J Arcane
09-01-2009, 02:01 AM
I was talking Lekon in the IRC about some of the various MMOs I've played and how, when it comes down to it, the vast majority of MMOs are a few neat features, wrapped in a lot of badly conceived crap. But a lot of those features are really fucking cool, and I often find myself pining for them or even tempted to play otherwise not so good games just to have them again.
I made the joke that I could probably make myself one killer MMO just by copy and pasting all the best features from the ones I've played and gluing them together. So let's have a list then!
UO: Sandbox. Say the word Ultima to me and the first word that'll come from my mouth is that one. Ever since I first played Exodus on an NES all those years ago, I've been in love with the sandbox model of RPGs, and for all it's hacking apart of the Ultima lore and everything else, they got that part down. The skills based system was also pretty cool, but the best for me was the exploration and the freedom.
EQ1: Still has, hands down, the best Necromancer class of any MMO I've played. Loved that class, it was just a shame about the rest of the game not being any damn good. The random dungeon expansion was conceptually cool, but very badly implemented. I also liked the giant dungeons under the cities, at least in theory, but they were mostly pretty boring C&Ps of old Gold Box dungeons in play.
EQ2: The faction/alignment change quest was, from a story perspective, fucking rad, even if it was a bitch in actual play. Also kept the cool undercity dungeons from EQ2, only they were actually navigable and fun now.
DAOC: Megadungeon. I never got far in the game, either in it's earlier form, or it's current badly executed WoW wannabe interface, but the whole Catacombs thing sounded so fucking cool. The whole "giant dungeon beneath the whole earth" thing just makes me all excited.
Monster Hunter: Fucking EPIC boss fights, against critters that are actually scary, and feel like giant monsters with real behavior and AI instead of just cardboard standups that you punch in the right order for 10 minutes until they fall down.
Tabula Rasa: Waypoint battles. Imagine a cross between a WAR public quest and Alterac Valley when it was more co-op than PvP race, confined to a single defense point and amped up to 11. Massive fucking battles with PC and NPC allies against waves of evil aliens, and all balanced just right so that almost any number of players could take part in one and still have fun. I was also pretty fond of the 3PS combat, even though it was pretty tacked on.
WAR: See above: Public Quests. Fucking brilliant things they are, all the fun of an instance, without the instance, or the hunting for groups, at least in theory. In practice after the first month everyone abandoned them for PvP so unless you were in a guild that grouped for them regularly you never got to do them as intended. I was also pretty fond of the quest tracker system and even have a mod for WoW that gives me a similar one. In fact, everything about WAR PvE seemed expressly designed to make it go as efficiently as possible, up until lvl 20 and you run out of soloable content.
DDO: Dungeons that feel like dungeons. For all the butchery they did to the 3e system, when the dungeon designers were on that day, you got a dungeon that felt like a dungeon should, with puzzles and traps and adventure, instead of a slow slog through room after room of overlevelled mobs that take 10 minutes a piece to kill.
LOTRO: Gorgeous scenery, a melee DPS class that isn't a wuss (now shared with WoW DKs), a healer that's not really a healer, and crafting that, if you have the patience for it and a guild to share mats, actually produces useful gear. Also, one incredible storyline that you sadly will never get to see because it's almost all group content, and a really cool "monster play" PvP system that no one actually plays because it's terribly imbalanced against the monster side.
EVE: Sandbox again. Sorta. There's definitely a sense of freedom of approach to it that isn't in most MMOs. A real economy is also kinda cool, as is crafting that's designed to be profitable instead of a money sink (relatively speaking, that is, the initial investment is enormous for a casual player). Plus I just fucking love space games.
COH: Mentoring/Examplaring was cool, as was the feel of the early days before the Nerf Times when you could wade into thugs like they were cannon fodder and really feel like a hero. Character customization was cool, if tough to not make look like generic poser art, though powers were still a bit too confined. This Architect thing sounds cool but I haven't tried it yet.
Ryzom: Geez, talk about a game too cool for the audience. Totally customizable effects-based, skills-based character system, you even get to create your own spells. Massive GM run events in the old days, an awesome level editor/GM client, mob AI that behaves roughly like actual animals. Sadly, outside the level editor and the GM client, a bit short on enough content to keep your character leveled.
Runes of Magic: Dual-classing was fuckin' cool. Also, it's the only MMO besides WoW that officially supports add-ons.
WoW: Well, it's WoW. It's not perfect, but I almost hesitate to bring it up because by contrast it gets far more right than wrong. Add-ons alone are one of the key features that no MMO should be without but so many are. The ease of soloing, the focus on quests over mob XP, the class design, the loot, basically everything about Wrath except for daily quests, heirlooms and heroics especially, shit they even made raiding more fun and I hated raiding in vanilla. BC remains their only stumbling point for me, and they've made up for it well. But really, all this, except for Add-Ons, can be explained away as standard Blizzard polish.
OK, so I'm not sure what you can really put together from this quite yet, but I bet it would wither be really awesome, or really horrid.
I made the joke that I could probably make myself one killer MMO just by copy and pasting all the best features from the ones I've played and gluing them together. So let's have a list then!
UO: Sandbox. Say the word Ultima to me and the first word that'll come from my mouth is that one. Ever since I first played Exodus on an NES all those years ago, I've been in love with the sandbox model of RPGs, and for all it's hacking apart of the Ultima lore and everything else, they got that part down. The skills based system was also pretty cool, but the best for me was the exploration and the freedom.
EQ1: Still has, hands down, the best Necromancer class of any MMO I've played. Loved that class, it was just a shame about the rest of the game not being any damn good. The random dungeon expansion was conceptually cool, but very badly implemented. I also liked the giant dungeons under the cities, at least in theory, but they were mostly pretty boring C&Ps of old Gold Box dungeons in play.
EQ2: The faction/alignment change quest was, from a story perspective, fucking rad, even if it was a bitch in actual play. Also kept the cool undercity dungeons from EQ2, only they were actually navigable and fun now.
DAOC: Megadungeon. I never got far in the game, either in it's earlier form, or it's current badly executed WoW wannabe interface, but the whole Catacombs thing sounded so fucking cool. The whole "giant dungeon beneath the whole earth" thing just makes me all excited.
Monster Hunter: Fucking EPIC boss fights, against critters that are actually scary, and feel like giant monsters with real behavior and AI instead of just cardboard standups that you punch in the right order for 10 minutes until they fall down.
Tabula Rasa: Waypoint battles. Imagine a cross between a WAR public quest and Alterac Valley when it was more co-op than PvP race, confined to a single defense point and amped up to 11. Massive fucking battles with PC and NPC allies against waves of evil aliens, and all balanced just right so that almost any number of players could take part in one and still have fun. I was also pretty fond of the 3PS combat, even though it was pretty tacked on.
WAR: See above: Public Quests. Fucking brilliant things they are, all the fun of an instance, without the instance, or the hunting for groups, at least in theory. In practice after the first month everyone abandoned them for PvP so unless you were in a guild that grouped for them regularly you never got to do them as intended. I was also pretty fond of the quest tracker system and even have a mod for WoW that gives me a similar one. In fact, everything about WAR PvE seemed expressly designed to make it go as efficiently as possible, up until lvl 20 and you run out of soloable content.
DDO: Dungeons that feel like dungeons. For all the butchery they did to the 3e system, when the dungeon designers were on that day, you got a dungeon that felt like a dungeon should, with puzzles and traps and adventure, instead of a slow slog through room after room of overlevelled mobs that take 10 minutes a piece to kill.
LOTRO: Gorgeous scenery, a melee DPS class that isn't a wuss (now shared with WoW DKs), a healer that's not really a healer, and crafting that, if you have the patience for it and a guild to share mats, actually produces useful gear. Also, one incredible storyline that you sadly will never get to see because it's almost all group content, and a really cool "monster play" PvP system that no one actually plays because it's terribly imbalanced against the monster side.
EVE: Sandbox again. Sorta. There's definitely a sense of freedom of approach to it that isn't in most MMOs. A real economy is also kinda cool, as is crafting that's designed to be profitable instead of a money sink (relatively speaking, that is, the initial investment is enormous for a casual player). Plus I just fucking love space games.
COH: Mentoring/Examplaring was cool, as was the feel of the early days before the Nerf Times when you could wade into thugs like they were cannon fodder and really feel like a hero. Character customization was cool, if tough to not make look like generic poser art, though powers were still a bit too confined. This Architect thing sounds cool but I haven't tried it yet.
Ryzom: Geez, talk about a game too cool for the audience. Totally customizable effects-based, skills-based character system, you even get to create your own spells. Massive GM run events in the old days, an awesome level editor/GM client, mob AI that behaves roughly like actual animals. Sadly, outside the level editor and the GM client, a bit short on enough content to keep your character leveled.
Runes of Magic: Dual-classing was fuckin' cool. Also, it's the only MMO besides WoW that officially supports add-ons.
WoW: Well, it's WoW. It's not perfect, but I almost hesitate to bring it up because by contrast it gets far more right than wrong. Add-ons alone are one of the key features that no MMO should be without but so many are. The ease of soloing, the focus on quests over mob XP, the class design, the loot, basically everything about Wrath except for daily quests, heirlooms and heroics especially, shit they even made raiding more fun and I hated raiding in vanilla. BC remains their only stumbling point for me, and they've made up for it well. But really, all this, except for Add-Ons, can be explained away as standard Blizzard polish.
OK, so I'm not sure what you can really put together from this quite yet, but I bet it would wither be really awesome, or really horrid.