Suggestions for Blizzard's new MMO

This is not meant to be an attack on WoW in a large way. It's a great game and I thoroughly enjoy it. This is from my blog (elitistpodcast.com) and I thought it would make interesting discussion for some proposed things to do if they are going to make an MMO from scratch. Enjoy:

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Blizzard has a new MMO in early production. Basically I keep saying to people that if Blizzard made an MMO now with everything they learned in their 5 years of being the most popular MMO to exist that we would crap ourselves. Nibuca put this up as blogfodder for the chatroom yesterday and I wanted to give my thought into this because I tend to think of myself as a guy with decent ideas and if you like any of them or can suggest more, I love comments .

1. MORE DYNAMIC UNIVERSE:
This is one of my major complaints about WoW. The game will be nearly identical one day to the next and there is very little in the ways of world-changing events or player-driven content. One MMO that is a shining example of the power of a dynamic universe is that of the game EVE online. Sure the game is a little cruel, but one of the things it has is a great player-generated universe. The designers basically gave you a bunch of toys and told you to go play instead of WoW’s method of putting you on a roller coaster and hoping you enjoy the ride long enough to make the next one. I am a fan of MMO’s because of the changing landscape. The way that as a veteran you can see the change from one day to the next tot he next and see things come and go. A lot of the content in WoW hasn’t changed much since its creation and I’d really like a universe that at least yielded a bit of its world to let the players run wild and free with rather than having an exact perfect way to do everything.

2. MORE MEANING TO THE CLAN / GUILD SYSTEM:
At the moment in WoW a guild means a few things to people. It is your raiding group, your social circle, your levelling mates, or your BG premades. You really don’t have a lot of meaning behind it. Some ideas for guilds / clans have been done before to varying success. In some games your clan can own territory and make it their own. Guild halls / Guild Headquarters are common in other MMO’s. You could even take a leaf from Warhammer Online’s book and make those guilds then in turn have to defend that territory. Another idea I can’t remember the game that did it but it was cool, was a PvP anarchy game where your guild was essentially your faction. EVE does it as well to an extent, and this makes faction balance and world territory dynamics very different from server to server.

3. REVAMP PVP
PvP is a fun thing to do and any MMO that wants to sell is going to need it from here on out. WoW’s PvP is amazing, but it could be improved. In many ways Warhammer set a new bar for PvP mechanics. The battleground idea is good and should be kept alive in MMO’s to come. The arena idea is great as well, but the marketing as an e-sport I’m not too big a fan of. World PvP in my mind fell flat. Wintergrasp was a great idea, but I think what players are looking for cannot be done in WoW currently. Destructible buildings and sieges can make for a very cool PvP mechanic, but it needs to be larger and more epic. I think if in future MMO’s we had something like Wintergrasp fortresses all over place it would be cool. In fact, we could probably do it for any major town or city. This could change into an actual dynamic world map where territory changes hands based on PvP. Now there would need to be some sort of save haven for players with no interest in it, but if the world outside of say a sanctuary city were dynamic and conquerable and paired up with guilds or clans being the factions controlling that territory, who can then choose to be friendly to traveling players, kill others, make a profit from business there and expand if they have the means. It would be a great idea and would bring much more to the table in guild loyalty and what could possibly come out of the consequences of two large guilds colliding. It would be raiding on a level never tried before. I mean what better PvP would there be than all out WAR. Guilds can be neutral, make alliances, break alliances, oh god that would be awesome. You’d need to do some balancing mechanics, but it’s not impossible. These guilds could even facilitate trade and truly become their own factions.

4. BRING BACK SOME WORLD BOSSES
What could be better for a game with the dynamic world PvP I mentioned before than the occasional Loot-Carrying raid boss for these guilds to fight over? Friendships can be tested and wars could break out over these and other than just being good PvE content, it could toss a spark into a powder keg. I’m not saying this is what all raid content should be, far from it. They would be in the minority. Think how many world bosses there were in vanilla wow and I think that’s a decent number. Though I would make it a little more random

when they choose to arrive. As for gear worth I would not put something essential on these. It would have loot more comparable to Archavon or Emalon.

5. SOME MORE CREATIVITY PLOX
WoW’s major downfall is it doesn’t allow for player creativity very much. I think if a new MMO were to come out you would need to put a lot more into allowing characters to better customize their toons and their property. Not only would it mean that you’d have more attachment to your toon and your stuff, but you’d see a more diverse and interesting world with less work from the developers. If your guild owns a city or town maybe you can even make yourself a home in that town or city.

6. RAID CONTENT
The 10 and 25-man instanced raid content is perfect for sizing and scaling. All I can suggest fromt hat point on is to keep up with the hardmodes and achievements to keep the content accessible but challenging if so desired. The only thing I would like is a more linear progression path so when we clear a raid dungeon we know with hardmodes where to go next.

7. PROFESSIONS
I’m not a fan of the idea of professions giving you abilities and buffs as that has only led to a new form of min/maxing. I think beyond simply making good gear for yourself, the professions should simply be a means of making money. Although I would make them more important in the ways of character customization, and I’d vouch for a more player-driven economy. More variety of professions would be desired as well.

8. AVOID PTRS
All the top end raiding guilds have pretty much unanimously suggested Blizzard stops testing new content on the PTR. It removes a lot of the mystery and newness of a new piece of raid content. The fact that Yogg-Saron was not on the PTR, but tuned very well is a testament that this is possible.

9. DO SOMETHING WITH OLD RAID CONTENT
As expansions and patches roll out, content int he game will become stale and worthless. The only suggestion I can think of is maybe after a certain time you can rescale old content into dungeons or something that players can run as they level up. Just so all that precious scripting and developer time isn’t completely gone.

I think that is a decent list of ideas. I might make a second part if I get more ideas, but these are pretty good for a start. If you have any of your own feel free to leave a comment with cool ideas. If I really like it I’ll toss it into the next installment.

When I heard Blizzard was working on a completely new MMORPG, I just had one thought -

Let it be like the Rifts RPG

Sci-Fi, Fantasy, tech and magic, xenophobic humans vs D-Bees, not to mention easily expanded content (oops, another dimensional rift opened).

*sigh*