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[Dakk]

There's also the issue with numbers. Most of the time, your success on an mmo depends more on your stats then your actual skill. The richest and strongest people are almost aways the people who can sit around and do repetitive tasks for longer. There are exceptions though, but they're rare. Its possible to get rich by cleverly exploiting the player economy, but improving your character almost aways depends on how much time per day you're spending clicking the same things.

[BurnedToast]

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.

This will NEVER happen (at least, for any remotely popular mmo).

Like pretty much everything, half the players of any given game are (pretty much by definition) below average. Single player games, who cares? give them an easy mode. Multiplayer games, you can't really do that.

It does not matter so much for something like a FPS - sure you've got the guys dominating everyone, and you've got the noobs who shoot themselves in the face more then the enemy, but generally everyone averages out and you usually get reasonably balanced teams. RTS games are starting to make autoranking ladders to get everyone around where they should be, and so on

In an MMO... that won't work. The bad players will get kicked out of groups, they won't find guilds, no-one will want them since they will drag everyone down. If they play with other bad players, they won't get anywhere and will always fail and die and get discouraged. Even in no-skill games like WoW you already see the damage meter police kicking people out of groups for not doing enough damage - imagine if a game was actually HARD and took real skill to do well instead of mashing the same 2 - 3 buttons in a pattern?

So they've got to make the game easy. They have to cater to that bottom 50%, because otherwise they lose a MASSIVE amount of potential subscriptions. Oh sure, people (like myself) will complain that mmos are just mindless grindfests that ANYONE can win at, as long as they waste enough time and can use google to look which 2  - 3 buttons they should mash over and over but enough people will still play that it does not matter.

It's just the nature of a subscription based service and it's never going to change as long as they keep that monthly fee attached.

[klingon13524]

Something that isn't too grindy, but still a little grindy. Like the first 60 levels of any skill in Runescape.

[Max White]

It really depends on what sort of audience your trying to appeal to. Some of the features of one popular MMO will make it very popular, such as a rich class system, while another MMO will benefit from not having this feature at all.
Contrast WoW and Minecraft for example, polar opposites, but both very popular. So long as you pick a direction and stay dedicated to it, it works, but as soon as you try to build an omni-game things go south.

[SeaBee]

Strongly agree with the "omni-game" thing.

I don't think it's possible to make everyone happy all the time with a single MMO, but you might have a measure of success blending several niches to appeal to twice the audience.

I think most people DO want a sense of progression (not talking raids, just a feeling of growth), compelling combat, meaningful customization and choices, reasonable crafting, and the chance to play with their friends regardless of "level" or "skillpoints."

[nenjin]

I don't think it's possible to make everyone happy all the time with a single MMO, but you might have a measure of success blending several niches to appeal to twice the audience.

This sounds like the GURPS solution to MMOs. And while it might work ok....to me a "system" is as much a part of a game as its theme or niche....and a system that tries to address fantasy worlds, sci-fi, all that jazz would strike me as far too generic.

[Muz]

1. Balanced PvP. Players don't play MMOs for the gameplay, they play it to gloat over others.

2. A grind, but not a boring one. You can't have 'too much' grind, other than putting level caps. The purpose of a grind is to allow an easy task that lets a devoted player get ahead of less devoted players. You're rewarding effort, not skill/intelligence. Grinds can be fun, CivWorld rewards you for accomplishing small puzzles.. I hear Guild Wars is possible to 'win' PvP without a severe grind, though the grinds give you cool, unique outfits and stuff.

3. Community. Join for the gameplay, stick around for the community. Even the best games get boring after 4 months, everyone will stick in it for each other. If the game doesn't encourage working together, the game is dead.

4. Emerging storyline. The world changes in response to the actions of groups of players. Unfortunately, this makes it prone to trolls, and most companies find it too risky, so it doesn't happen in many commercial MMOs. Plus, some less intelligent players get pissed off if other people's actions affect the world, but not theirs.. it's an incredibly stressful task to mediate/moderate and most just skip it because of the risk.

[Caz]

Everything Ultima Online did (pre-trammel)

[squeakyReaper]

Well, I have to throw in for that "fun grind" thing everyone is mentioning.  A Disgaea styled MMO would be amusing.

[Max White]

Unpredictability.

[Muz]

Unpredictability.

On the contrary, I think unpredictably is bad for MMOs. Great for single player games, though. Unless you have some kind of survival MMO where people work together against the various forces and have to be creative or something.

[BurnedToast]

I hear Guild Wars is possible to 'win' PvP without a severe grind, though the grinds give you cool, unique outfits and stuff.

This is one thing that amazed me about guild wars. You could premake a PvP char who had good equipment and max level instantly for free and could do all PvP content with literally 0 grind (you just picked 'make PvP char and poof there you go). You might have had to have completed the storyline at least once, but I don't think so.

You could play a 'real' storyline char who could do all PvP content and all storyline content, and without any real grinding (i.e. just doing the storyline missions normally) end up with a set of equipment numerically equal to the PvP char's starting equipment - in some cases you could get random drops better for certain builds because of the stat distribution etc but the difference was never very significant.

Or you could take your storyline char and grind out some class specific armor.. I don't remember exactly what was involved (maybe just throwing wads of ingame money, or maybe you had to collect bits of bosses or something). The grind armor was..... yup, numerically equal to the free PvP armor, it gave you no advantage at all for that grind other then that it 'looked cooler'.

All 3 options were popular, and there were a significant number of people (not the majority of course) who had the 'grind' armor even though it didn't give you anything extra.

It worked really well - something for everyone. I'm too much of a misanthrope to enjoy being in a guild... and obviously with the name of guild wars that's the major focus of the game, so I didn't play it THAT much... but it was really the best mmo I've ever tried because the grind was completely optional and there was a lot of thought required in putting together your skills (especially for PvP) due to only being able to choose a small amount (6?) and the inability to swap mid-mission.

[Matz05]

I think that having a player's creativity and intellect affect the game world would be a big thing. Unfortunately, this isn't done much because of difficult programming and balance concerns. Not much difference between an evil overlord and a griefer.

[DJ]

I expect great things from Salem. H&H was heading there, but then it went abandonware

[Acperience]

Use a pay to play model.
Loot with randomly generated stats and bonuses
Grind for items, not levels
Have multiple town hubs, each with isolated auction houses, different npc wares, etc.
Have player/guild housing, even if instanced.
Recolorable andRe-skinable Equipment within reason (no reskining swords as axes, robes as heavy armor, coloring a weapon invisible, all one color etc.)
Limit wide area chatting; No server channels, or region channels etc. You can talk with your guild,party,friends from anywhere, but otherwise your chatting is confined to the local area.
A bigger focus on PvE, large cooperative events, and/or faction PvP, rather than team based arena PvP.