Jon-Style MMO Gaming
May. 13th, 2006 01:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caraigSo on my way home tonight from work -- it was exceptionally swamped and wore me down some -- I was considering things as to what I like in games. This came about mostly from my previous gushing about Warship Gunner 2 and Oblivion. So, let me stream-of-consciousness at you, about what Jon is looking for in MMO's, and I welcome anyone and everyone to join in and comment, of course. ^_^
Keep in mind that all these are my opinions. I do not say them as a way to project them onto others. If I say something, it really is just my opinion and not 'the Truth' or 'The Way Things Must Be!' Also, I mention Oblivion a lot here, and even if it isn't an MMO I think it has some of the seeds of a potentially good one. (Wether Bethesda is actually considering an Elder Scrolls MMO is something I leave as grist for the rumormills.)
Characters. I like options in character creation. And by 'options' I don't mean 'a scajillion classes.' Honestly, I didn't want to sit through all the sample classes that Oblivion gives, I jumped right into the make-your-own-class maker. I admit it, I'd prefer a system that lets me play my favorite types of job-types: hybrid spellcasters/swordwielders, or stealth/marksmen. By the latter, I do NOT mean the eponymious and much-reviled WoW Rogue. I can do without the "OMG Sneak Attack Gank!" well enough; I DO however, like the ability to sneak around all over the place and explore. (In a sense, fast travel in Oblivion ruined this for me. Still, it was fun to find Hieronymous Mora's shrine before it even got marked on my map!) As for the hybrid, this is my FFXI memories coming back. I really really enjoyed playing the redmage. So... in summary, if a character creation system allows this sort of thing, the creation of hybrid or 'custom' character attributes, it's a plus in my book. EVE did this great, letting you focus on what you wanted to focus on and still be a functional part of the game. Oblivion also rocked out with this. I still think WoW had balance issues with some class powers, but they also had only a handful of powers. Lineage II was disappointing in this as well. Advantage: Oblivion and EVE.
Sidetrack to Characters: Das Ubercharacteren. Balance between jobs/classes is pretty tricky, and I don't think there's any easy way to do it. I think that there are some egregious examples out there of broken classes and jobs -- Paladins in WoW, and as near as I can tell Blue Mages in FFXI, now -- but there's going to be minmaxers who take advantage of a more freeform 'roll-your-own-class' system. Some way to limit the minmaxers from making characters that will statistically eat your marshmallows every time -- that's a metaphor, son -- would be nice, but that might not be possible if you're going to have a very freeform character creation system like in Oblivion. Advantage: Early FFXI. The character classes were mostly quite balanced with some exceptions.
PvP. Hot-button issue for me. I loathe it. Nay, revile it. I think it brings out the worst in Internet gamers. At least the ones whom I've seen the most of. I know that most people treat PvP in an MMO as pretty much akin to Counterstrike, but some take it way too far. This is one reason I left WoW. FFXI was better in this respect, mostly because there was very little PvP, and what little there was, was codified as a mini-game, which I rather liked. I can understand people wanting PvP though, so I wouldn't be adverse to allowing some in. I feel that the way WoW implemented it was bad. EVE didn't do much better, though it was more tightly controlled. Lineage II was simply atrocious as far as that went. Advantage: FFXI.
Story/Background. I have to admit I've been lucky. FFXI and WoW had very engaging stories in their missions and quests for the most part. FFXI was vast and epic and there was tons of good fanfic fodder there. WoW also had a wonderfully elaborate world (though somehow it seemed resistant to being creative as far as writing in it for me.) Lineage II and EVE seemed to have backstories as afterthoughts.Most people ignore the background/story of MMO's, though, which is a shame. City of Heroes/Villains seems to have backstory in spades. Matrix Online on the other hand seems to be nothing but backstory, near as I can tell. =^_^= So... epic and engaging backstory that doesn't drown out the PC's in a sea of backstory. Advantage: FFXI.
Roleplaying. I probably should have rolled my WoW character on an RP server from the start. There was some great RPing on them. On the other hand, MMO's seem to generally avoid roleplaying, which is a shame. FFXI had some great RP potential with the three nations, and I remember some really enjoyable RPing there. Of course, the people who didn't RP in WoW seemed more than happy to mock those who did, so there was something of a damper there. So, yeah, encouragement to roleplay is important! Advantage: Your tastes vary, all in all. I would say FFXI and MxO, but I know people who have quite happily RP'd in WoW for months and months.
Variation in Quests. Oblivion had some fun quests that covered a wide variety of things. The Rogue missions for WoW likewise covered a slew of things to do. Don't just tell me to kill off N Monster-K's and bring back Q of Monster H's. FFXI, you were gauranteed to have to do some sort of boss battle for each quest. It rather pretty much sucked rocks, especially where I left off: all those 'Almost's I rattle off once? Boss battles, almost every one of them. And finding parties to do them was hard. At some point, most people completed those quests and were not willing to help others since they'd done them so many damn times. Not that I can blame them too much. Still, it's a serious roadblock. So, mix up the quests some. Make a bunch appropriate to each major type of skill path, so that there's something for everyone. WoW had quests for crafting recipes which I thought was quite keen, so if you chose to go the route of a dedicated crafter you could do some interesting quests with appropriate rewards and not feel TOO left out in the cold. Advantage: WoW and Oblivion. WoW could get repetitive after a while but it was better than most quests. On the other hand FFXI had plenty of cutscenes, even if you were mostly just an observer. I still quite fondly remember the escape from Zvahl Castle....)
Advancement and Abilities. Advancing in levels in FFXI and Lineage II was torture. I hit level 68 in FFXI and was told I was halfway to the maximum level cap in terms of actual XP gained. Holy shaznak! Plus, abilities were slow in coming -- you were lucky if you got two within 10-15 levels of each other. Spells were a bit more frequent but it averaged out to about one spell every couple of levels, and they got expensive. (More on that later.) WoW did something quite nice in that respect: you got access to new abilities every other level, and sometimes they were pretty neat and you really looked forward to some. WoW also had very rapid level advancement, too. Which was good in its own way, but people were right in that it make high-end content a bit... crowded. What was there to do when you hit the level cap? Well... PvP. *gag* No, thank you. At the same time, FFXI's advancement was way too long and arduous. Something in between, something that makes it feel like you're advancing at a decent clip but not glacial. And where, if you go up in levels or get new points to spend in abilities, you get them fairly frequently. One way around this is what EVE did: make SO MANY areas to advance in that you'll spend MONTHS if not YEARS trying to get all the interesting/cool ones. The key words being, 'interesting/cool.' This also adds variety. I was really taken with the idea that in EVE I could make a (*deep breath*) Hacker archaeologist flying a stealth bomber that could cloak, exploring the universe while dabbling in genetic engineering cybernetics, and playing around with several different flavors of alien technology. If only EVE had more to actually do, rather than have be done to you, while getting to that point. Advantage: EVE and WoW.
Crafting. Ever since... I don't know... someone in UO wove a basket, there's been crafting in MMO's. Once again, Oblivion has some interesting ways of doing this. FFXI was, again, a grind and torture to do it. And each time you tried to craft, you ran the risk of loosing your expensive materials and not even getting a skill-up. WoW took a different tack: Crafting was easy and you skilled up fairly quickly with it, but the recipes got expensive sometimes; some recipes were quest items; and the ingredients started to require entire raid groups to get hold of at the higher end, or they were ridiculously expensive. Now, I'm of two minds about crafting: On the one hand it's an interesting and potentially fun addition to an online game economy. I can enjoy certain crafts if done right. (Fishing... why is there always fishing?) On the other, it's one more thing that can be exploited. (More on that later.) I liked WoW with Alchemy, Engineering, Enchanting, and several flavors of Leatherworking, and they way they branched off the crafting in the upper levels to mix things up a lot. My hat's off to them for that. Advantage: WoW though EVE had a nicely complex system of blueprints, research, and development.
Sidetrack to Crafting: Customization. Oblivion lets you make magic items to suit your own personal play style. You need to have more than a little magic skill, of course, and some expensive components. Even so, you can do some neat stuff with that in the later stages of the game. This is something I think would be nice in an MMO. Also, I seem to recall Matrix Online being quite... fashion conscious. Crafters can make a huge selection of apparel, with an equally huge selection of attributes. This I think is also very cool and a great idea, too. (Raise your hands if you played a Tauren shaman and had the Pauldrons of Grand Piano Tuning....) This is something that CoH/CoV does EXTREMELY well; the character creation module alone is almost a game unto itself, at least for me. Granted, you'll get a lot of ninjas... but that does kind of immediately show you what kind of people you're dealing with. (In a real sense, this ties in with the Roleplaying topic before.) I should point out that EVE also had some interesting character customization, if limited; there was a quite extensive avatar-face-generation system in place. Advantage: Oblivion, CoH/CoV, and, maybe, MxO.
Economy. An economy in an MMO is important, since it helps to logically and rationally serve as a money-sink if one is needed. EVE has one of the most elaborate economies in the MMO gaming world... and thats mostly because it's completely laissez-faire on the part of the developers. it's completely player-driven. Which still leads to some exploitation but in theory you could break into the otherwise closed markets. Still, I would prefer to not have to worry too much about gold/gil/rupees/ISK/adena/etc. Sure, charge me to repair my gear, get armor upgrades, replenish ammunition, that sort of thing. But let's draw the line when you can write a master's thesis on the game's economic intricacies. =) That being said, though... I wouldn't be adverse to a complex economy. See above, re 'options.' =) Advantage: EVE. Even if I didn't want to get into the economics of it, having a honkin' great economic model to play with and influence could make for some fun.
Timesinking. This is another hot-button topic. I don't mind things taking time. I welcome it! It gives a sense of advancement and accomplishment. But don't make everything a total grind where you have to grind for anything you need. WoW did this well; you could very often get replacement gear, money, and crafting items from just going out into the wilderness and 'grinding' XP. (More on this later!) Maybe I just got extremely bad vibes from all the WoW players who spent 4-8+ hours playing a day, and would rant up and down on the forums about how this made them better than the 'casual' players, and how this entitled them to getting better gear, better advancement, etc. Hmm. This is a tricky one. If you play a game for long enough you should get something for the time you put into it. But at the same time, there should be no difference between the player who plays 10 hours over the course of a week, and the one that plays 10 hours over the course of a day. At the end of those 10 hours, they should be equal. Except more often than not, they're not. The one who can play 10 hours straight can do high-level content that requires a lot of equally-hardcore players. I feel that an MMO should be accessible to both casual and hardcore players, but when in doubt to favor the casual player. (Seriously, it's not like the hardcore player is going to loose out on anything this way.) WoW dropped the ball on this, in making their 20- and 40-man raids and the time-sensitive PvP 'honor' system. Sure, a casual player could get into such things... but what "hardcore" guild would have a casual player? FFXI REALLY dropped the ball on this, with HNM LS's, Dynamis LS's, the repeated attempts to get past the Promyvrion bosses, and even just grinding to L75. You cannot be a casual player in FFXI and get anything like reasonable and satisfying advancement. Advantage: *sigh* None here, sorry. WoW but only because levelling up casual characters went so well. After that, you had to be hardcore player. EVE only because you could level up your skills without actually being online.
Solo v. Group? Related to the above's talk about casual v. hardcore. WoW did this great, possibly even TOO great. You could solo, and you could reach level cap fairly quickly all on your own. This had advantages for the casual gamer, and the hardcore gamer both -- the casual gamer could do stuff on their own, at their own pace and at their own time. The hardcore gamer could go out with like-minded hardcore gamers and bang out an impressive amount of work... and at the end of the day they were making roughly the same amount of XP, though the hardcore gamer who went with a party had a slight advantage. FFXI made it impossible to solo for anything interesting. Well, you could farm materials to sell or for crafting. If the materials weren't dropped off of boss-type monsters, that is. EVE, you can sort of solo in most places I've found, but once you hit 0.0 space you really need a lot of guns at your back since it's dog-eat-dog. As for Lineage II... as far as I understand, 100-man groups were normal to tackle some monsters. Battlefields littered with bodies was the norm. I like the option to solo, but I also like the chance and opportunity to go with a group of friends to do stuff. That being said, to do interesting stuff I don't want to be required to group with people. Advantage: WoW. But not by much.
Exploits. Hoo, boy. I remember playing in Battlegrounds, and I can't count how many times I saw Alliance punks wallwalking to get into the Horde base. It made me furious and even more so since Blizzard didn't seem to care. Duping and such was just as frustrating, but as you can see I'm not focussed much on the economy of MMO games, so that didn't annoy me so much (though it did, and if someone was interested in the economy of the game then they have a right to be pissed about exploits like that.) Ideally, of course, every game will have instant and immediate bugfixes to prevent exploiting and a GM unit that takes exploiting seriously. In practice, that's the sort of thing that's hard to enforce without robust and detailed serverside logs. And even then, at what point is something actually exploiting as opposed to just 'unintended consequences' or just plain 'badly-written code?' I remember a lot of players complaining about how they should be allowed to 'use local geometry' even if the effects were unintended -- in a nutshell, they were using the rooftops to plink off and kill other player characters, because the local 'police' NPCs weren't programmed to jump up onto the roofs. This was considered exploting, but the players who wanted to do it said it wasn't fair to ban them from doing that. Me? They knew that they did that to avoid being killed by the police when they started killing off other PCs. So, yeah: 'Sploit. it could have been handled better, though, like maybe make the police/guards able to jump or reach them in some fashion. (Hell, give the guards ranged weapons. They're goblins, they'll be carrying bombs. That'll stop the rooftop snipers right quick.....) In the same vein, I think this is where I got the idea that paladins are overpowered from, what with their Shield->Hearth one-button combo; they were able to pull off some royal assholerly and get away scot-free. Advantage: EVE. Maybe. I didn't get far enough into it to notice serious exploitation. Though the serious economic scams that get pulled off might count, they're considered 'intended consequences' by the developers.
Graphics. Lineage II pretty much proved that no matter how pretty the game is, if it's underlying ethos is not for you then it doesn't matter how much attention the designers lavished on the female Dark Elf armors, it's still going to be a miserable game. FFXI was just flat-out beautiful as far as I'm concerned, with lovely vistas and very evocative locations. (Too bad you needed huge groups to go see them....) WoW had it's own charm, being slightly stylized and slightly toonish but still lovely. EVE... well, it was deep space, and every star system seemed to have the same nebula out thataway... not much to talk about there. =) Still, the ship designs were unique to each race. But, frankly, graphics are not that big a deal to me. They certainly help with the setting and immersion, but that's gravy. Now, music I think is what helped FFXI to utterly blow away WoW. The cities and many of the zones had their own music tracks, and they were always great in helping to evoke just the right emotions; the Forest of Zu'Lind (the forest you cross before reaching the City of the Gods, I think) had this sweet, sad melody. Selbina had this folksish, fishing-town tune. Jeuno was grand. And San d'Oria had this great martial music. And there were others. So, in summary: You can skimp on the graphics, just make the music fit the scenery. =) Advantage: FFXI. Lineage II if you want to throw in cheese- and beef-cake.
Events. An ever-changing world is a fun one. In this, WoW and FFXI lead the list though EVE has it's own special mention since it's entirely player-run as far as events go. FFXI and WoW had seasonal events, like the WoW versions of Thanksgiving and Christmas. FFXI had more eastern holidays; going briefly back to Graphics, the Cherry Blossom Festival was to delevel for, and I don't care what anyone says, I LIKED the fireworks and the beach music! Now, there weren't a lot of changes to the metaplot, though. Things kind of remained the same politically; territories didn't change hands, kingdoms didn't expand. In WoW the only incentives to PvP 'For The Horde!' were personal, 'honor' and bragging rights. Same in FFXI, really. Now, EVE was almost the other extreme, in that the player-run corps ran wild in 0.0 space and did their own things. Still, world-events can be an enjoyable thing to run, and not just seasonal/holiday ones. One thing to add: I very much liked how FFXI's developers fixed the seasonal events. The Easter one seemed to bring out the worst of the wannabe Adam Smiths: the egg hunts were supposed to be fun and instead they turned into bidding wars, auctions, shouts and /yells about egg pricing... it made me feel vaguely disgusted. The next holiday was the Summer festival, and they did everything right, then. Nothing incurred people to try to turn a profit, it was all about having fun and doing unusual stuff that you wouldn't or couldn't do. There were a few unique items but they were limited in what they could do, and they just added flavor to it. (If my character wasn't deleted, she still probably has the yukata from that festival; I was so not going to just get rid of it!) Things like this make it fun and enjoyable without letting it become exploitable for some sort of gain. Advantage: FFXI though I understand that CoH/CoV might have some interesting events.
Griefing. And finally, the other main hot-button topic. FFXI had mob-training. (Who here recalls the training of bats to Garlaige Citadel's entrance and how much fun that was? How about training crawlers to the entrance of Rolanberry Caverns?) WoW had ganking. (Three L60's vs. 6 L30's is NOT a contest, no matter how much you believe in quantity v. 'quality.') EVE has documented some of the most incredibly stings and cutthroat play imaginable; I think if Enron executives have nightmares it's about what can happen in EVE. Lineage II had random PKers. And probably still does. Gods know what CoH/V and MxO have. The point is, at some point 'competetive gameplay' degenerates into 'griefing' and even if there's no easy way to make that line, more often than not it's pretty blatant. (The first clue: Someone saying 'It's a perfectly valid tactic....') A lot of times people do mean things just to be mean and there's no rhyme or reason for it -- they're just assholes. Is there any way to cut down on the assholery? Somehow I don't think there is though I dearly wish there wasy. Advantage: FFXI but only because mob-training and kill-stealing were the worst that I could think up for it and compared to ganking and /spitting and forum-trolling and *shudder* Barrens chat, that's bloody tame.
Whew. That was a lot. I'm going to end it here since I have work tomorrow. Again, these were all my opinions and they're not meant to represent how things really are, objectively, or how they must be. Please keep in mind that my brain is slightly mushy right now, too, and that might make me unable to get my concepts across too well.
Not much else for now. Pax!
P.S. Jon is making repeated 'Resist FFXI' rolls now, after talking with an old friend from that game who went back. 'GRIND.' Okay, feeling a bit better now. 'DYNAMIS.' Ouch. Tough love here. 'PROMYVRION.' Augh. Right, that cured me.
Keep in mind that all these are my opinions. I do not say them as a way to project them onto others. If I say something, it really is just my opinion and not 'the Truth' or 'The Way Things Must Be!' Also, I mention Oblivion a lot here, and even if it isn't an MMO I think it has some of the seeds of a potentially good one. (Wether Bethesda is actually considering an Elder Scrolls MMO is something I leave as grist for the rumormills.)
Characters. I like options in character creation. And by 'options' I don't mean 'a scajillion classes.' Honestly, I didn't want to sit through all the sample classes that Oblivion gives, I jumped right into the make-your-own-class maker. I admit it, I'd prefer a system that lets me play my favorite types of job-types: hybrid spellcasters/swordwielders, or stealth/marksmen. By the latter, I do NOT mean the eponymious and much-reviled WoW Rogue. I can do without the "OMG Sneak Attack Gank!" well enough; I DO however, like the ability to sneak around all over the place and explore. (In a sense, fast travel in Oblivion ruined this for me. Still, it was fun to find Hieronymous Mora's shrine before it even got marked on my map!) As for the hybrid, this is my FFXI memories coming back. I really really enjoyed playing the redmage. So... in summary, if a character creation system allows this sort of thing, the creation of hybrid or 'custom' character attributes, it's a plus in my book. EVE did this great, letting you focus on what you wanted to focus on and still be a functional part of the game. Oblivion also rocked out with this. I still think WoW had balance issues with some class powers, but they also had only a handful of powers. Lineage II was disappointing in this as well. Advantage: Oblivion and EVE.
Sidetrack to Characters: Das Ubercharacteren. Balance between jobs/classes is pretty tricky, and I don't think there's any easy way to do it. I think that there are some egregious examples out there of broken classes and jobs -- Paladins in WoW, and as near as I can tell Blue Mages in FFXI, now -- but there's going to be minmaxers who take advantage of a more freeform 'roll-your-own-class' system. Some way to limit the minmaxers from making characters that will statistically eat your marshmallows every time -- that's a metaphor, son -- would be nice, but that might not be possible if you're going to have a very freeform character creation system like in Oblivion. Advantage: Early FFXI. The character classes were mostly quite balanced with some exceptions.
PvP. Hot-button issue for me. I loathe it. Nay, revile it. I think it brings out the worst in Internet gamers. At least the ones whom I've seen the most of. I know that most people treat PvP in an MMO as pretty much akin to Counterstrike, but some take it way too far. This is one reason I left WoW. FFXI was better in this respect, mostly because there was very little PvP, and what little there was, was codified as a mini-game, which I rather liked. I can understand people wanting PvP though, so I wouldn't be adverse to allowing some in. I feel that the way WoW implemented it was bad. EVE didn't do much better, though it was more tightly controlled. Lineage II was simply atrocious as far as that went. Advantage: FFXI.
Story/Background. I have to admit I've been lucky. FFXI and WoW had very engaging stories in their missions and quests for the most part. FFXI was vast and epic and there was tons of good fanfic fodder there. WoW also had a wonderfully elaborate world (though somehow it seemed resistant to being creative as far as writing in it for me.) Lineage II and EVE seemed to have backstories as afterthoughts.Most people ignore the background/story of MMO's, though, which is a shame. City of Heroes/Villains seems to have backstory in spades. Matrix Online on the other hand seems to be nothing but backstory, near as I can tell. =^_^= So... epic and engaging backstory that doesn't drown out the PC's in a sea of backstory. Advantage: FFXI.
Roleplaying. I probably should have rolled my WoW character on an RP server from the start. There was some great RPing on them. On the other hand, MMO's seem to generally avoid roleplaying, which is a shame. FFXI had some great RP potential with the three nations, and I remember some really enjoyable RPing there. Of course, the people who didn't RP in WoW seemed more than happy to mock those who did, so there was something of a damper there. So, yeah, encouragement to roleplay is important! Advantage: Your tastes vary, all in all. I would say FFXI and MxO, but I know people who have quite happily RP'd in WoW for months and months.
Variation in Quests. Oblivion had some fun quests that covered a wide variety of things. The Rogue missions for WoW likewise covered a slew of things to do. Don't just tell me to kill off N Monster-K's and bring back Q of Monster H's. FFXI, you were gauranteed to have to do some sort of boss battle for each quest. It rather pretty much sucked rocks, especially where I left off: all those 'Almost's I rattle off once? Boss battles, almost every one of them. And finding parties to do them was hard. At some point, most people completed those quests and were not willing to help others since they'd done them so many damn times. Not that I can blame them too much. Still, it's a serious roadblock. So, mix up the quests some. Make a bunch appropriate to each major type of skill path, so that there's something for everyone. WoW had quests for crafting recipes which I thought was quite keen, so if you chose to go the route of a dedicated crafter you could do some interesting quests with appropriate rewards and not feel TOO left out in the cold. Advantage: WoW and Oblivion. WoW could get repetitive after a while but it was better than most quests. On the other hand FFXI had plenty of cutscenes, even if you were mostly just an observer. I still quite fondly remember the escape from Zvahl Castle....)
Advancement and Abilities. Advancing in levels in FFXI and Lineage II was torture. I hit level 68 in FFXI and was told I was halfway to the maximum level cap in terms of actual XP gained. Holy shaznak! Plus, abilities were slow in coming -- you were lucky if you got two within 10-15 levels of each other. Spells were a bit more frequent but it averaged out to about one spell every couple of levels, and they got expensive. (More on that later.) WoW did something quite nice in that respect: you got access to new abilities every other level, and sometimes they were pretty neat and you really looked forward to some. WoW also had very rapid level advancement, too. Which was good in its own way, but people were right in that it make high-end content a bit... crowded. What was there to do when you hit the level cap? Well... PvP. *gag* No, thank you. At the same time, FFXI's advancement was way too long and arduous. Something in between, something that makes it feel like you're advancing at a decent clip but not glacial. And where, if you go up in levels or get new points to spend in abilities, you get them fairly frequently. One way around this is what EVE did: make SO MANY areas to advance in that you'll spend MONTHS if not YEARS trying to get all the interesting/cool ones. The key words being, 'interesting/cool.' This also adds variety. I was really taken with the idea that in EVE I could make a (*deep breath*) Hacker archaeologist flying a stealth bomber that could cloak, exploring the universe while dabbling in genetic engineering cybernetics, and playing around with several different flavors of alien technology. If only EVE had more to actually do, rather than have be done to you, while getting to that point. Advantage: EVE and WoW.
Crafting. Ever since... I don't know... someone in UO wove a basket, there's been crafting in MMO's. Once again, Oblivion has some interesting ways of doing this. FFXI was, again, a grind and torture to do it. And each time you tried to craft, you ran the risk of loosing your expensive materials and not even getting a skill-up. WoW took a different tack: Crafting was easy and you skilled up fairly quickly with it, but the recipes got expensive sometimes; some recipes were quest items; and the ingredients started to require entire raid groups to get hold of at the higher end, or they were ridiculously expensive. Now, I'm of two minds about crafting: On the one hand it's an interesting and potentially fun addition to an online game economy. I can enjoy certain crafts if done right. (Fishing... why is there always fishing?) On the other, it's one more thing that can be exploited. (More on that later.) I liked WoW with Alchemy, Engineering, Enchanting, and several flavors of Leatherworking, and they way they branched off the crafting in the upper levels to mix things up a lot. My hat's off to them for that. Advantage: WoW though EVE had a nicely complex system of blueprints, research, and development.
Sidetrack to Crafting: Customization. Oblivion lets you make magic items to suit your own personal play style. You need to have more than a little magic skill, of course, and some expensive components. Even so, you can do some neat stuff with that in the later stages of the game. This is something I think would be nice in an MMO. Also, I seem to recall Matrix Online being quite... fashion conscious. Crafters can make a huge selection of apparel, with an equally huge selection of attributes. This I think is also very cool and a great idea, too. (Raise your hands if you played a Tauren shaman and had the Pauldrons of Grand Piano Tuning....) This is something that CoH/CoV does EXTREMELY well; the character creation module alone is almost a game unto itself, at least for me. Granted, you'll get a lot of ninjas... but that does kind of immediately show you what kind of people you're dealing with. (In a real sense, this ties in with the Roleplaying topic before.) I should point out that EVE also had some interesting character customization, if limited; there was a quite extensive avatar-face-generation system in place. Advantage: Oblivion, CoH/CoV, and, maybe, MxO.
Economy. An economy in an MMO is important, since it helps to logically and rationally serve as a money-sink if one is needed. EVE has one of the most elaborate economies in the MMO gaming world... and thats mostly because it's completely laissez-faire on the part of the developers. it's completely player-driven. Which still leads to some exploitation but in theory you could break into the otherwise closed markets. Still, I would prefer to not have to worry too much about gold/gil/rupees/ISK/adena/etc. Sure, charge me to repair my gear, get armor upgrades, replenish ammunition, that sort of thing. But let's draw the line when you can write a master's thesis on the game's economic intricacies. =) That being said, though... I wouldn't be adverse to a complex economy. See above, re 'options.' =) Advantage: EVE. Even if I didn't want to get into the economics of it, having a honkin' great economic model to play with and influence could make for some fun.
Timesinking. This is another hot-button topic. I don't mind things taking time. I welcome it! It gives a sense of advancement and accomplishment. But don't make everything a total grind where you have to grind for anything you need. WoW did this well; you could very often get replacement gear, money, and crafting items from just going out into the wilderness and 'grinding' XP. (More on this later!) Maybe I just got extremely bad vibes from all the WoW players who spent 4-8+ hours playing a day, and would rant up and down on the forums about how this made them better than the 'casual' players, and how this entitled them to getting better gear, better advancement, etc. Hmm. This is a tricky one. If you play a game for long enough you should get something for the time you put into it. But at the same time, there should be no difference between the player who plays 10 hours over the course of a week, and the one that plays 10 hours over the course of a day. At the end of those 10 hours, they should be equal. Except more often than not, they're not. The one who can play 10 hours straight can do high-level content that requires a lot of equally-hardcore players. I feel that an MMO should be accessible to both casual and hardcore players, but when in doubt to favor the casual player. (Seriously, it's not like the hardcore player is going to loose out on anything this way.) WoW dropped the ball on this, in making their 20- and 40-man raids and the time-sensitive PvP 'honor' system. Sure, a casual player could get into such things... but what "hardcore" guild would have a casual player? FFXI REALLY dropped the ball on this, with HNM LS's, Dynamis LS's, the repeated attempts to get past the Promyvrion bosses, and even just grinding to L75. You cannot be a casual player in FFXI and get anything like reasonable and satisfying advancement. Advantage: *sigh* None here, sorry. WoW but only because levelling up casual characters went so well. After that, you had to be hardcore player. EVE only because you could level up your skills without actually being online.
Solo v. Group? Related to the above's talk about casual v. hardcore. WoW did this great, possibly even TOO great. You could solo, and you could reach level cap fairly quickly all on your own. This had advantages for the casual gamer, and the hardcore gamer both -- the casual gamer could do stuff on their own, at their own pace and at their own time. The hardcore gamer could go out with like-minded hardcore gamers and bang out an impressive amount of work... and at the end of the day they were making roughly the same amount of XP, though the hardcore gamer who went with a party had a slight advantage. FFXI made it impossible to solo for anything interesting. Well, you could farm materials to sell or for crafting. If the materials weren't dropped off of boss-type monsters, that is. EVE, you can sort of solo in most places I've found, but once you hit 0.0 space you really need a lot of guns at your back since it's dog-eat-dog. As for Lineage II... as far as I understand, 100-man groups were normal to tackle some monsters. Battlefields littered with bodies was the norm. I like the option to solo, but I also like the chance and opportunity to go with a group of friends to do stuff. That being said, to do interesting stuff I don't want to be required to group with people. Advantage: WoW. But not by much.
Exploits. Hoo, boy. I remember playing in Battlegrounds, and I can't count how many times I saw Alliance punks wallwalking to get into the Horde base. It made me furious and even more so since Blizzard didn't seem to care. Duping and such was just as frustrating, but as you can see I'm not focussed much on the economy of MMO games, so that didn't annoy me so much (though it did, and if someone was interested in the economy of the game then they have a right to be pissed about exploits like that.) Ideally, of course, every game will have instant and immediate bugfixes to prevent exploiting and a GM unit that takes exploiting seriously. In practice, that's the sort of thing that's hard to enforce without robust and detailed serverside logs. And even then, at what point is something actually exploiting as opposed to just 'unintended consequences' or just plain 'badly-written code?' I remember a lot of players complaining about how they should be allowed to 'use local geometry' even if the effects were unintended -- in a nutshell, they were using the rooftops to plink off and kill other player characters, because the local 'police' NPCs weren't programmed to jump up onto the roofs. This was considered exploting, but the players who wanted to do it said it wasn't fair to ban them from doing that. Me? They knew that they did that to avoid being killed by the police when they started killing off other PCs. So, yeah: 'Sploit. it could have been handled better, though, like maybe make the police/guards able to jump or reach them in some fashion. (Hell, give the guards ranged weapons. They're goblins, they'll be carrying bombs. That'll stop the rooftop snipers right quick.....) In the same vein, I think this is where I got the idea that paladins are overpowered from, what with their Shield->Hearth one-button combo; they were able to pull off some royal assholerly and get away scot-free. Advantage: EVE. Maybe. I didn't get far enough into it to notice serious exploitation. Though the serious economic scams that get pulled off might count, they're considered 'intended consequences' by the developers.
Graphics. Lineage II pretty much proved that no matter how pretty the game is, if it's underlying ethos is not for you then it doesn't matter how much attention the designers lavished on the female Dark Elf armors, it's still going to be a miserable game. FFXI was just flat-out beautiful as far as I'm concerned, with lovely vistas and very evocative locations. (Too bad you needed huge groups to go see them....) WoW had it's own charm, being slightly stylized and slightly toonish but still lovely. EVE... well, it was deep space, and every star system seemed to have the same nebula out thataway... not much to talk about there. =) Still, the ship designs were unique to each race. But, frankly, graphics are not that big a deal to me. They certainly help with the setting and immersion, but that's gravy. Now, music I think is what helped FFXI to utterly blow away WoW. The cities and many of the zones had their own music tracks, and they were always great in helping to evoke just the right emotions; the Forest of Zu'Lind (the forest you cross before reaching the City of the Gods, I think) had this sweet, sad melody. Selbina had this folksish, fishing-town tune. Jeuno was grand. And San d'Oria had this great martial music. And there were others. So, in summary: You can skimp on the graphics, just make the music fit the scenery. =) Advantage: FFXI. Lineage II if you want to throw in cheese- and beef-cake.
Events. An ever-changing world is a fun one. In this, WoW and FFXI lead the list though EVE has it's own special mention since it's entirely player-run as far as events go. FFXI and WoW had seasonal events, like the WoW versions of Thanksgiving and Christmas. FFXI had more eastern holidays; going briefly back to Graphics, the Cherry Blossom Festival was to delevel for, and I don't care what anyone says, I LIKED the fireworks and the beach music! Now, there weren't a lot of changes to the metaplot, though. Things kind of remained the same politically; territories didn't change hands, kingdoms didn't expand. In WoW the only incentives to PvP 'For The Horde!' were personal, 'honor' and bragging rights. Same in FFXI, really. Now, EVE was almost the other extreme, in that the player-run corps ran wild in 0.0 space and did their own things. Still, world-events can be an enjoyable thing to run, and not just seasonal/holiday ones. One thing to add: I very much liked how FFXI's developers fixed the seasonal events. The Easter one seemed to bring out the worst of the wannabe Adam Smiths: the egg hunts were supposed to be fun and instead they turned into bidding wars, auctions, shouts and /yells about egg pricing... it made me feel vaguely disgusted. The next holiday was the Summer festival, and they did everything right, then. Nothing incurred people to try to turn a profit, it was all about having fun and doing unusual stuff that you wouldn't or couldn't do. There were a few unique items but they were limited in what they could do, and they just added flavor to it. (If my character wasn't deleted, she still probably has the yukata from that festival; I was so not going to just get rid of it!) Things like this make it fun and enjoyable without letting it become exploitable for some sort of gain. Advantage: FFXI though I understand that CoH/CoV might have some interesting events.
Griefing. And finally, the other main hot-button topic. FFXI had mob-training. (Who here recalls the training of bats to Garlaige Citadel's entrance and how much fun that was? How about training crawlers to the entrance of Rolanberry Caverns?) WoW had ganking. (Three L60's vs. 6 L30's is NOT a contest, no matter how much you believe in quantity v. 'quality.') EVE has documented some of the most incredibly stings and cutthroat play imaginable; I think if Enron executives have nightmares it's about what can happen in EVE. Lineage II had random PKers. And probably still does. Gods know what CoH/V and MxO have. The point is, at some point 'competetive gameplay' degenerates into 'griefing' and even if there's no easy way to make that line, more often than not it's pretty blatant. (The first clue: Someone saying 'It's a perfectly valid tactic....') A lot of times people do mean things just to be mean and there's no rhyme or reason for it -- they're just assholes. Is there any way to cut down on the assholery? Somehow I don't think there is though I dearly wish there wasy. Advantage: FFXI but only because mob-training and kill-stealing were the worst that I could think up for it and compared to ganking and /spitting and forum-trolling and *shudder* Barrens chat, that's bloody tame.
Whew. That was a lot. I'm going to end it here since I have work tomorrow. Again, these were all my opinions and they're not meant to represent how things really are, objectively, or how they must be. Please keep in mind that my brain is slightly mushy right now, too, and that might make me unable to get my concepts across too well.
Not much else for now. Pax!
P.S. Jon is making repeated 'Resist FFXI' rolls now, after talking with an old friend from that game who went back. 'GRIND.' Okay, feeling a bit better now. 'DYNAMIS.' Ouch. Tough love here. 'PROMYVRION.' Augh. Right, that cured me.
