[General Discussion] MMO Design

I have limited experience with MMOs, with Final Fantasy XI being the one I played the longest (three months). I think the genre is sort of at an impasse with the focus on grinding and more grinding, but I have no idea how to address that.

One thing I've sometimes thought about is something Devo mentioned-- epic battles and player vs. player. Final Fantasy XI did an... okay job with PVP, but their focus is more on players competing against each other through friendly sports. Not very intense. As far as epic battles go though, it seems to've done it right-- Assault for taking a small, elite team of players and breaking into enemy fortresses, or Campaign for fighting beastmen for control of chunks of territory.

So, I guess I would like to combine epic, large-scale battles with PVP. You'd have to put restrictions on the kind of equipment you could wear as well as organize players based on their levels, but it should be doable. Players would choose sides and fight one another for control of some sort of territory that would not be arbitrary (ie, an important place that offered some sort of incentive for nations to keep possession of it). Probably not major cities, but perhaps fortresses, trade routes, or the like.

Of course, people would have the ability to opt out and do their own thing, but I would like more MMOs to have epic PVP that held consequences for all players-- sure, skip out on fighting for your nation, but be prepared to deal with the particulars that ensue when your enemy wins.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I agree that this hand-fed crap is dumb, but some of the stuff you're mentioning might be too far in the other direction.

Interaction with others in a massive online setting should be intense, but not so intense that you don't have time to relax and enjoy yourself. I can't say I like the idea assassins being able to stalk me even in the safest of havens, or the idea that everything I own drops onto a corpse I must find. There should be risk --a fairly large amount-- but not so much that it's... soul-crushing.

There's nowhere I can't reach.