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[Azkanan]

On the line of  NPCs, NPCs in MyWorld will remember you. You speak to them, and a system, alike to The Sims' relationship system, will be kept track of.

Still not sure how death and reproduction will work, if at all possible, but if I can acheive that, I'd be so happy =D.

Along with relationships, skills and family trees will be kept on-record.

[qwertyuiopas]

Sounds like a lot of data to storer at once. Have you considered putting an arbitrary cap at, say 1000, and at that point have the NPC tell the player that (the NPC) has seen so many people, that they can't really remember all of them? It could be set up so that the least remembered people are bumped off the list, and how well they are remembered decays over time. Of course, you could set it up so that at most the top 200 are well known, and then an arbitrary, though possibly hardcoded number after that are recognised, fading away to vaguely recalled.

[Labs]

Or if you could say, go out drinking with that NPC or have him help you with a task, then he would remember you more readily than say, someone who he's only met once or twice.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I think if I were coding I would work it like this:

How much someone remembers you depends on how often they see you and how powerful your impression was.

Every interaction or every time he witnesses you do something incredible, his memory of you (a number) increases. If he doesn't have you in memory at all he creates a profile for you.

His profile includes numbers for Like, Fear, Pity, etc. And various actions you take interacting with him (or big things he sees you do) would affect those numbers and also affect his Memory of you. The neutral point is 30,000. Between 20k and 40k change happens easily, but to get to 10k or 50k it takes twice as much and beyond that in either direction it takes ten times as much.

His memory will decrease, and his feelings toward you will move toward neutral, every day. If his memory drops to zero or his feelings move to neutral he shifts your profile to the inactive list and all that he remembers is that he knew you once (he saves your Character ID in his list of Inactive Relationships, so just one string). If you interact with him again his conversation will reflect having met you before but he will have no opinions of you.

Harming him or stealing from him or his good friends will create a larger memory of you (and certainly, bad feeling values).

His reactions to you will be based on his feelings toward you. If he hates and fears you he will run away. If he hates but does not fear you he may attack.

Every NPC would also have, among other personality stats, a Gossip stat. This is the likelyhood he will talk about things to other characters. Things he will talk about may include people he's met who have greatly influenced him (those with a high Memory value and for whom he has strong feelings one way or the other). The people he talks with will gain you in their "known people" list, and their opinions will somewhat match the Gossiping NPC (to the extend that their Gullibility stat allows and how much they Trust this NPC).

So it's possible that you can spread your good name around by chatting up very talkative NPCs and making an excellent impression on them. Or commit vile deeds in one town only to hear your name spoken across the countryside and people you have never met flee from your sight.

[Azkanan]

Hm... Maybe have two memory settings...

1. Immediate memory - Oh, Azkanan! How are you today?
2. Historical memory (Once # of game-time days have passed...) - You there... Are you... Azkanan? My god!

Maybe have Historical memory only acheived once Immediate memory has reached #%, so to speak.


In any case, NPC AI is pretty far down the line right now, but all your ideas will be going down on record! Right now, I'm taking a different approach to the way I design MyWorld;

Target: I want to come up with an architectural design for the cities.

To do this, I'll need to know their ethics, their ideals. From that, I need to know what environment they evolved in; Dangerous? Maybe they are a warfare race, and have no qualms with chopping wood. Or, perhaps, they evolved in dangerous mountains, where there is not too much cover, thus, they must dig underground, and use stone (and metals?) as construction resources.

Of course, that's just a couple of simple ideas. So, with all that in mind, I'm currently working up 1970 Fauna and 1980 Flora.

Here is my ...Equation? For life?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Water source 0%+ = Plants (33*Water)
Plants % = Herbivore % (Herbivores/Water)
Herbivore % = Carnivore %

water%=plants#
Herbivore#=(water%/2)+10% water   %
Carnivore#=(herbivore%/2)+10% Herbivore#

33 plants = 0% Water
Water =(60%)= 1980 Plants
2000 plants =(60%)= 1188 Herbivores
1188 Herbivores =(60%)= 782 Carnivores

Tree Growth
(CO2% * Sunlight hours) /10 = Growth cms/0.5 year
+9

Tree Colour
Base colour (X) (R/G/B) then 100 -/+ R/G/B/

Flower Growth
(CO2% * water%) + Random 1-400cm = base flora size (#mm)

Flower Colour
X + 50-250 in R+G+B (Spent between R,G,B)

Adapation, Food sources.

Race
Civilization
Ethics

Megatrees 23
Tall trees 65
Short trees 12

Tall plants 32
Short plants 58
Carnivorous plants 10


50% Land
50% Sea

1Water Creatures 30% (591)
2Land Creatures 50% (985)
3Amphibian 10% (197)
4Flying Creatures 20% (197)

Deep Sea (W)15%
Sea (W)15%
Coast (W)70% (A)50% (F)10%
Marshes (A)50% (F)10%
Grasslands (L)26% (F)15%
Forests (L)26% (F)25%
Hills (L)24% (F)15%
Mountains (L)24% (F)25%

Water Creatures in Deep Sea: 88
Water Creatures in Sea: 88
Water Creatures in Coast: 177

Amphibious Creatures in Coast: 99
Amphibious Creatures in Marsh: 99

Flying Creatures in Marsh: 18
Flying Creatures in Grasslands: 58
Flying Creatures in Forests: 116
Flying Creatures in Hills: 58
Flying Creatures in Mountains: 116

Land Creatures in Grasslands: 256
Land Creatures in Forests: 256
Land Creatures in Hills: 236
Land Creatures in Mountains: 236

so, with all that worked out, I'm designing the fauna and flora, then i'll distribute them across the globe. Some creatures, on rare occasions, will have the "Tribal" tag during generation. I'll select a few - or maybe need to create a few more - of these, and they will be the Races of MyWorld.
I'll then do more design work on these races, and see how it all comes out...

Here is my thread on the subject in my Work in Progress board.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

May be better to run a pollination and growth cycle for a biome several times, including certain trees and plants discourage anything else from growing nearby (think a fir tree dropping needles and preventing new growth). If your parameters are right, you'll end up with what should be there. From that example build your rules for procedurally generating a mature area of that biome elsewhere.

For example, you may find that certain plants cluster together.

Animal pathfinding between water sources and food sources, avoiding hard foliage, with a memory on the ground, should create game trails.

[Shad0wyone]

From what I'm seeing of this, it will be a mash of:
Wurm Online (Would love to see some features from here like the house building)
That one asian MMO, Atlantica (Turn-based fighting)
Oblivion
Ultima Online
The Sims
D&D
WARNING: WALL OF TEXT
Now here's a few thoughts of my own. (Note: I haven't read much of the first two posts so sorry if this is repeating) This will ramble on for a while, so be warned. I understand you may already have some of this completely planned out, and these ideas might not make it in, but if you can, I would appreciate a response to each of these.
First, you should really make some stats like Intelligence and Wisdom based on the real-life player, make it so the smartest people get to be really strong, and the dumb trolls are just dumb trolls. This shouldn't be taken too far, but some implementation would be great.

Relationships:
First off, how would you pull this off? There are so many different elements of this, so many intricate things that seem minute but are actually important, I'm not sure how indepth you're going with this game, but good luck. You should implement a few things like memory into NPCs, don't make NPCs all the same. On the other side however, don't randomly generate them too much, you don't want to end up where the Archmage is a retard.

Here's some ideas for some NPC personality traits and axes, some are obvious, while some are not.
Good-Evil
Law-Chaos
How quickly they anger
How protective they are of family (and friends)
Stats (Int Wis Str, etc.)
So on and so forth.
About the stats Int Wis Str Con etc., I think you shouldn't limit yourself too much with those, a wise character may be quick to anger, an intelligent character may be bad at math, and so on. Also, what I said about RL players coming into play here should allow some flexibility for some physical traits, but they will be based on a characters past. Also, you should have some others beside the Str Con Wis Int Cha and Dex. These are too limiting, which is where skills come into play, there should not be a way to directly increase a stat, they are only the summary of your character's abilities, at the same time, we shouldn't have them be based totally around a few skills. At the same time, we need things separated like leg strength, upper body strength, etc., for example, if you run, it should increase lung ability (a subskill of stat Con), leg strength (subskill of Str OFC), and speed (substat of leg strength). I'll maybe make a map of what I mean by subskills and so on.

Now on to skills, first off, a fighter does NOT cast spells, unless he has some magic skills. This is what's annoying about D&D 4e, granted the fighter is stronger, like it needed to be, but it's casting SPELLS, this is wrong. We don't want fighters being too weak either, I'm thinking of an advanced system of what Age of Conan was planning, you know, the "pie slice" thing for sword combat. However, I was thinking that the turn based combat is a strength here, the battle advances in "ticks" and the player chooses what direction to swing their sword, they can choose to bring it up to parry, swing down, stab forward, and so on, but no autoattack here, and no automatic parrying and blocking, we want this to be somewhat realistic right? The thing is, this MMO is supposed to be 2D, but the swordfighting thing could be in 3D somewhat. Now, a fighter with higher arm dexterity should be able to move their sword around faster and one with higher arm strength should be able to swing harder. The thing is though, I can't think of a way to implement swordfighting like this without some awkward camera angle, so if you can't implement this somehow, you could do something like choose how your character fights, put a small message bar that says "Kobold is stabbing with his knife!" or something, and then tell your character to swing to deflect it, or to bring up his shield, or to jump to the side or back, or if you really want to, jump forward.

On the subject of wounds and death, I think there should be no "corpse run" stuff, but no D&D style have to find a cleric and get 10k GP of diamonds kind of deal. No permanent damage to stats either. On the wounds side, we don't want something to be fighting perfectly fine until it dies, like it has a heart attack suddenly, but until then is perfectly fine. There should be a system of infections for wounds that don't get cleaned however, and probably broken bones, but healing magic shouldn't be too rare, as I'll explain below. Back on the side of death, we should have a time penalty, like you wait a while for someone to get to your corpse or something. You should also be able to be raised by a necromancer if they get there first. Now how does somebody find your corpse? You bind yourself to a healer, and if you die, they will know exactly where your corpse is, and will go and retrieve it. To solve the problem that the healer won't be able to get into the dragon's lair to get to your corpse, the evil things should move your corpse out of the way, and the healer can teleport your corpse a short distance to him, even through walls.

On the subject of magic, I was thinking there could be several types, healing magic, charm magic, enchanting magic, alchemy, and high magic. Here's a short explanation of each.
Healing magic: Common, pulls energy from nature to heal. By common I mean there would be maybe 1 in 20 people have it
Charm magic: Charm and persuade. Something like 1 in 40
Enchanting magic: Adding magical properties to items. 1 in 60
Alchemy: Creating magical items, and changing properties of items, and fusing items. 1 in 80
High magic: Uses spoken words and hand waving to do weaker versions of the other four, plus elemental, necromancy and such. 1 in 100
Each of these is not a hard cap, or any idea of how many people you want to have magic, but this is probably a good scale of power. If you wanted to, you could combine Alchemy and Enchanting. Now then, since we have that laid out, I can say how I envision spell schools, this ties into personalities a bit, because some people may abhor necromancy, while others don't care about it unless a family or friend is raised, some don't care at all, and some really like it. I was thinking of several schools of magic, including a weaker version of each of the other four types of magic, and necromancy.

Religion, here's one of the more interesting aspects of D&D and RPGs in general, I was thinking that the D&D kind of religion is good here, each race has it's own main god, and different aspects of life have a god as well. A god of roads and travel, a god a of trade and money, a god of war, a god of death, a god of life, and so on. You would find a shrine to them in various places, like shrines to the god of travel and roads along roads, and shrines to the god of trade in market places, and along major trade routes. I was thinking that the more a god is worshiped, the more powerful it is, so if you got people to worship you as a god, then you could smite people. Naturally you would need a LOT of worshipers, and the current gods might smite you, but if you could somehow be welcomed into their pantheon, have fun being a god. Naturally this leads to...

Individual player power: Players should not be the most powerful thing in the land, and the only person who is able to deliver mail. They should be another footman in the army, perhaps a sergeant if they're good enough, you may end up with a player as a general, or even a player as the king. Each player should only be able to advance as far as a normal NPC could, and NPCs should be as powerful as a player, and in fact, there will be many more powerful ones, like the archmage. A player should start as a peasant, or maybe as an apprentice wizard, or a recruit in the army. You don't want to have the same starting for every person if you can avoid it. As mentioned earlier, a player could become a god, or they could simply be a farmer. They could be the world's most revered swordsman and general, or the most wanted thief. They could be who they wanted to be, given enough time. This leads to...

Skill flexibility: Also known as "I don't like being a fighter, I want to be something else" syndrome. IDLBAFIWTBSE Syndrome is common, and shouldn't be a problem, you shouldn't have to reroll if you want to switch lives, the easiest transition I can imagine is retiring to become a farmer. The hardest is something like a fighter becoming a mage. Each player shouldn't be limited as to what they can do. There should be a limit on the amount of skills you can have for magic by way of memory, you can't memorize every spell in the game. On the flipside, you don't want it to be too easy to switch to a mage from a fighter, you want it to take time, and gold.

Quests: The boon and bane of every RPG, used by railroading DMs and MMORPGs alike, they can be exciting, or the most boring thing ever (looking at you WoW, why don't you deliver the mail yourself, you lazy bastard). On the other hand you don't want every quest to be a "slay the dragon, save the kingdom from peril" kind of deal either. You want quests that are randomly generated by NPCs to do random tasks, if you want to do a fedex quest, go to a noble's house and ask the cook if they want anything from the market. If you want a "kill 10 boars" kind of quest, go to the hunting guild, if you want to slay a dragon, go ahead and find one, you don't need to find an NPC to tell you do something. If you kill 10 boars, and collect their pelts, it should fulfill the quest criteria no matter if you talked to the NPC or not, you should be able to turn the pelts in at several places as well, if you want gold, go to the market, you want fame among hunters, go to the hunter guild, you want to piss somebody off, go to the druids. Also, I agree with the oneshot quests kind of deal, but only with assassinations and such, those quests can obviously only be completed once, but they can be attempted many times. Of course each time it is attempted, it gets harder, because of bodyguards and such. If the guy is killed you need some kind of proof as well, grab his crown or a piece of his robe, grab something so you can prove you're the guy that killed him. You don't want to kill him, then go back and find there's 20 people camping the guy to turn the quest in. Now what NPCs give quests, if possible, all of them, a beggar could want food, no reward, but you get a bonus on the beggars niceness towards you, they won't jump you if you give them food. I think ANY NPC should be able to give a quest out, but not all the time, no floating ! over their head, you may hear them complaining, or you may just go up and ask if they need anything done. If they're having relationship problems, it's a conversation puzzle, but no second chances if it's something major, you may end up destroying somebody's relationship, and they will hate you for the rest of their life, at the same time, you may end up being their best friend if you help their relationship, or hook them up. This will give competition for big quests, but also there will be an abundance of lower level quests, cooks in noble houses sending you to market, all the way up the assassinate the king. At the same time, if you assassinate the king on your own, you won't know where to turn in the whatever you have that says you killed the king. You can wander around, asking people, but some player may turn you in to the guards for some cash.

Player Vs. Player, another boon and bane of RPGs, mostly a bane in D&D, and a boon in others. There should be complete and open PvP, but there should be guards, to prevent too much killing in cities, and along major roads, but make sure you can trust the guy signaling you to go down an alleyway. Guards should be able to hear you scream "Bloody murder in the alleyway!" and come rushing to help, only to find the killer has escaped. Or they may come face to face with the killer, and get killed themselves. Guards should put up wanted posters, there should be player-run and NPC-run bounty offices, both questionably legal, but a way to make lots of gold. At the same time, we don't want newbs being slaughtered by pros. Let's say there's a player king that kills all new players that come into the kingdom, no immigration then, because there won't be a way to keep track of who's an NPC, the entire game should be a turing test. Build a good enough NPC interaction and players shouldn't be able to distinguish who's an NPC. But back to the point, that king won't last long as king, he'll be exiled by his own people, sent away to an island to starve to death.

Metagame stuff, metagame damage is given out regularly in one D&D campaign I'm a part of. Metagame stuff includes knowing who's a player and who's an NPC, you can go up to a character and ask if they need anything, if they're a player they may just ask you to go to market for them, and then leave, causing you to waste money on useless stuff. This is how I feel an MMORPG should be like, complete and total immersion, there may be some asshole that stands around like an NPC, and tells people to go off on wild goose chases. However this leads to NPC movement, you want NPCs to move around, go to sleep and such, if you want to assassinate the king, you could dress as a servant, go to clean up the king's room, and hide under his bed waiting for him, kill him, then jump out the window into the moat. NPCs shouldn't have strict schedules either, they may have a headache and go to bed early, there may be a state holiday and so they're out partying, there may be a church event, so the king is at the church, along with everyone else, anybody not there is suspicious or a guard, and so every player may logout to avoid it, or go to it, or just skip it and let the guards suspicion fall on him. This brings up the problem of logging out, if you want immersion, what happens when you log out? I think if you log out when you're in a city, you get taken over by an NPC, and just go around, while you remain logged out, your NPC self will not do anything to majorly mess you up, unless they get killed. If you tend to do something everyday, they'll do it. If you log out, you're given some choices, to go home, to go an inn, or sleep on the ground somewhere, each will tell you what it will cost you. If you logout outside a city, you may be able to set up a camp, with a choice of fire and no fire, to avoid being seen, or you may want to go to a city and sleep in an inn, or go home.

Transportation: This is yet another boon and bane of RPGs everywhere. A typical medieval RPG has three major ways of transportation, walking, animal riding, and magic. This MMO should have others, such as hitching a ride in a cart and so on. Magic transportation should be limited to high-power mages for teleporting anywhere, mid-power for going to a specific place from anywhere, and low-power for going from a specific place, to a different specific place. Each takes time, and also enchanters/alchemists could set up portals for the low and mid teleports.

Flora: Plants are necessary for life, and if some player wants to kill every plant in the world, they can go ahead and try. Plants should be able to go extinct, and there should be some amount of invasive species, succession, and so on. Plants should be eaten, tracking each individual leaf would be both stupid and pointless, so tracking plant overall surface area is good if you have enough space on the server. If not, go for overall health. Plants should take a while to grow, and a player who's a farmer shouldn't expect results within a few hours (looking at you Runescape, and players even complain about it taking too long when the shortest wait is 5 minutes or so).

Fauna: This is a magical world, and as such, needs magical animals, such as dragons. This world needs things like sheep and deer as well. As mentioned earlier, there should be game trails through forests. Players should be able to track down animals, for hunting. Players should be able to raise animals for livestock farming. NPCs should be able to do all of that as well, I envision an MMORPG with NPCs and players indistinguishable, if that is at all possible, if not, that's fine, but we don't want a world with NPCs saying the same things and doing the same things day after day.

Politics and trade: This ties into PvP a bit, and is quite confusing at times, I would like to see a world where players can create new villages, even new kingdoms, with just some friends. I want to see constantly shifting borders, cities being torn apart, bodies strewn in the streets, a lone warrior standing in the throne room of a castle, bearing the bloodied crown of the king... *ahem* Oh right, I want to see cities constantly shifting ownership, I want to see a real siege, I want to see the REAL methods medieval warriors used, I want boiling oil, I want diseased corpses being thrown at the enemy, I want to see assassins, I want to see siege towers, I want TREBUCHETS. But I also want peace, and trade, of weapons, armor, jewelry, magical items, livestock, precious metals, anything and everything.

Metagame part two: This brings me back to metagame stuff, for outside trade, I've seen the plan with myworld points, I was thinking that the way to implement that is give a message to the player saying "(God here) favors you, and gifts you with (something)" or something like it. I don't think I would like to see forums for trading, I never have liked them. To me, they're not really belonging in an RPG, they're just more metagame shit. Also, if a player is tempbanned or permabanned, they should become an NPC while they're banned, they shouldn't just disappear. Also, in regards to permadeath for NPCs, this is good, but how do you explain it in RPG terms? I was thinking of that the players are "chosen by the gods" or something, and that as such, they can be revived by the aforementioned revival system. The players shouldn't age either, if they do, they should age at a rate much slower than NPCs.

Time: Here's an interesting piece of this MMO you're planning, how long should an ingame day be, and how do you age NPCs if you're going for a 1 game day = 1 real day, in fact, how would you do sieges in a reasonable amount of time? No player wants to wait a month to finish a siege. This is a problem in multiplayer games, and games with long waits such as sieges, if you want a game to be perfect, you need to find the balance between too long of a day, and too short, anything too short, and you have a feeling that players move too slowly, too long, and sieges become boring, having to wait a month, maybe even two.

I think that's all for now, I may come back here to add a bit more, I could go on for a while longer, but I've got things to do.

[Azkanan]

@Relationships;

Dwarf Fortress has an ethics system whereas you set a minimal and maximal range on an ethic; that's the sort of system i'm using for anger, happiness, and all that jazz (I think it's ethics? Might be personality tags).
I'm planning to have all the armour, weapons, items, crafts, and so on, made by NPCs personally. When they do so, their skill in that area will increase, thus, kicking out better crafts. Their output with craftsmanship, I guess, would be set by some type of "Laziness" or "Dedication" tags.
NPCs will have stats, age, levels, experience, skills, names, family trees, favourite weapons/armour/crafts/materials.

Lol@"Archmade is a retard".

@Stats

Stats will increase according to skill usage - not the other way around! So if an NPC has the background history of carrying heavy things, he will have a higher strength. If they run alot, dexterity. Read alot, intelligence. You get the idea.

@Skills
If a player wants to wield a sword and throw a fireball, that's their choice.  Magic is explained below. People train their skills by using them, practicing them. The more you use a skill, the more practiced you are in it. Read educational books for a boost, be trained, sort of like The Elder Scrolls, I guess.
Skills cover swordplay, magic schools, crafting, farming, building, and so on - all the abilities a player could do.
Turn-based combat would impliment autoattacks. but, Myworld has three battle systems, inspired by the Suikoden series. The first is, evidently, turn-based combat with up to six players/npcs on either side. The second is an army-based system, where it's action-based, running in and doing your jizz against waves of enemies, and the last is a Duel-system.
Now, you're idea of different attack types has completed the puzzle on how duels work. I wanted something more than a rock-paper-scissors system, and you've give it me! Thank you! Players will be able to do different attack moves, for different actions.
As you said, Parry. Uppercut, Stab, Vertical-slash, and maybe some special moves that are learned through training. Other than that, you have the choice of Dodging, (Parrying), or blocking. Maybe throw a shield block in there, if they have one equipped.

Wounds & Death
I think i've finally come up with how to intermix Dwarf Fortess style wounds, with the HP based system. It was really obvious, when I just this moment came up with the example; Fallout 3! You can have a battered body on that, which then effects your attacking, defending, movement speed, vision, and so on. I think i'll use a system alike to that.
If you are killed, you are not killed. Players run through a background before playing the game, whereas they learn as to why they are pretty much immortal. So, with that in mind, they get knocked unconcious. Whilst unconcious, you can be looted by players passing by, and maybe NPCs if you are in a bandit-infested area. Or, maybe somebody passing by will put some sort of bitter salve in your mouth, which snaps you out of unconciousness... I remember watching 24, where they break a little tablet by an unconcious person's face, and the smell is so strong it wakes them. Something like will work.

But then, you would have to be fixed up. Healed. This is where magic, healing aids, naturally balms and so on come into play. Whilst a crutch and band aid may give you a temporary fix, you can either wait the weeks for it to heal, (In-game weeks. 4 days = 1 real day), or go to a cleric's guild, where they will fix you up. Maybe for free. Depends if it is player-run or not, I guess?


@Magic
The lore behind magic is that every living and unliving entity has a source of magic. A wooden table will have a magical (lifeforce) residue from whence it was a tree. Magic is in the air - in the wind, although very little. Magic is in the water, as it rains from the skies, which grabs magic from the air, bringing it down the mountain, gatherering more, and finally to the sea, where it is foccussed by the sun, and "shook up" by the waves, undercurrents and creatures. It's all one big cycle, basically.
Mainly, magic is notably strongest in smarter, or particularly magical, creatures - which opens a whole new bag on Blood Magic, for one example.
Now, back on to the subject of skills, players will have to be trained to "unlock" their magic at a school-based system... Or it may unlock naturally, which is potentially dangerous, and will need to be trained to control it.

There are a number of magics already planned... Natural magic, Star Magic and Blood Magic. Natural magic is where you focus the magic around you, in nature, and put it to use. This can be done with air, water, earth, fire. There is also eating plants, which will restore your magic, as opposed to taking it from animals, which would be blood magic, explained below.

Example; you are in a battle, and intend to use wind magic. You focus on the air before you, and imagine a circle, a globe. You then compact as much magic into that unbreakable globe to the best of your ability, then open the other side of the globe - releasing a sort of "Force push". This can be compared to pushing two magnets together, whereas a stronger person physically can push them closer, easier - somebody who practices the muscles for this skill.
In the other end of that example, is magic. Practice manipulating the air around you, and you get better at it each time.

Then there is Blood Magic, where you take magic from living animals, as opposed to plants, bark, fruit and so on. Blood magic is where you take blood from an animal, by cutting them and absorbing the magic. More magic is gained not only from drinking their blood, but also from eating their flesh. More magic is in the cells and organs, than the blood itself.
Of course, when you mix sodium with water, bad things happen - just like mixing two different magic sources. You become further and further corrupt, even addicted to it. This is inspired by reading The Magician's Apprentice series by Trudi Canavan, and the addiction/corruption came from my own thoughts, but is comparable to the    Supernatural series.
This would be a good background idea to Vampires, actually...

Finally, there is Star Magic. On cloudless nights, where hundreds and thousands of stars are easily visible, and/or the moon is bright, a sort of Cosmic Magic is present. Star Magic can be gathered and stored in oneself, and released later.

Of course, the above three are sources of magic, where to gain magic from. For their use, the magic can be released to manipulate, not create. That is a base rule of magic. You can manipulate the air molecules to rub together veraciously, causing a spark of flame, which can then be forcefully fed air and brought into existance, but that is manipulation, not creation.
The wind can be redirected, the water can be gathered from the air (For example, water magic may not work in a desert, or maybe be more powerful at sea), Rocks can be brought up from the ground/cliffs, and magic can be released into a physical entity. You may even become strong enough to "summon" creatures. That is, to teleport a creature of your choosing to you, then controlling it to fight.
Summoning a creature may take much focus and magic power to sustain, though...
You have healing magic, which manipulates cells to exponentially grow, sucks out poisons, and so on.
Enchantment magic, where you gather your magic, and permanently place the enchantment on something. For example, you may craft the magic to thinly coat a blade, and then manipulate the magic to be extremely sharp along the blade's edge. The enchantment, obviously needing a name that I will have to come up with, a focus perhaps, will require to draw magical energy from the user for user, or extract magic and store it in itself, from blood of it's victim.
Alchemy isn't a magic, is more of a study of herbs... unless you start throwing magic in as a spice, so to speak! But for the most part, Alchemy will be Herbology, with a whisper of magical entity.

@Religion
That's an interesting idea. Maybe when you worship a god, or entity, that entity is transferred some of your natural magic, magic-user or not. From that, you gain magic from worshippers, but very little. Over the millenia, the focus of magic from the millions has focussed into the creation of an entity, a true god, a being of pure magic, and its ideals are that of which has been focussed into the magic, from the worshippers. Therefore, a goodly god would be a goodly one. An evil god, an evil one. A god of sunny weather may effect the weather when prayed to by many, in times of need.
Very interesting idea - I think I'll use that. This is why I like having these topics, so useful!

@Individual Player Power
Players are pathetic, put simply. At first, at least. Everybody starts as a farmer or a fisherman, or some other meagre background. They can continue that life, if they really wanted to, or they can take that step into the unknown, and follow the road where-ever it take them. Skills effect a players' abilities, and maybe some sort of bonus on levelling up, which I havn't covered in design yet. But, it would take a good while before players are slaying dragons, naked and with a dagger. There will not be any one-hit-killing powerful creatures (Unless, of course, they had some sort of magic behind their attack).
Basically, powerful creatures will stay powerful, and weak will stay weak.
On reading the rest of your post on the individual player power, it seems you are saying the exact what I am saying, just now. Players *can* become kings, if they and their heavily-trained army can defeat the current king and his army. This system is called Lordshipery, where if you wear the crown, you are the king of that land - not that it will be easy to gain.

@Skill Flexibility
Imagine skills like this; you have a page in your menu, where it displays a skill name, and a % of your ability in that skill. If you want to become a different skill-user, just start using that skill instead. Practice makes perfect is the motto, here.
If a player wants to flip from fighter to mage, then they have to go through the school and yadda yadda as I write above. Perhaps players can only roll into the schools, is they pay an internment fee - or, whatever it is you americans call that.

@Quests
Quests will be relative. A herder may need somebody to kill the wolves. A farmer may require a trapper to lay traps for the marauding moles and rabbits. A private in an army may have lost his helmet, and need help finding it before the sergeant.
Why exactly does a guy on the road need you to go and hunt down 20 boar in the local area? Is he insane? That is the main reason I stopped playing WoW, and I won't be endorsing that sort of Quest system in MyWorld.
Then again, don't expect somebody to ask you for help if they're desperate. You might need to earn their trust. I'd like quests to be one-shot only. So, once somebody has done it, nobody else can do it afterwards. Or, at least, for a while. Maybe give a week or so before the rabbits return to the carrot patch.

@PvP
Woah, okay, let's see... PvP can either initiate 6-party-battle in unwanted battles, or two peoples can agree to a duel. Say for example, you're taking a shortcut through the city, through the alleyway. A player with no money jumps out and start a battle. Or, you decide to take a shortcut across a long line of houses, through the theives-guild-run-sewers.
As for guards, I'm not quite sure how to impliment them, that will be a complicated matter, and I'll have to say No Comment on their involvement at this time.
Bounty boards was available in one of the earliest version of MyWorld, when it was playable, so they will be in. Players can post a bounty on anybody. They give over the bounty award to a third-party NPC, which then pays the bounty hunter, when task accomplished.
NPC Interaction may be a toughie to confuse with players, seeing as the conversational system will be completely different between NPCs and PCs. That is, to say, to converse with an NPC, you will have to click them, then choose from a number of options on what to say. With PCs (Players) you can just scream and shout, and people will scream and shout back, for example.
A king is a king. Henry VIII was a complete fat dickhole, but nobody sent him away, because without him the country would be in chaos. Players/NPCs may refuse to pay taxes and leave the country if the King is too harsh, though. Maybe? And perhaps, without taxes, the kingdom would fail, and the king removed by the senate/council.

Metagaming
Immersion is what I am aiming for with MyWorld. No flying hamburgers, no random advertising, no useless crap. Everything will have a purpose. If players is woodcutting, for example, and needs somebody to haul wood back to his home with him, he could then pay the helper afterwards. If the woodcutter then breaks the deal, the helper could steal the wood, kill the guy for his money, report him to the bounty board, and so on.
As for assassinating the king in that style, that is something that will need to be avoided. The king is the seat of power. Without a king, the country is in chaos. Lordshipery is handled here, whereas you have to attack the capital with your army in an army battle, and then charge at the king, slapping through his personal guard.
If the NPC king was just assassinated, a 7 year old newbie could walk in a grab the crown, if the assassin decided to leave the crown behind, or give it away.
Then again, the assassin could then take the crown for himself, or auction it off for thousands, for his effort. Perhaps assassinating NPC Kings would be possible. I'll think on that.
As for assassinating PC Kings, that couldn't happen. You could attack and knock him unconcious, but, his is immortal, after all, and will remain as the king.
NPC Interactions with needs and moving around places... That I'd like to see, but I've attempted that once and it isn't easy! But, I will attempt it. As I said in an example once, a quest requires the player to go and give a love letter to Lucy of Village X, but she has gone to the city as she does every Tuesday each week, to trade her mother's goods. Or something.
Logging out will put you to sleep. This will force the player to need a secure bed, or being looted, or maybe catching a cold or some other illness.
A camp system is what I would like to see. Where you are on the world map, and your sleep requirement bar is at 1% before you are about to collapse. There is no where to go nearby, so you quickly hit the Camp Key, and you are warped to a camp. You build a fire, and if you have time a tent, otherwise a bedroll, and fall asleep. The fire would reduce the chance of a cold, whilst a tent knocks it down to very unlikely, for examples.

@Transportation
Mounts, ships, airships, underground rails (Dwarven-like cilivization?), and whatever comes up. Teleportation I plan to be a powerful feat, and not easily done at a low cost. You are basically folding spacetime when you teleport, which is evidently not easy!
As for hitching a ride, perhaps escorting a merchant will not only give you ease of transport, it may also pay up a little - accompanied by a little drama and experience!

@Flora
There will be 1980 plants generated and spread across the map of MyWorld, give or take.
I'm not quite sure how to switch and change them about on a massive planet the size of MyWorld, in the case of extinction and invasive species, although a randomly generated location on each map, perhaps, or some other sort of instance placement, may cover that.
Plants will regenerate from their roots, once taken by a player. On a farm, plants will take a set number of days to mature, keeping in mind that 4 days are in 1 real-time day.

@Fauna
There will be 1970 creatures  generated and spread across the map of Myworld, give or take.
Every creature has 3 adjectives generated, these include appearance, attitude, if they are domesticated and if they are mounts... and a few others, making them poisonous or not, for example.
Example. Some are woolly and domesticated, which would make them sheep, but may have sharp teeth, be carnivores, or maybe really small - or really big. They may be pets, rather than wool-providers, or guardians.
A dragon would be a rare case of generated content. It would need the fire-breather tag, winged, scaly, gargantuan or bigger, and so on. So, there could be a dragon in-game, but not exactly the usual type. It could be missing a tail. Or have tentacles. Maybe it is pink and has long shaggy hair. Who knows?
Of course, I do make sure each creature makes sense. I go over them all, and check for any clashes. "Good" and "evil" tags, duplicate tags, "Woolly" and "Scaly" - I fix all these, and more.
In actual fact, I hit the generate button and type them all up by hand, which takes a while.

Again, you return to the NPC Immersion. I'd also like a world where NPC and PC are indistinguishable, but, that would take up alot of AI Programming, which I or nobody I know, has the skill to do. In fact, they say that perfect AI will not be possible till 2050, where they will be able to "copy" the human brain into the format of a Computer. (Wikipedia for "2050").
Anyway, NPCs won't be saying the same random nonsense, that's for sure!

@Politics and trade
Players can create villages. Players can take over kingdoms. All land will belong to somebody already, NPC-wise. Constantly shifting borders, that is able to be done by setting "outposts" or "war camps" between warring borders, where when one camp is defeated, it is taken over. Thus, the border shifts. Something alike to this, anyway.
On that note, if a border were to be reduces so much that a Player Village were to be taken over, what if that village was designated to be destroyed by the Player who runs that country? That would be problematic.
A lone warrior standing in the throne room, bearing the bloodied crown - surrounded by his five party members who helped him get there. Maybe one of the party members challenges him to a duel over the crown. Perhaps one of the party members breaks off from the party, and attacks the guy on the remaining four party members for the crown.
Siege engines/methods would be interesting to see, and maybe a Fourth combat system whereas the War Battle system would include great balls of fire being tossed at your face (lol), your soldiers being taken out in their clusters. Diseased corpses knocking over an ally squarly, or a steel ball clipped somebody's leg.
Trebuchets are sexy, by the way.
Assassins would be one of the hirable agents, I should think, and work much like they do in Medieval 2, where they have a chance to kill, miss or be killed on-mission.
Whilst on the Agents subject, there will be Diplomats who you can send on diplomatic missions with trade invitations, alliance invitations, all that jazz. Theives that will attempt to steal from a treasury. Assassins, that will assassinate as explained, and a few others I have forgotten - feel free to make a suggestion.
Weapons, armor, jewelry, magical items, livestock, precious metals, anything and everything - all will be crafted and craftable. No randomly placed items in a shop. You buy something, the shop loses one of it. If you buy all of something, the shop loses all of that something till the NPC recrafts those items, or buys more from somewhere. You then have that something, which you might sell to another player in your own shop, or sell back to another shop elsewhere - the shop then gains X number of that item.
I want items to stay in circulation for a long time - including money - till they are broken, destroyed or lost.
I think I covered Trade in the above example.


@Metagame Part Two
MyWorld Points - This is a system I was contemplating, and i'm thinking I may only use it for expanding the world of Cerria, to include space for new Kingdoms for players who have earned it.
Banned - If a player is banned, his character will sleep. Forever. Till he decays. A temporary ban will just be a long sleep.
Permadeath - Every NPC will begin at some random age. They will give birth to children, and then themselves die. Their children will grow old, give birth, and die.
Player Aging - Nope. They reach an age, then do not age. The original plan is that players are "chosen by god" as you say. But, perhaps, they were exposed to some magical "pulse" of energy, which has exponentially lengthened their life. In the initial lore-history of MyWorld, All life was created by "Oril" the overlord god, the god of gods. The first humanoid creation was a Guardian, an elf-like creature that protected the forests. These then migrated, evolved to suit their location, and became dwarves of the mountains, humans of the farmlands, etc.
The first creation of this type, the guardians, was a male and female, sort of like an adam-and-eve story, but they were created with the very essence of Oril. Oril is immortal. The essence of Oril is immortal, and thus, so were the initial Adam and Eve Guardians.

Now, my point is, perhaps the players wander into a cave in the history/background gameplay at the start, where they are exposed by an essence of a god. Perhaps they see visions in the cave, where they make choices. Kill or do not kill the innocent, sort of thing. Then finally, they come across an artifact, which is a product of the player's choices. The artifact would be an inflection of the real life person, if they chose the choices they personally would choose. Then upon exposure to this, they are made immortaly, touched by a god alike to the person's personality.

That's just me rambling an idea, though.

@Time
I seem to have answered the initial question a good number of times already, above. One real day = Four game days. Why four? I can't remember. but, it was a good balance between things being too long, or too short, aswell as an easy round number for multiplying and dividing where needed.
The lives of NPCs won't be two years in real life, they'll be far shorter, living perhaps, 4 or 6 months, real-life.
Sieges. By previous games, sieges tend to last for a season. Maybe a month. So, if a siege were to last for 1 game month, that is 30/4. 7 real days? Oh, wow, that sucks... Hm... Maybe that's the maximum time, and for a large city. Thinking about it, sieging a player's fishing village with high walls and many soldiers may last only a few real hours. Two days, perhaps, game time.
In any case, I'm not even sure about implimenting wait-sieging. That could really mess everything in-game up.

[Azkanan]

Double post, buutttt...

Happy birthday MyWorld! You are 1 years old in development!

[Azkanan]

As well as a bump, I'm also going to link y'all to a Feature I did for MyWorld over at Mod|DB, based on this thread.

Please, continue to discuss the perfect 2D MMORPG! The more replies I get, the more inspiration and ideas, as well as improvements, I have for Myworld.

Link Here

[Shad0wyone]

About the unconscious thing, it brings some interesting problems, namely the question of what if a player is a ruler. How do they get removed from power eventually? How does one assassinate a logged-off (sleeping, therefore unconscious) person, if all they're going to do is fall asleep anyway? If players are able to be looted, can you be looted while asleep, or do you just disappear? It's kind of interesting really, if you are temporarily banned, something like "the gods dislike you" and you get thrown into a divine prison would work, otherwise it just doesn't make too much sense. For logging off, if you log off a long time, I still think you should be taken over by an NPC controller until you log in, and you just pop back to where you logged off, except if you're in combat, maybe you could have to wait a bit.
For what I was saying about skills, I'm trying to say that Con should have an influence on lung ability and such. I do agree that Con should increase if you run, but I think you should have sub-stats or something similar, which also increase if you run. It should be two-way, but to a small extent as far as stats to skills go. Actually, now that I think about it, Con should not actually have any influence on skills, instead, you should have several sub-stats, like I was saying about Con and lung ability, Con should just be a summary of your abilities, but have no actual effect on anything. Instead you have several sub-stats, lung ability, endurance, etc. I don't know if this is what you had in mind but it's fine anyway.
About quests, I'm not saying there should be a quest to go kill 20 boars, that was an example. Still, I think NPCs should give small quests to people, but shouldn't pay them in advance, except perhaps if they're very trusting or something. I'm saying that a lot of NPCs should be able to give quests, I like my example that a noble's wife needs groceries, she won't pay you to go, but she will pay you once you get back, if you choose to go. Things like these should probably be in a separate journal for "errands" or something. About the boar pelts thing, these shouldn't be repeatable, except every week as you said, boars should be extinct in WoW, along with everything else. The hunters guild will definitely give out a "10 boar pelts" quest, don't avoid that, it WILL happen, it's just part of the game, it's just your decision on how to implement it. Don't go down the path of WoW and make it so that every player does it once, but don't go down the other way and make it one-shot a month, I think once a week is good. However, don't put it in so that the time is fixed, otherwise you have people camping the questgivers for quests. Also, you need some kind of proof about you killing the thing, otherwise you end up that the dragon is killed, and some noob turns in the quest, said noob gets fame, fortune, and a fancy dragonslayer title, while the other guy wasted a bunch of time.
About magic, I like that system, it seems very mystic and mysterious. I think that star magic should be very limited and powerful though, think of how powerful real stars are, and releasing that power on the planet? Not good. (There should be a one-shot quest for that I think .) As far as the others go, natural magic shouldn't include lifeforce from plants, that limits it too much, you get the situation where some plants are best for wind, some for fire, etc. I don't think that would be too good, instead, add a fifth category of life, and put in plant life to that, and animals should give a small portion of it too. Blood magic maybe should be split, into lifeblood and deathblood, or something, deathblood from killing, lifeblood from eating. This gets an equilibrium of sorts, plants should give natural life, as well as a very small portion of lifeblood. Each animal has some natural, and some lifeblood, the lifeblood is transferred to deathblood when it dies, and from there to the killer, but some remains (say, 50%) as lifeblood, and the animal must either have its blood drained or be eaten to release that, otherwise it returns to the earth. In my opinion this leads to a much better magic system. This way something like corn doesn't get shafted because it gives very little magic, and something that gives a lot of magic is worth a million gold or something, instead, corn is worth a good amount, and the other plant is instead worth, say, 100k. Inflation is bad, especially when dealing with something like gold that has a fixed value. There is a reason the US doesn't have the gold standard anymore.
About player power, don't make players too powerful. New players are EXTREMELY discouraged if they find out there is somebody going around killing dragons with nothing but his left pinky toe. As a new player, I don't want to find that out, and I would leave that game, saying that I could never get that powerful.
About cities, I don't want to just see large cities, I want to see small fishing villages, I want to see small wilderness camps of bandits, that I could join or destroy. I want to see a player that's the mayor of those, I want to see, well, what a real world would be like if there really were dragons with pink wool. Also, I would like to see a city building part of the game, being able to look at your city from an airship would be awesome. I would love to see an airship siege as well.
I would like to see some different races in this, for example, humans, (duh), elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, and so on. One race I want to see is a steampunk race, I've kind of been interested in that, and it would be interesting to see, plus, where else would the airships come from? Kind of leads to...
Technology, I don't want to see machine guns. I don't want to see lasers, I don't even want to see primitive rockets (well, maybe, in case you do have that steampunk race). I think it would be nice to see the world slowly advance in technology, I don't want to see the whole world go at once though. I don't want to see the steampunk race be at a huge advantage if you do implement it though. I would like to see them with basic rifles, you know, black powder, they took a full 30 seconds to reload for the fastest reloaders. Eventually, the other races should catch up to them, and they just meld into whatever race they're modeled after, if you have steampunk elves, make them meld with the other elves once the others catch up.
Well, that was a short ramble, strange for me (Yes, that was short). The reason I keep returning to the NPC immersion is that I think it would be really cool to see, I want to play the game that does do that when it comes out, and it will. I just think it would cool. Do try to get an advanced AI as possible though, I think this may interest you, (Warning: PDF). I like the idea of an entire game being a Turing test though. Anyway, going away from that, I hope this goes well, good luck to you.

[Azkanan]

About the unconscious thing, it brings some interesting problems, namely the question of what if a player is a ruler. How do they get removed from power eventually? How does one assassinate a logged-off (sleeping, therefore unconscious) person, if all they're going to do is fall asleep anyway? If players are able to be looted, can you be looted while asleep, or do you just disappear? It's kind of interesting really, if you are temporarily banned, something like "the gods dislike you" and you get thrown into a divine prison would work, otherwise it just doesn't make too much sense. For logging off, if you log off a long time, I still think you should be taken over by an NPC controller until you log in, and you just pop back to where you logged off, except if you're in combat, maybe you could have to wait a bit.
For what I was saying about skills, I'm trying to say that Con should have an influence on lung ability and such. I do agree that Con should increase if you run, but I think you should have sub-stats or something similar, which also increase if you run. It should be two-way, but to a small extent as far as stats to skills go. Actually, now that I think about it, Con should not actually have any influence on skills, instead, you should have several sub-stats, like I was saying about Con and lung ability, Con should just be a summary of your abilities, but have no actual effect on anything. Instead you have several sub-stats, lung ability, endurance, etc. I don't know if this is what you had in mind but it's fine anyway.
About quests, I'm not saying there should be a quest to go kill 20 boars, that was an example. Still, I think NPCs should give small quests to people, but shouldn't pay them in advance, except perhaps if they're very trusting or something. I'm saying that a lot of NPCs should be able to give quests, I like my example that a noble's wife needs groceries, she won't pay you to go, but she will pay you once you get back, if you choose to go. Things like these should probably be in a separate journal for "errands" or something. About the boar pelts thing, these shouldn't be repeatable, except every week as you said, boars should be extinct in WoW, along with everything else. The hunters guild will definitely give out a "10 boar pelts" quest, don't avoid that, it WILL happen, it's just part of the game, it's just your decision on how to implement it. Don't go down the path of WoW and make it so that every player does it once, but don't go down the other way and make it one-shot a month, I think once a week is good. However, don't put it in so that the time is fixed, otherwise you have people camping the questgivers for quests. Also, you need some kind of proof about you killing the thing, otherwise you end up that the dragon is killed, and some noob turns in the quest, said noob gets fame, fortune, and a fancy dragonslayer title, while the other guy wasted a bunch of time.
About magic, I like that system, it seems very mystic and mysterious. I think that star magic should be very limited and powerful though, think of how powerful real stars are, and releasing that power on the planet? Not good. (There should be a one-shot quest for that I think .) As far as the others go, natural magic shouldn't include lifeforce from plants, that limits it too much, you get the situation where some plants are best for wind, some for fire, etc. I don't think that would be too good, instead, add a fifth category of life, and put in plant life to that, and animals should give a small portion of it too. Blood magic maybe should be split, into lifeblood and deathblood, or something, deathblood from killing, lifeblood from eating. This gets an equilibrium of sorts, plants should give natural life, as well as a very small portion of lifeblood. Each animal has some natural, and some lifeblood, the lifeblood is transferred to deathblood when it dies, and from there to the killer, but some remains (say, 50%) as lifeblood, and the animal must either have its blood drained or be eaten to release that, otherwise it returns to the earth. In my opinion this leads to a much better magic system. This way something like corn doesn't get shafted because it gives very little magic, and something that gives a lot of magic is worth a million gold or something, instead, corn is worth a good amount, and the other plant is instead worth, say, 100k. Inflation is bad, especially when dealing with something like gold that has a fixed value. There is a reason the US doesn't have the gold standard anymore.
About player power, don't make players too powerful. New players are EXTREMELY discouraged if they find out there is somebody going around killing dragons with nothing but his left pinky toe. As a new player, I don't want to find that out, and I would leave that game, saying that I could never get that powerful.
About cities, I don't want to just see large cities, I want to see small fishing villages, I want to see small wilderness camps of bandits, that I could join or destroy. I want to see a player that's the mayor of those, I want to see, well, what a real world would be like if there really were dragons with pink wool. Also, I would like to see a city building part of the game, being able to look at your city from an airship would be awesome. I would love to see an airship siege as well.
I would like to see some different races in this, for example, humans, (duh), elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, and so on. One race I want to see is a steampunk race, I've kind of been interested in that, and it would be interesting to see, plus, where else would the airships come from? Kind of leads to...
Technology, I don't want to see machine guns. I don't want to see lasers, I don't even want to see primitive rockets (well, maybe, in case you do have that steampunk race). I think it would be nice to see the world slowly advance in technology, I don't want to see the whole world go at once though. I don't want to see the steampunk race be at a huge advantage if you do implement it though. I would like to see them with basic rifles, you know, black powder, they took a full 30 seconds to reload for the fastest reloaders. Eventually, the other races should catch up to them, and they just meld into whatever race they're modeled after, if you have steampunk elves, make them meld with the other elves once the others catch up.
Well, that was a short ramble, strange for me (Yes, that was short). The reason I keep returning to the NPC immersion is that I think it would be really cool to see, I want to play the game that does do that when it comes out, and it will. I just think it would cool. Do try to get an advanced AI as possible though, I think this may interest you, (Warning: PDF). I like the idea of an entire game being a Turing test though. Anyway, going away from that, I hope this goes well, good luck to you.

@Unconcious
Players are removed from power, currently, by being beaten in a sort of face-off in a siege. The idea of assassination is a fun idea I have yet to play with, but I suspect that if they intend to go to sleep, they should do it in a well-guarded location by NPCs.

@Sleep-looting
When a player logs off, they go to sleep at their location, causing their player to settle down where they are. To stop people from just nodding off on a road, like most people do, or in a town square, you'd obviously have rules and consequences. If you fall asleep in a street, for example, you could be taken to jail till you wake up, perhaps. As for being looted whilst asleep, the body will remain, therefore, enabling the ability to be looted.

@Temporary Ban
Maybe rather than being put in some godly-jail, maybe being thrown into a dank and smelly jail, sort of like how Morrowind did the jail-system, where you come out with stats decreased.

@Logging off long time
Being taken over by an NPC would be far too complicated, not to mention players could just log off for a while, come back, and have their stats increased, or, something.

@Constitution
It's called Stamina, not constitution, in Myworld. If a player swims, they become more athletic - same for running, the two are alike. Repetative diving will increase diving time length, but doing it repetatively constantly should cause dizziness and eventual incacipitation, or, moreso "Being worn out".

@Quests
If a stranger started talking to you, in real life, would you then entrust them to go shopping for you? Precisely. I don't understand what genius in the mmorpg development scene came up with the idea that people would entrust strangers to do these things for them! T'is plain common sense, that they wouldn't.

@Hunting
I'm not sure how extinction would work, except perhaps maybe, some variable that tracks the region's populations of creatures, then every time one is killed, the number is reduced. Every 10 reduces the creature count in the region by 1 or so, whilst over time the population would increase. (Creatures * Creatures) / 20 = Offspring, or something, perhaps. This would be interesting to see, though, to see how players would react. Preservation attempts and repopulation, perhaps. The thrill of seeing a very rare bird flying by, perhaps the bird was captured and sold on the black market for their beautiful song, and this player hears it, enjoys it, then leaves. The player then goes on to create a repopulation attempt of this bird, and 10 years later in-game, the forest is filled with that beautiful song. Just me rambling, though.

@Guild Quests
Guilds would give quests to their members, or perhaps a certain player made their guild to give out quests/errands to anybody - sort of like a Bounty Hunter's Guild, I suppose. I guess it depends on how the Guild Leader wants his Guild to be - open or secretative.
Quests should be given out when they are needed. If a guild is run by players, the players can make the quests and post on their board, or some sort of Quest Giver at the desk. Example, go collect x amount of Opice Wood / Shinerock Gems / etc.
As for hunting quests, maybe the guild/quest giver will want the creature's head as proof, or talon, tooth, etc. Of course, that opens the opportunity for the sneaky player to go to the black market and buy a tooth, turn that in, then run away with the reward, leaving the town to it's fate under the monster's reign of terror.

@Magic
- Star Magic
To be honest, I havn't put much thought into Star Magic yet. It's sort of like, a sixth sense, whereas the first five need to be thought out, first.

- Natural Magic
Maybe I explained it wrong... Magic is magic. There isn't a fire magic, a wind magic, a water magic, etc. Magic is a lifeforce, a magic force. You can then use that magic to manipulate and control elements, nature... I have an example from an old "Bible" I was working on for MyWorld, here. One moment. It's quite a hefty peice.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Tale of Vaelrim

Part III – Chapter I

Vaelrim, sixth son of Ilith Gretis, began to dabble into what sustained the life of living beings. He began by examining common insentient plants and a number of sentient plants with their permission. For a hundred years, he sat and watched them day by day, fully aware of his immortality, pondering upon his theory.
He came to the conclusion that some sort of essence, a tiny portion of the sun and Uríl himself, was in every living being, and a tinier amount in the unliving. Soils and rocks carried the Physical remains of beings. Seas and rain, the fluids of beings. The wind and air, the voice of beings. Fire and Warmth, the emotions of beings.
When a being dies, their remnants are split between these four, these elements.
Vaelrim attempted to grasp the soils, which he could hold.
Vaelrim attempted to grasp the seas, which slipped away from his grasp.
Vaelrim attempted to grasp the winds, which howled and whipped away from his touch.
Vaelrim attempted to grasp the fires, which hissed and burned at his intrusions.
Vaelrim spent another hundred years pondering on why he was not able to grasp the elements, till he realised that the elements were not physical, but emotions.
So, Vaelrim stroked the soils with his hands, to which it replied, “Do not worry, Vaelrim, son of Ilith.”
Vaelrim cried to the seas, to which it replied, “do not cry, Vaelrim, son of Ilith.”
Vaelrim screamed to the wind, to which it replied, “do not scream, Vaelrim, son of Ilith.”
Vaelrim yelled and cursed to the fires, to which it replied, “do not be angry, Valerim, son of Ilith.”
Vaelrim replied to each with, “Why do you not allow me to grasp you, and hold you?”
Each simply said, “You do not speak our language.”
“How can I learn your language, if you do not teach me?” He said.
“You must listen to hear.”

Part III – Chapter II

Vaelrim spent a hundred years in the mountains, listening to the tumbling of rocks in the peaks and the echoes of the valley.
Vaelrim spent a hundred years in the seas, listening to the sighs of waves and the bubbling of the sea creatures.
Vaelrim spent a hundred years in the plains, listening to the purring of the winds and the screams of the storms..
Vaelrim spent a hundred years in the depth of Cerria, listening to the crack of molten rock and the bubbling of Lava.
At the end of each ordeal, Vaelrim found himself able to speak to the elements in their language.

Part III – Chapter III

Vaelrim spent a half a century speaking with the elements in idle conversation, learning what they knew about the creation of Cerria.
On the hundredth year, Vaelrim told the soils to dig a hole.
On the hundredth year, Vaelrim told the seas to fill his cup.
On the hundredth year, Vaelrim told the winds to sing him a song.
On the hundredth year, Vaelrim told the fires to warm him from the winter.
On the hundredth year, Vaelrim realised he could command the elements to do as he willed.
So with his new found ability, he made the soils bring up stone from the depths of Cerria.
He made the rain smooth the stone, then the wind to dry the stone, then the fires to smooth the stone. He named this stone Oeraquogaelbrii, which held the name of each element in it’s own language.
When the Oeraquogaelbrii was completed, Vaelrim collapsed on the floor and slept for two-hundred years.
When he awoke, he asked the elements as to why he had collapsed.
The soils said, “You were not strong enough.”
The seas said, “You did not care enough.”
The wind said, “You did not be careful enough.”
The fire said, “You did not feel enough.”
Vaelrim asked the elements how he could achieve each of these, they all replied, “Take strength from us and to upon yourself.”

Part III – Chapter IV

Vaelrim pondered on this cryptic response, and at first thought he was to grasp the elements and maybe eat them. Then he remembered how he was able to communicate with the elements. He began by attempting to ask the elements for their strength, but they did not respond.
Then, in a fury, he punched the soils and slashed the seas, clawed the winds and kicked the flames. As he kicked the flames, he screamed as to why they would not lend him their strength – and then they did.
Upon that moment, he discovered that he not only had to be able to speak to the elements, but also speak to the elements in their emotion. Forceful and demanding with the soils, soothingly with the seas, softly with the winds and furiously with the fires.
One day, it was brought to his attention that a disease was sweeping the forests of the guardian lands. With his powers, he went to each tree and demanded the soils to remove the sickness. He went to each lake and purred to the rain to remove the taint. He went to each bird and sang to the wind to heal their ailments. He reached out to the sun and screamed to the flames to remove the icy winds, frozen lakes and cold creatures.
And so, Vaelrim caused all to back to normal.
At this event, Uríl came to Vaelrim and asked him why he had done what he had.
Vaelrim replied, “There was suffering and death.”
Uríl shook his head and smiled, “Without suffering, there can be no happiness. Without death, there can be no life.”
Vaelrim asked Uríl what this meant, Uríl simply smiled and disappeared once more.

Part III – V

Half a year later, the disease had returned. Trees and plants turned brown and leafless, warmth left the forest and a coldness return. But, when the Guardians turned to Vaelrim for aid once again, he simply spoke, “Let god’s will be.”
The sickness got worse till all the trees lost their leaves and the winds turned icy. And then, it rained. But, it was not a wet rain, but a soft rain. The soft rain did not form pools, but a blanket across the Guardian Lands, as far as the eye could see.
Vaelrim called to the fires and demanding that they light warmth in the homes of each of the Guardians, unable to watch his kinsmen die.
But, after a short amount of time, the soft rain ceased and the warmth returned, melting the whiteness into pools of water, and soon after that, life returned to Guardian Lands.
Uríl came once more to Cerria before all of the Guardians and called Vaelrim to his side,
“Why did you defy me and command fire to your will?” He boomed for all to see.
“I did not wish to see my people die,” Vaelrim replied, his chin held high.
“And why is that?”
“Because you made us merciful.”
Uríl smiled and turned to the Guardians, “That is true. Do not forget it, for all of you have this trait.”
Uríl swept his gaze over the Guardians, bowed and then disappeared once more.

Part III – VI

A year later, the soft rain returned and passed. As this year progressed, Vaelrim write what he experienced around him, naming the Soft Rain as Snó.
He named the first Aquo, giving this period of time to the seas, due to the snó during these months.
He named the second Gael, giving this period of time to the winds, for the wind blew away the snó of Aquo during these months.
He named the third Brii, giving this period of time to the fires, for it was the warmest during these months.
He named the fourth Oer, giving this period of time to the soils, for it was the time that many leaves fell and returned to the soils, during these months.
And so, the Guardians became aware of the four seasons.

It is said that Vaelrim went on to teach his siblings how to speak to the elements and how to command them… He called this process “Magic”.

- Blood Magic
Every creature and living organism has an energy, vibrations so to speak from the cells moving - sort of like a friction that causes heat. The magic is then soaked into the creature, into the very being. For a plant, that would be into the cells, the leaf, the berries, etc. For a creature, that would be the skin and the blood. Blood magic consists of drinking blood and eating flesh. The more intelligent the creature is, the more magic it has.
So, with that in mind, the Intellectual races, the playable species, obviously would have the highest amount of magic. So eating a person would give alot of magic, but there should be a drawback on something that powerful, a corruption of the soul, perhaps. "Killing" somebody does not extract the magic, it simple kills them. You would need to physically draw that magic into you, through blood and flesh - very gory. I think this feature, along with sex and drugs, might push MyWorld into an 18+ game, haha.
Eating plants is natural, and goes down as "Natural" magic. Cannibalism isn't exactly "Accepted" by humans, in a sense. I think it may come down evoloution of the in-game species that I am working up, if cannibalism is acceptably by their standards. In which case, no "Corruption" would come from cannibalism, and their draw back must be some sort of other disability.

@Player Power
Player's abilities aren't godly. For they aren't gods. Their lifeblood may have been touched by god, forming them immortal, but this doesn't effect their muscles and intelligence - that comes with time. Sure, you might get some steroid-like-plant-extract-abusing bodybuilder who can beat you to a pulp, but they'll still get fried by a dragon's breath. Or, a magic-player who spends 90% of his game time in a library, learning glyphs needed to practice magic and whatnot, eventually becoming a madman.
Now, mythically, there are these sorcerers who go nut-job with magic, but they usually get knocked down a notch by a collection of heroes, right? Well, maybe the Magician's Guild has a no-no on becoming too powerful, and will open up a bounty on the player till he tones down, sending the magician running into the wilderness. Again, it comes down to balancing pros and cons. "I become powerful, but nobody likes me" "I eat this, I become this" etc.

@Cities
Of course all cities arent going to be huge! Well, they are, but, there are cities, then there are hamlets and villages. Players who build their own town, will start off with a hut our two and building out from that. Players can set up camps for them and their evil mercenary NPCs, or even their evil mercenary players, whereas to strike from and return to, to rest. And yes! It would be awesome to view your village from an airship, or a flying pet's back - these things I dream of. Crossing a sea by skimming the waters on my dragon's back, going at high speeds to the warmer southern lands.
Airship sieges... Perhaps.

@Species
Ohhhh, you have nooo idea! I've created 1980 (Or was it 1970?) creatures, and out of those, 6 have risen to intelligence and are the playable races. I've got to work up the Flora and the Pollination of the two (Fauna+Flora) before I can begin the evoloution process. Each playable species will start as any other creature, see. They will evolve according to their surroundings - tougher skin against the winds/heat, webbed feet for swimming, extra digits for climbing... They are less trusting, because they evolved alongside a treacherous egg-stealing theif creature, or more aggressive due to dangerous wild animals - or maybe more peaceful, because they've never been presented with dangerous animals. Maybe their food source was a highly-magical blooded creature, therefore they become a more magical species as a whole, and so on.
These six have been named with basic information, they're over at the MyWorld Mod DB Site, check the news section.

@Technology
Well, it depends. Did one of the species eat intelligence-increases food sources? Are they naturally curious? It all comes down to how they evolved, as to how technologically advanced they are. The basic plan for now, is to have all the species near-about the same technological level, but depending on how players play, perhaps if a certain species has more players who are more engineer-like, they will advance more quickly in technological terms, although that will evolve over many years (in-game), seeing as it's such a huge shift in the world. Perhaps players will be told they have had the "Inspiration" to start research into a certain technology (Airships? Spring-loaded guns? etc), by an Admin.

NPC AI
Will be very simple, in layman's terms. It will be simple variables and speech-generation according to those variables. I havn't a clue how to go about creating intelligence, that is something far in the future of all the world, for true NPC AI. A turing test would evidently fail in MyWorld, I sadly admit.

I hope that answered your questions!

[mission0]

I will keep a close eye on this.

Kudos to you for trying such an undertaking.

[DeKaFu]

This seems like a bit of a minor thing, but about the logging out = falling asleep...

I regularly play online games with friends who have an extremely unreliable internet connection. It's not uncommon for their internet to go down without warning while playing. Will there be some system in place for dealing with unexpected/unintentional disconnects, or would someone like that have a character that suffered random bouts of narcolepsy?

I just mean, if your character randomly keels over on a public street, it'd be lame to be looted dry while your internet's down.

[Sowelu]

Punishing people for logging off on short notice is seriously bad style, and it instantly weeds out your non-hardcore people.  If people need to do something special when they log off, that's cutting into time spent actually PLAYING.  If my roommates come up and say "Hey, wanna go out to eat", and my response has to be "Sorry, I can't, it'll take me fifteen minutes to get back to my castle so I can log off in peace"...well, screw that, it's a dumb game.