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Haven’t read Part II of Part I yet? Check it out!
The Completed World!
You can save enormous server load by removing pointless content. You can combine the good parts of numerous games to make a system that works for everyone, including the cost analysis department:
-WoW’s instanced raid system
-GW’s instanced PvM/Tournament system
-SB’s player owned city/siege system
-UO’s universal skill system
By doing the below you could have all players on one server competing against everyone else in their region of the world. So you’re looking at three massive servers that could encompass all the gamers in the world. I started to discuss how this all ties together in the travel section of Part II. The game itself would be no different than any other MMO world other NPC Run Cities (quest hubs) and Waypoints (teleport points for easy travel) all over the map. You start out with all races in a single city that has instanced quests out of it. Imagine how cool they could make each city if they didn’t have to build 16 of them, one for each race. To take concepts from GW, you gather a Group using the in-depth LFG system that shows all players LFG with their city/preferred quest/level or hire NPCs to go with you and start the mission which is instanced. If you find someone part way through a quest then use the easy to navigate travel system outlined in Part II.
It’s really no different than running outside a city to quest other than a five second load time. In-fact, the content itself can be much more interactive because anything in the environment of the area can be altered without affecting other players. For example, the city you just left could be fully sieged by an attacking force while you attempt to defend it. With this type of system players of similar level can all gather in one city or use the system to group, trade, and interact. This eliminates travel time and a huge server load due to the six trillion monsters and empty space that devs love to put between cities to waste your time and their money.
This also forces interaction because everyone of similar level is bunched up together. It’s the building of a player run community. Anyone who played UO saw this idea work to perfection on a much smaller scale. Raids would work the exact same way except they would allow more people to join the group and could be added at every city along with the normal quests. This system would basically eliminate Gold Farmers because there would be no pointless re-spawn for them to camp. They would actually have to level a charc up through the game to get resources.
An integrated MMO tournament system is something that has been lacking for a very long time. WoW has just recently scratched the surface but they missed the point. A similar system to what WoW and GW have could easily be integrated out of a menu that you can access in any city. Much like the LFG system, you simply pull up a menu and get in a queue for a duel of your choosing. These would be separated exactly how any RTS or FPS does it. Simple, easy to understand, and no wasted travel time because it could be accessed from any safe area. Either add your Group to the queue or PUG it up in whatever style of fight you want. Expansions could really capitalize on an all access instanced dueling system adding different types of fights and areas to fight in. This is an endless goldmine of endgame content for a developer. There is a large segment of players who would choose to spend most of their time dueling for rewards and recognition as we’ve seen in many games.
The last part of the game would be a non-instanced area that allowed for player housing and city building with no monsters to cause pointless lag. This area would be specifically designed for PvP combat, player housing, and nation building. With a SB type system minus the millions of random monsters this area could hold many more players than any other game has been able to handle because there would be nothing other then housing, waypoints, and environment. It would be divided into nation and open areas.
In open areas any player could design, build, decorate, and store stuff in their house. The area would be relatively dense with player housing to save space, but on big enough plots that anyone could build their house up over time. The longer you play the game and own the plot, the more options you have for house design. This gives Devs big time expansion options and time to keep the content rolling in. Anyone could come up to it and check it out but they would be risking PvP in this area. A UO type option could be added to make the house public or private. In UO and SB at least half of the people I played with spent the vast majority of their game time building and rebuilding their house to their liking. This is another endless goldmine for end game content. Nearly every player would want their own house that they could build up and show off.
In nation areas guilds could claim much larger land masses and build up cities. Past games have forced you into a time-sync where you gather gold and resources to have a city. That’s stupid, your city should build up over time just like an individual player house. Sieges could revert you back a set amount of time BUT not completely destroy the city. A city could only be destroyed if it consistently loses fights with no time in-between to build back up. This would allow players to focus on politics and protecting their city, rather than duping gold to pump into it. In other words, if your city gets sieged you lose a week or two of time and any structures you unlocked/build during their period.
The actual system could work much like SB’s system with some simple refinements. All charcs on any account would automatically go into the same guild so you can’t have 10 alt guilds to exploit the system. To siege, a guild must have a set amount of people (ie 50), be on a regular subscription (not a trial), and not currently own a city. When a guild initiates a siege it must take an equal amount of time to start as the amount of time the city your sieging will lose. While your city is under siege it does not grow. If the city owners win the siege then it can’t be sieged again for a set amount of time to avoid exploiting the system. If the city is damaged then it can be re-sieged quickly by the same group so they can focus on taking it down. That way the entire system is balanced and fair for everyone involved without some major game ending loss. Guilds without cities can burn yours down and take it. This way no single zerg can own everything and no one is ever out of the game.
However, this system is somewhat self defeating because although it fixes the problem that SB encountered with one carebear nation of 30,000 people ruling everything, it doesn’t have an end game goal. To address this issue an influence system could be added that is a circle around your city that you can choose to grow if you want. If two city’s influence bubbles meet then they can siege each other for territory. All sorts of features and rewards could be added as end game content for having increased influence. Again, this is an end game goldmine because lots of features could be added over time to reward any guild that owns a nation. Crafting halls, training halls, customizable guildhalls, etc.
All three of these systems can be tied together VERY simply. You gain player XP for being active and involved in a quest/raid group, you gain player XP for winning duals vs. other players, and you gain XP for PKing people of a warring guild or successfully sieging another guild’s city. You gain loot for killing bosses in quests/raids, you gain loot for winning tournaments, and you gain loot for achieving specific goals in the nation warring system. Pretty simple right? Every play style is promoted with XP, Loot, and Awards in which you can show off to other players in your house, nation city, player profile online, or dueling ladder in game or online.
Going forward I want to cover one of my favorite features that focuses in on what a MMO should be. Put together a team of game masters that would be tasked with creating events on a daily basis. An event could be a random new instance encounter that has some boss mob with a one-of-a-kind sword. No not uber damage, one of a kind as in it looks cool and you will keep it and use it because no one else has one (you all know you would show it off)! Another could be a 2v2 tourney that has a similar item as a reward. Another could be a GM played nation that appears that people can siege for fun, fame, and rewards.
The possibilities are endless here as well with the instanced system because content could easily be added in a couple default instances that these game masters could use. I'm also a huge fan of real world rewards! Giving away high end computer parts as rewards for major events would be a great way for people to get their significant other and/or friends involved. Many people go through periods where they can't play (cancel their sub) because they fry a PC part. At a minimal cost a gaming company could give parts away to keep those subscriptions coming in. In OPP we often give parts to guildmates or sell them very cheap. In most guilds this doesn't happen, the more typical scenario is Ken Firesword's video card explodes and no one hears from him for six months. Fun rewards and increased GM interaction with players is a good thing!
End game expandable content would include everything I covered above plus more. Additional areas to build nations (in the air, under water, etc), additional mounts, houses, city buildings, more difficult raid instances, different concepts for tournaments and duels, etc could all be included. I really could write like 15 pages of ideas that I’m sure most people would enjoy and most importantly would keep buying while continuing to pay their monthly fee.
There’s a group of a couple million hardcore MMO gamers across the world now days. Visit the top 100 guild websites and you will see how frustrated these people are with what’s currently out and what’s coming out. A game made with a focus on balanced gameplay, easy character development with no time syncs, and a focus on end game content would set precedence in the MMO market. If you build it, they will come!!!
This covers The Completed World part and concludes Part I: Making a MMO, Check Back Later for Part II: How to Market a Next Gen MMO!
The Completed World!
You can save enormous server load by removing pointless content. You can combine the good parts of numerous games to make a system that works for everyone, including the cost analysis department:
-WoW’s instanced raid system
-GW’s instanced PvM/Tournament system
-SB’s player owned city/siege system
-UO’s universal skill system
By doing the below you could have all players on one server competing against everyone else in their region of the world. So you’re looking at three massive servers that could encompass all the gamers in the world. I started to discuss how this all ties together in the travel section of Part II. The game itself would be no different than any other MMO world other NPC Run Cities (quest hubs) and Waypoints (teleport points for easy travel) all over the map. You start out with all races in a single city that has instanced quests out of it. Imagine how cool they could make each city if they didn’t have to build 16 of them, one for each race. To take concepts from GW, you gather a Group using the in-depth LFG system that shows all players LFG with their city/preferred quest/level or hire NPCs to go with you and start the mission which is instanced. If you find someone part way through a quest then use the easy to navigate travel system outlined in Part II.
It’s really no different than running outside a city to quest other than a five second load time. In-fact, the content itself can be much more interactive because anything in the environment of the area can be altered without affecting other players. For example, the city you just left could be fully sieged by an attacking force while you attempt to defend it. With this type of system players of similar level can all gather in one city or use the system to group, trade, and interact. This eliminates travel time and a huge server load due to the six trillion monsters and empty space that devs love to put between cities to waste your time and their money.
This also forces interaction because everyone of similar level is bunched up together. It’s the building of a player run community. Anyone who played UO saw this idea work to perfection on a much smaller scale. Raids would work the exact same way except they would allow more people to join the group and could be added at every city along with the normal quests. This system would basically eliminate Gold Farmers because there would be no pointless re-spawn for them to camp. They would actually have to level a charc up through the game to get resources.
An integrated MMO tournament system is something that has been lacking for a very long time. WoW has just recently scratched the surface but they missed the point. A similar system to what WoW and GW have could easily be integrated out of a menu that you can access in any city. Much like the LFG system, you simply pull up a menu and get in a queue for a duel of your choosing. These would be separated exactly how any RTS or FPS does it. Simple, easy to understand, and no wasted travel time because it could be accessed from any safe area. Either add your Group to the queue or PUG it up in whatever style of fight you want. Expansions could really capitalize on an all access instanced dueling system adding different types of fights and areas to fight in. This is an endless goldmine of endgame content for a developer. There is a large segment of players who would choose to spend most of their time dueling for rewards and recognition as we’ve seen in many games.
The last part of the game would be a non-instanced area that allowed for player housing and city building with no monsters to cause pointless lag. This area would be specifically designed for PvP combat, player housing, and nation building. With a SB type system minus the millions of random monsters this area could hold many more players than any other game has been able to handle because there would be nothing other then housing, waypoints, and environment. It would be divided into nation and open areas.
In open areas any player could design, build, decorate, and store stuff in their house. The area would be relatively dense with player housing to save space, but on big enough plots that anyone could build their house up over time. The longer you play the game and own the plot, the more options you have for house design. This gives Devs big time expansion options and time to keep the content rolling in. Anyone could come up to it and check it out but they would be risking PvP in this area. A UO type option could be added to make the house public or private. In UO and SB at least half of the people I played with spent the vast majority of their game time building and rebuilding their house to their liking. This is another endless goldmine for end game content. Nearly every player would want their own house that they could build up and show off.
In nation areas guilds could claim much larger land masses and build up cities. Past games have forced you into a time-sync where you gather gold and resources to have a city. That’s stupid, your city should build up over time just like an individual player house. Sieges could revert you back a set amount of time BUT not completely destroy the city. A city could only be destroyed if it consistently loses fights with no time in-between to build back up. This would allow players to focus on politics and protecting their city, rather than duping gold to pump into it. In other words, if your city gets sieged you lose a week or two of time and any structures you unlocked/build during their period.
The actual system could work much like SB’s system with some simple refinements. All charcs on any account would automatically go into the same guild so you can’t have 10 alt guilds to exploit the system. To siege, a guild must have a set amount of people (ie 50), be on a regular subscription (not a trial), and not currently own a city. When a guild initiates a siege it must take an equal amount of time to start as the amount of time the city your sieging will lose. While your city is under siege it does not grow. If the city owners win the siege then it can’t be sieged again for a set amount of time to avoid exploiting the system. If the city is damaged then it can be re-sieged quickly by the same group so they can focus on taking it down. That way the entire system is balanced and fair for everyone involved without some major game ending loss. Guilds without cities can burn yours down and take it. This way no single zerg can own everything and no one is ever out of the game.
However, this system is somewhat self defeating because although it fixes the problem that SB encountered with one carebear nation of 30,000 people ruling everything, it doesn’t have an end game goal. To address this issue an influence system could be added that is a circle around your city that you can choose to grow if you want. If two city’s influence bubbles meet then they can siege each other for territory. All sorts of features and rewards could be added as end game content for having increased influence. Again, this is an end game goldmine because lots of features could be added over time to reward any guild that owns a nation. Crafting halls, training halls, customizable guildhalls, etc.
All three of these systems can be tied together VERY simply. You gain player XP for being active and involved in a quest/raid group, you gain player XP for winning duals vs. other players, and you gain XP for PKing people of a warring guild or successfully sieging another guild’s city. You gain loot for killing bosses in quests/raids, you gain loot for winning tournaments, and you gain loot for achieving specific goals in the nation warring system. Pretty simple right? Every play style is promoted with XP, Loot, and Awards in which you can show off to other players in your house, nation city, player profile online, or dueling ladder in game or online.
Going forward I want to cover one of my favorite features that focuses in on what a MMO should be. Put together a team of game masters that would be tasked with creating events on a daily basis. An event could be a random new instance encounter that has some boss mob with a one-of-a-kind sword. No not uber damage, one of a kind as in it looks cool and you will keep it and use it because no one else has one (you all know you would show it off)! Another could be a 2v2 tourney that has a similar item as a reward. Another could be a GM played nation that appears that people can siege for fun, fame, and rewards.
The possibilities are endless here as well with the instanced system because content could easily be added in a couple default instances that these game masters could use. I'm also a huge fan of real world rewards! Giving away high end computer parts as rewards for major events would be a great way for people to get their significant other and/or friends involved. Many people go through periods where they can't play (cancel their sub) because they fry a PC part. At a minimal cost a gaming company could give parts away to keep those subscriptions coming in. In OPP we often give parts to guildmates or sell them very cheap. In most guilds this doesn't happen, the more typical scenario is Ken Firesword's video card explodes and no one hears from him for six months. Fun rewards and increased GM interaction with players is a good thing!
End game expandable content would include everything I covered above plus more. Additional areas to build nations (in the air, under water, etc), additional mounts, houses, city buildings, more difficult raid instances, different concepts for tournaments and duels, etc could all be included. I really could write like 15 pages of ideas that I’m sure most people would enjoy and most importantly would keep buying while continuing to pay their monthly fee.
There’s a group of a couple million hardcore MMO gamers across the world now days. Visit the top 100 guild websites and you will see how frustrated these people are with what’s currently out and what’s coming out. A game made with a focus on balanced gameplay, easy character development with no time syncs, and a focus on end game content would set precedence in the MMO market. If you build it, they will come!!!
This covers The Completed World part and concludes Part I: Making a MMO, Check Back Later for Part II: How to Market a Next Gen MMO!
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