ghostly visitation to the main world, other neat loot that are in many ways intangible but would be important to the dead.

When the current incarnation of the world nears it's end (see below), players could call upon their dead ancestors to aid them in their hour of need. That is to say, if your side is nearly lost, and down to defending their last stronghold, you and your allies can whip out grandpa uber level 50 mega arch mage just one, last time to fight in your stead and see if he can whup ass for a timer of 15 minutes or so, if he's earned enough in the afterworld to get that ability. But if you push the enemy back and then a month later the barbarians are once again at your gates about to end this world cycle and reset the map...Grandpa, he's off chillin' with Shatner somewhere.

4) To prevent massive wealth building, there would be a heavy inheritance tax. Also, the parent will be able to bring some small proportion of belongings with them into the afterlife. More, if the child pays for a proper funeral (burial with items, burn the boat with items like the Norse, something, anyway, you gotta pay an NPC for it). But, with some conservation, over time you could build wealth from a poor day 1 level 1 with a quilt shirt, no pants, no AC adding shoes, and a sword that barely manages to piss off a rodent to a kid who starts off fairly comfortably well off.

Your kid would have to pay a cost of being raised/inheritance tax, based in part upon how much money the parent had and how old the kid is at the time he/she switches from NPC to PC. I'm no economist, but for this to work you would have to come up with a fairly complex economic system to drain off some of that money to prevent inflation.

5) A cycle of death and renewal for the world as well. Things that were built by players in this incarnation will be there in some form in the next incarnation of the world, either as existing cities (winning faction), or ruins. If the Dark players win, the next world is blighted and ugly, a red sky, but in a way Goth pretty, like the Gilgamesh anime. Light wins, sunshine, flowers, someone buys all the newbies a Coke and a smile and somehow it's oppressive in its own way, like the Moorlocks are about to sound the raid siren and you're gonna be what's for dinner. Or something like that. Urban/modern vs classical/traditional, tastes great vs less filling.

6) PvP matters. There is an end. You win the map, it doesn't just reset. It changes. The top alliance (not guild) gets to pick where they start on the next map, and get some benefit from being the lords of that area. If you lose, you're stuck. If you win, you may find your guild on the side of the losers this time around, even though the rest of the alliance you once had a part of now sits in that big old fortress town on the heights. If the margin was small, maybe a small guild will be forced to change. If large, the biggest, or a number of guilds may be forced to change. You could ask for volunteers. In WWIIOnline, after winning several maps, some axis teams switched to allies to even things out and for the challenge. I admire that, and they had fun too.

But the basic principles of the map changes
1) Glory is fleeting
2) You will never, ever get to rest on your laurels. Even if your alliance comes out top dog, it'll have to fight tooth and nail the next map to keep that position. Welcome to the next level. Lost the last map? Revenge.
3) Yeah, you're great. I see the ruins of your big town there. But that was the last map. What have you done lately?.

7) You can switch sides with each map cycle, but not in the middle, if you could find someone wanting to switch from the other side. There would be auto-balancing as well, random, but not of individuals. Maybe a tower of Babel divides the peoples of the world anew each map.

8 ) No special drops close to home. Monsters drop money or raw materials. Merchants sell great items for lowbies, mediocre to poor for top levels. To get better, you find a good crafter, but these things will be expensive and will wear out eventually (No Uber Vorpal Lighthsaber of Drano to pass on for 99 generations). Or, go adventuring close to the enemy, and take the risk of death, for some phat lewt and face permadeath earlier if you die a lot trying.

9) Occasional (once or twice a year) significant events. Cataclysms. Defections of guilds from one side to another (to balance sides). Cats and dogs, living together. Major story events nobody saw coming unless they were really, really paying attention, but would get everyone running back into the game.

10) A better justice system. A way to deal with other players who mistreat you (invade your camp, steal your loot, train mobs into you, whatever) without complaining to their GM or a CS representative, or all out PvP anywhere anytime against anyone. A trial by combat system? This one, I have no clue.

11) No 'stealth' mode. But, you can infiltrate the other side. You can 'dress' like the other side (by looting other player's bodies of "clothing," but not their special items so that they can corpse recover them or I as MMO god may have to listen to too much whining). If you die, you also have a no weight set of clothes you don't see or can drop, but enemy players can loot off of you. Great. Put on the stolen disguise. You don't see it and the enemy doesn't see it either, it doesn't actually change your character's appearance. But wearing it changes your name tag to look like theirs instead of just "Enemy" or no tag. If you die you lose that suit and have to kill to get another or buy one from a high level crafter. But while you wear it, your name tag looks like a friendly to them. And an enemy to your own folks, unless you take the clothes off, and your own side can kill you, while you wear it.

Put on the clothes. Move at will in the enemy town. Until you open your mouth and all they hear is "Ooga booga mum mum ha ba shi?" Unless you trained specifically in 'enemy language' and your intelligence is high. Then you have a better chance you sound like them. But not perfect.

Then you're toast. They could just randomly go hit everyone they see all the time to find suspected spies but that gets the guards on them and they get fined, even though they couldn't really kill their own realm/side mates. 1, then 5, then 10 then 20% of the cash value of what you own, maybe, so you really wouldn't want to do that as a routine method of spy detection, though if you waited long enough you would go back down to 1% for hitting someone on your side, say, a few days in game to let the heat off.

So you can spy. You can get close to an enemy guild leader and unleash the uber throat-slitter power move and hope his no-res-no-respawn flag is kicked in, and if not, you get some XP if he dies or something. You can invest in those skills. You can go around the enemy town saying nothing more complex than 'Yeah' and 'I need gold' but if someone gets too suspicious, they hit ya and surprise, you bleed.

But no button to push for stealth. The spy/assassin should be one of the hardest roles to play in the game.

12) There would be a no-clip vs enemies, but allies could pass through. You and your friends can try to hold the door, but you can't grief your side by blocking them from getting into the keep. Rather than pure zerg, you could hold doors, block passes, even perhaps try formations in the field. Have to figure a way to allow spies/assassins some chance to get past though. If 10 try, 2-3 might slip past, kind of thing. But the real goal of this is to give tanks a true role in protecting the ranged and the healers as well as fighting on the line. I'd like a game where lines of tanks grind against one another in melee, with healers and casters/ranged in the rear, disguised (but not invisible, and quite vulnerable) assassins causing havoc in the rear, with commanders trying flanking moves and wedges to push through the enemy lines. You would need commanders and sub commanders who actually grasped tactics, not just the zerg or attrition.

Did he say 10? 12 is 10 and 10 is 12. Or I shall send you to room 101, Winston?

Ampknife the MMO player and itinerant surgeon.

[Glazius]

Since we're in "I want a pony" land, my 10 points:

• I can look at the instruction manual, pick what I want to do (caravan guard, miner, trader, potter, whatever), enter the world, and begin doing it
• As I do stuff, the game realizes I'm doing it and has the world react appropriately (even something as simple as NPCs realizing I guard a caravan or throw pots)
• I can communicate what I'm doing to anybody else in the game so they can look and, at a glance, decide whether we can help each other
• I can team up with any intelligent player at any time and the relationship will be mutually beneficial.
• Equipment is not a permanent addition to my character. It is ammunition for my character's abilities.
• Anyone can build their own space to socialize in and invite other people to come look. People cooperating can build enormous spaces.
• I can always do something that's challenging and engaging. I don't have to read a book while my character goes through hour 5 of 10 of skillups until "the good part".
• The world has three dimensions, and I can move through and build in all of them.
• A GM staff with power to change the "common environment" regularly does so, either on their own or after interaction with players.
• The game actually works as intended.

--GF

[kohs]

1 - NOT Fantasy.
seriously, enough with the magic crap. i'm cool with escapism, but magic and superhuman abilities make things dull.

2 - the OPPOSITE of classes, skills, and ANY form of grinding them.

3 through 10 - As much Realism and Meaningfulness as you can cram into a Living, Breathing fully functional, yet ever so fragile World.

[mrrx]

(The formatting came out betteron my blog)

1 - Robust economic system. I want to have a large store with effectively unlimited storage; no merchant should be destroying/vendoring items because he ran out of space in his bank. Give me plenty of space to make a ton of money, whether to actually spend it or simply hoard it like the miser that I am. I want to pick things up and sell them; get monster loot; steal things; make useful items that people will actually buy; invest in cooperative ventures, or do simple banking. The more real-world financial topics you can bring in, the happier I'll be.

2 - A class-based system with an interesting division of classes; but not too many. Too much choice (aka 24 classes in EQ2) is not good; especially when combined with the likely restriction on number of characters per account. Probably 6, or 12, is a good number of classes. Go class based because you can not only balance the game better for a better gamer experience, but any skills-based system runs into the same phenomenon of too many choices. Skills also degrade into the "what build do I create" scenario which kind of defeats the purpose of skills in the first place.

3- Soloing is a choice allowing you to experience the entire game less the unavoidable grouping items. You can't solo your way through a raid; but you can buy that raid loot if someone is willing to sell it. Some tier of gear should be the "Soloist Elite" level, whatever the actual name given is. Create dual dungeons for both solists and groups - or, alternatively, for even more divisions - with different populations.

4 - Quests are great. They give people a bit more direction in the gaming experience than just handing them a sword and saying "Go!". Include as many as you can, but written well, with interesting and engaging storylines, and a plethora of possible steps in each quest. Basically duplicate EQ2's system, since I can't imagine a better system existing.

5 - What will achiever players achieve in the game ? Give them levels and loot, of course, but also leaderboards on various items. The more the better, allowing a determined player the chance for fame on whatever statistic they like the best - or on the largest number of them. And don't limit the total of things tracked, aka, don't stop tracking at 10000 items.

6 - Find a way to keep guilds limited, and yet meaningful. Here's a tall order to be sure, but there it is. You want to accomodate the determined player who wants to have his own pocket guild for a couple people and all their characters; at the same time, if guilds are to be meaningful they need to be collections of people congregated online at similar times, and every guild I've ever been a part of is mostly offline when I am on. I'm thinking of a set of categories to which a guild must subscribe, divided by time zones, and limiting the number of them allowed. Raid guilds, soloer guilds, chatty guilds, and no more than X allowed to exist. You get the idea.

7 - If I manage to defeat something (heroic) that almost killed me, make sure I get a reward. The current grey-no-chest system works except in these instances. It might not be a big deal if you carefully design the quests such that soloists can complete most of them at the recommended levels; the problem being, grey killing is often the only way available to advance a quest. In fact its so frequent that whenever I actually get a chest fighting an eligible mob it's a real surprise !

8 - Optimize the graphics for speed, not beauty. Immersiveness really comes from a high frame rate, so don't try and do too much for pretty pictures. My guess on the state of the PC industry is speed isn't going to increase that fast anymore; Moore's Law is finished. This should make developing to that expectation easier. All this said, graphics are important - the pendulum has just gone way too far on the level of pretty versus performance.

9 - Design your crafting system in such a way that the reward from participating in it is profit - not levels, skills, or some kind of status. No experience gets rewarded at all. Instead, perhaps recipes are available for purchase from NPC's for the more common items and rare recipes are drops from monsters or quest rewards. Provide the crafter a way to determine what people want to buy, which he then makes; a reverse broker system would be one method.

10 - Let the players know how the game works. EQ2, nobody understands how the rules work. Instead players back into rules based on observed behavior, and the occasional quick tidbit thrown our way by a dev. It would be much more interesting to play if I knew that a level 1 fighter swinging a sword at a level 1 creature has a 50% base chance to hit; modified by skills based on (2x skill / max skill); et cetera et cetera. Versus the current system, wherein I walk my level 1 fighter up to the mob and see what happens.

I'm a little ambivalent on the last one. I never expected to play EQ and EQ2 long because this feature simply doesn't exist. Diablo2, now, there was a game that was well documented.

Then again, I'm the longest and most active EQ blogger at the moment, which suggests that knowing isn't that important. Documenting this stuff would be difficult to be sure; and yet with all that said, once I actually knew the rules I might be more interested in my character sheet and all his stats, versus just looking at his level and intuiting things.

[Arondel]

I'll try and keep my answers short and succinct. This is what I'm hoping to see from a Truly next gen game. I'd be happy to design it and even help code it.

1. A dynamic world that is fluid and changing. The Holy Grail. No static content.

2. Permadeath. Characters would not respawn. Death is the end and meaningful. This would be for PCs, NPCs, and all living things in the world.

3. A civilization style advancement system within the world, where things change, and advancements happen. No mudflation, just real growth and different things occuring.

4. A skill based system built on a curve system from how a character is played and how the world recognizes him/her. Skills would allow advancements, but not godlike growth that is current in the MMO class systems.

5. The real ability to build cities, kingdoms, and countries with advanced political AI, legal systems, and religious and ethnic strife.

6. A large, seamless, zonefree world such as EVE uses, but for a Medieval/Rennaisance type environment

7. Advanced, adult themes and indepth graphics that are lifelike and allow for a truly immersive game experience.

8. An ingame voice communication system that allows for one to 'assume' the role of the character. If one is a Hill Giant, their voice in the Mic sounds like a Hill Giant. Or an Elf. etc

9. An Alignment system based on a persons ingame actions that will build reputation and notoriety. If a person kills 100 guards from the city state of Urr, the guards should recognize said person and be hunting them.

10. Merge the best of the current crop of AIs into an extensible XML one that is simple to use and allows for advanced functionality, but without Macros or any method of dumbing down gameplay.

[TheeNickster]

1.) No level cap, and getting a new level would never take more than 3 hours of hardcore play. People need goals that aren't "unattainable".

2.) With no level cap, there will also be no super-rare items for the end game we don't have.

3.) Crafted items will be no better or worse than dropped or sold items. They will be some of the best items in terms of artwork.

4.) Crafters will be able to make temporary buffs, and enchant resists and minor stats onto any item.

5.) Most items will be "bind on equip". This removes items from the economy like item decay would, it's just less painful.

6.) Items would get their power from the people who wield them. It's the character's level that determines how much damage is done, and what levels of enchants could be supported.

7.) The "open world" would be geared toward solo-play for levels up to 60. Post 60, the challenges would come from instances. These instances could be solo'd, grouped or raided.

8.) The experience from soloing, grouping and raiding should be roughly equal. One playstyle shall not have all the rewards.

9.) PvP will be in mission based team instances. It should be realm vs realm to make it easier to get a "match" going.

10.) There should be lots of web based scoreboards, ranking the top players and guilds in various categories. Most of these stats would come from your performance in the PVE instances and PVP, instead of the limited "open world".

[Raging Newie]

1) A Dynamic world that is influnced by the players actions. A static world is doomed to ultimately fail.

2)PvP that is meaningfull, recieving points to buy equipment, is by itself unacceptable. In other words the world needs to be influenced by the results of PvP missions/battles.

3)An end game that isn't a endless hunt for uber gear. Rather the end game is were players truly begin to influence the world (I.E.: Creating cities, changing the tide of a war, etc...).

4) True item customization. Were the player can go into an item modification tool similair to CoH/CoV's costume creater. This would do wonders to kill the clown armor effect. This would also be a part of the crafters item creation scheme.

5) Instances that are truly different then what you would experience in all the other sections of the game world. (I.E: WoW's Zul Ferrak were your attacked by an army of trolls at the top of a temple/prison, is a fav of mine). Also death in instances should be different then the norm since it can add flair to an otherwise dull experience

6) Having uber gear should never be the deciding factor in a PvP. Although it is realistic its just not fun.

7) Classes need to have skill options that drastically change the gaming experience (note: Quality is better then quantity when it comes to this).

8.)The need for huge raid groups should be reduced to an absolute minium, having to depend on a large groups leaves to much chance that human stupidity (deliberate or not) will ruin my gaming experience. This is a recipe for disaster

9)The difference in the races needs to be more influencial. A texture change is not an acceptable difference.(note: Quality is better then quantity when it comes to this).

10)Add speed bumps to the grinding path. The best i have seen so far is CoV's mayhem mission's. The speed bumps are what would make the grind enjoyable.

[jason]

1 - NOT Fantasy.
seriously, enough with the magic crap. i'm cool with escapism, but magic and superhuman abilities make things dull.

2 - the OPPOSITE of classes, skills, and ANY form of grinding them.

3 through 10 - As much Realism and Meaningfulness as you can cram into a Living, Breathing fully functional, yet ever so fragile World.

So... you want a game where you have a job, go to work, try to meet people, maybe buy a house, or build one if you train to be a builder, vote, run for office if you don't like your options, drive cars, run the risk of accidents, when you can afford to take off from your profession you can travel and explore the world... is that the non-fantasy realistic world you are looking for?

I mean, if you don't want fantasy (Sci-Fi is also fantasy, its just impossible spaceships instead of impossible magic) and you want realism and meaningfulness, I'm not sure why you are looking for it in a game.

[Blackguard]

1 - NOT Fantasy.
seriously, enough with the magic crap. i'm cool with escapism, but magic and superhuman abilities make things dull.

2 - the OPPOSITE of classes, skills, and ANY form of grinding them.

3 through 10 - As much Realism and Meaningfulness as you can cram into a Living, Breathing fully functional, yet ever so fragile World.

I'm going to play the ignorant developer here: What is the opposite of classes, skills, and any form of grinding them? Would that mean that characters wouldn't be able to advance at all? Would that mean that you would have pre-defined character builds that players could just swap to on a whim without achieving anything?

[Blackguard]

1) A Dynamic world that is influnced by the players actions. A static world is doomed to ultimately fail.

I can't argue this one. It's very difficult and might even be a bad idea in some cases, but I agree with it.

2)PvP that is meaningfull, recieving points to buy equipment, is by itself unacceptable. In other words the world needs to be influenced by the results of PvP missions/battles.

Everyone knows I'm a proponent of meaningful and interesting PvP.

3)An end game that isn't a endless hunt for uber gear. Rather the end game is were players truly begin to influence the world (I.E.: Creating cities, changing the tide of a war, etc...).

I'm going to agree here too.

4) True item customization. Were the player can go into an item modification tool similair to CoH/CoV's costume creater. This would do wonders to kill the clown armor effect. This would also be a part of the crafters item creation scheme.

I'm going to disagree here not on principle, but because it's a technically bad idea. Allowing for infinite item naming, customization, etc. means impossible to deal with database loads after a period of time. See: SWG and its system that used to allow this, until it became far too expensive to allow it to remain.

5) Instances that are truly different then what you would experience in all the other sections of the game world. (I.E: WoW's Zul Ferrak were your attacked by an army of trolls at the top of a temple/prison, is a fav of mine). Also death in instances should be different then the norm since it can add flair to an otherwise dull experience

I'll half agree here. Yes on instances being used primarily (and in my opinion, exclusively) for directed experiences that differ from the norm. No on death in instances being different. I am against making death different in different situations, because it becomes difficult to communicate and is illogical in the first place.

6) Having uber gear should never be the deciding factor in a PvP. Although it is realistic its just not fun.

Hence why I put itemcentricity on notice recently.

7) Classes need to have skill options that drastically change the gaming experience (note: Quality is better then quantity when it comes to this).

Maybe. Balancing drastic differences is almost impossible, though. Say you have 10 classes and 50 levels, and give players 3 meaningful sets of choices along the way (and allow them to choose from 3 options each time). Now, you are balancing the following choice sets for EVERY class (a total of 270 combinations):

1, 1, 1
1, 1, 2
1, 1, 3
1, 2, 1
1, 2, 2
1, 2, 3
1, 3, 1
1, 3, 2
1, 3, 3

2, 1, 1
2, 1, 2
2, 1, 3
2, 2, 1
2, 2, 2
2, 2, 3
2, 3, 1
2, 3, 2
2, 3, 3

3, 1, 1
3, 1, 2
3, 1, 3
3, 2, 1
3, 2, 2
3, 2, 3
3, 3, 1
3, 3, 2
3, 3, 3

If you have 10 classes and have 2 meaningful sets of choices with 3 options, that's still 90 distinct choices you have to balance.

1, 1
1, 2
1, 3
2, 1
2, 2
2, 3
3, 1
3, 2
3, 3

If you have 10 classes and 1 meaningful set of choices with 3 options, that's only 30 and may be halfway reasonable.

8.)The need for huge raid groups should be reduced to an absolute minium, having to depend on a large groups leaves to much chance that human stupidity (deliberate or not) will ruin my gaming experience. This is a recipe for disaster

What's a huge raid group? Some games, like EQII, will cap raid sizes to about 4 groups.

9)The difference in the races needs to be more influencial. A texture change is not an acceptable difference.(note: Quality is better then quantity when it comes to this).

I tend to agree here as a min/max player, but it limits roleplay options and can make players less happy with their character overall (dramatically, in some cases). If you love Rogues, and you love Humans, you may make a Human Rogue.

Well, what if CatRace01 starts off with 20 more Dex and has a natural boost to sneak? If those differences influence the character to a great degree, you HAVE to pick that race or you are gimping yourself. Nobody likes playing a crappy character, so they'll usually pick CatRace01. The problem is that I don't like CatRace01, and I don't enjoy my character as much, so I end up quitting the game sooner than I would have otherwise.

10)Add speed bumps to the grinding path. The best i have seen so far is CoV's mayhem mission's. The speed bumps are what would make the grind enjoyable.

I don't get it. Mayhem Missions in CoV are just cool missions that take 10-30 minutes instead of 5, they don't stop you from gaining a level do they? They may bar you from going on the quest path, but most games don't limit you to a single quest path.

[Blackguard]

1.) No level cap, and getting a new level would never take more than 3 hours of hardcore play. People need goals that aren't "unattainable".

What's the benefit for gaining a level? Also, bad bad bad ont he 3 hours of hardcore play. You would need to implement diminishing returns eventually so gaining another level would just be a huge pain in the butt for almost no return.

2.) With no level cap, there will also be no super-rare items for the end game we don't have.

3.) Crafted items will be no better or worse than dropped or sold items. They will be some of the best items in terms of artwork.

Then why do you adventure if not for items?

4.) Crafters will be able to make temporary buffs, and enchant resists and minor stats onto any item.

5.) Most items will be "bind on equip". This removes items from the economy like item decay would, it's just less painful.

6.) Items would get their power from the people who wield them. It's the character's level that determines how much damage is done, and what levels of enchants could be supported.

In an infinite level system, this also can't work. Not to mention there's no way to make creatures infinitely difficult unless the entire game takes place in scaled instances, which is boring.

7.) The "open world" would be geared toward solo-play for levels up to 60. Post 60, the challenges would come from instances. These instances could be solo'd, grouped or raided.

Looks like you thought of those instances, but I reiterate that playing in instances is boring as sin after a while. You are removed from the world. You're playing a single player game over the internet in co-op mode instead of adventuring in a virtual world.

8.) The experience from soloing, grouping and raiding should be roughly equal. One playstyle shall not have all the rewards.

I'm assuming this means you'll have several types of creatures designated as Solo, Heroic, and Raid. Otherwise you'll have groups taking out all the mobs in an area quickly while a solo player has to struggle to attempt to keep up.

9.) PvP will be in mission based team instances. It should be realm vs realm to make it easier to get a "match" going.

10.) There should be lots of web based scoreboards, ranking the top players and guilds in various categories. Most of these stats would come from your performance in the PVE instances and PVP, instead of the limited "open world".

Some good ideas, but I wanted to bang on the ones I think can't work or get more info from you on some of them.

[Blackguard]

I'll try to hit on each of the posts here when I have time, I just fired up responses to the bottom ones because they were uhh.. down at the bottom.