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[nenjin]

On of my first experiences in EQ was visiting a low level dungeon, called Befallen, and falling down a well I couldn't see in the dark, down the very bottom of the dungeon. There was no hope of me getting back to it alone. Yet some necromancer, who may or not have been female, happened to be down there messing around. She found my corpse, came to the surface and guided me back down to it.

I relived this same experience two or three dozen times in the three years I played EQ. Falling down The Hole during raid...needing help in the Estate of Unrest when I'd snuck far too deep in to get myself out safely. Skulking through raid level zones doing recon for my guild and meeting other rogues doing the same thing, getting drafted into impromtu raids.

Games today don't like include stuff like that, for good and bad reasons. They need a formula to address the millions of players they want, and that kind of randonmess and social dependency doesn't jive with what sells boxes and keeps subscriptions paid.

I'm still undecided if I want to go back to the days of real corpse retrieval...but the spirit of those mechanics, and what players did with them, gave me far more lasting memories than even the most intense WoW raid I ever ran or participated in. The epic failures and eventually success of my EQ years make the months spent raiding the same dungeon and raid instances in WoW week after week seem pretty shallow.

The only things I did in WoW that ever really felt epic to me, I did alone, by pushing the boundaries of what a solo rogue could get to and kill. I liked sneaking into lower level dungeons and farming the bosses. That's about the only sense of mastery (that and the DPS charts) I ever got out of WoW.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

I don't know if any amount of good game design can fix that.

there is one simple thing, as i stated, to take out the first M on an MMO. a simple multiplayer game with a limited population of a few dozen players is superior to a massively multiplayer game any day

[Dakk]

But it doesn't make money, which is what every mmo company out there is after. Everyone wants to be the next WoW.

I do believe that, if people would do what demon souls did but on a massive open world, we could have your ideal MMO. Dark Souls supposedly has a bigger and more open world then demon souls did, so it might be worth a look once its released.

[nenjin]

And it's (I've read?) coming to PC. Yay!

[Neyvn]

My BIGGEST pet peeve is Crafting vs Quest Rewards...

As a high level Weapon Crafter, who can mod and adjust their weapons via augments and such, I don't want to hit the level of my Newly crafted Weapon thats say 40, and then still find it inferior to that Quest Reward of a Sword which I received 4 levels ago and it is 3x more powerful then I could ever make even with a Augment that has a 1% chance of success...

[BurnedToast]

The problem with crafting is:

1. Crafters can make the best (or close to the best) stuff out of relatively common mats. Everyone (relatively) quickly gets the best loot, now there's no reason to run the loot treadmill (which is the only reason mmos seem to exist) and people quit due to boredom.

2. Crafters can make the best (or close to the best) stuff out of very rare drop mats. Chinese farmers rejoice as people RMT their way to the best gear, and the most profitable tradeskills are the harvesting ones with people doing the 'hard part' (or at least, the hard and expensive to skill up to part) for tips (if they are lucky).

3. Crafters can make the best (or close to the best) stuff out of drops from (raid) bosses. They need to be tradeable (unless you want to force everyone to craft their own swords) so this has most the same problems as #2, with no major upside (since any reasonable sized guild will have crafters, only now they probably won't even get a tip).

4. Crafters make junk for the most part, with maybe 1 - 2 decent things. Business as usual, Crafters (rightly) complain, but they still run the treadmill even though it's nothing but a massive waste of time and money.

As for tradeskill gear vs quest rewards... does it even matter? The modern MMO only takes a month or two to hit the level cap (not that I'm saying we should return to the EQ style leveling grind, mind you) so who cares if your level 10 sword of crafting doom is slightly worse then the level 10 sword of completed some quests? You will probably only use it for a couple days at most.

[SeaBee]

I don't like: the loot treadmill, grinding, or stupid gimmick fights.

I'm also not convinced that many "MMO" games deserve that first "M" -- take WoW. Millions of players, but only a few thousand per server. They aren't all online at once, or in your zone. And the only time you see these big crowds is in the big city.

Usually it's you and four other people, or you and nine other people. Doesn't feel massive to me. RIFT was a little better because of the open-group, outdoor raid system melded with dynamic content (and events). On the other hand, when RIFT's server population at your level band is low, you really feel it and often can't even quest (your quest hubs get overrun and destroyed/replaced).

I guess I'm railing against instances here. But I'm not a dedicated MMO player. I do want to see the Star Wars MMO and maybe even Guild Wars 2, but I'll probably play them a month and quit.

[Haschel]

I'm definitely with you on instancing SeaBee. I don't mind it if it's used sparingly and with a purpose, like to tailor a special dungeon for a more controlled challenge, but the more it's used the more fractured it makes the community feel. Some of my favorite memories in any MMO are from going places I shouldn't be, stumbling across other groups and interacting to make new friends like Nenjin said. Forcing random people together for a quest doesn't really force them to interact- it actually provides a good incentive to remain (relatively) anonymous.

[Geen]

No pay-to-win button. Nuff said.

[Dakk]

There's also the issue with professions being usualy boring and grindy as hell, and the game itself feeling more like a day job then a game. I remember when I tried flyff for the first time. Damn thing felt more like an office job rather then a game, except more boring.

I don't care about the first M on MMO, I care more about the RPG that comes after it. Asians seem to thing that RPG = repeat X task to win Y, then perform Y till you get Z.

[Errol]

I would like some MMO where your success depended less on having a lot of time to waste and more on actually having skill as a player. Basically a MMO that required serious brains to play.

And lots of possibilities and sandboxing ability because that's where the best stuff comes in. Dynamically emerging stuff = best stuff.

[Nighthawk]

There's one thing I look for in an MMO.

Involving combat.

That's literally it. Sure, the game looks nice and has tons of classes and all that, but if the combat is boring as hell, I'm not even going to bother playing it, because it simply won't last.

[Dakk]

Would be nice if combat wasn't the center of everything too, but yea, interesting combat would be a big improvent. Just click X and wait till stuff happens just doesn't quite cut it anymore, altough its not too bad if you make up for it with other stuff.

Quest variety is also a big plus. Lots of quests is great but just hundreds of "do X Y times" quests just doesn't cut it. Stuff like "invade X's house and assassinate him without being seen" or "reach X place\acquire X\do X before its too late" can keep people busy without forcing them to do repetive tasks. Also, make them non linear, give people choices that branch out into different quests, stuff like "start doing task for X, Y offers something if you betray X" etc.

If you REALLY have to do quests that do repetitive tasks, at least give them some flavor. Making an NPC ask for 10 wings of thingamagig for some random reward, for some random reason is quite disheartening.

[Rakonas]

What I don't like is how, as the cracked article puts it, the game ceases being fulfilling for a big gap in an attempt to get you hooked.
It's why I made like 50 characters in Everquest and got only 3 past level 20. Pretty much every mmo has that void of reward as things slow down and I can't help but notice when I'm grinding.
It's why the only mmo I've made it to max level in is LotRO, where I was doing quests, many of them interesting and with actual story, and exploring new lands all the way to max level, without ever having much of a grind being necessary.

[squeakyReaper]

A good mmo or a successful mmo?

A good mmo will try to be semi-complex to approach, but without being overloaded.  It'd have non-repetitive combat, story that is driven by player action, evolving class definitions that aren't tied to merely being "tank" or "dpser", the ability to play PVP with the same set you play PVE with, and should be fresh at every turn.

A successful mmo will do well to ignore all of the above.