Additionally, permanent death would immediately make the game niche. Knowing that your character can go away instantly makes the game significantly less accessible, and I’d wager that the population of the game would slowly disappear (it would get a good number of immediate players, but people would slowly start getting tired of making new characters and would stop playing).

Why not have the concept of ‘permanent death’ in an MMO, although on a more reasonable scale? You have 100 chances to die and come back. After time 100, that character is “forever” dead, and their portrait is hung in a hall of fallen heroes. Some other schmuck (e.g. your new 1st level character) can choose to take on a quest to bring the hero back, but with a much reduced death count (maybe 20 this time).

The intent would be to make death a true threat, and cause players to be a little less reckless.

I would also like to add to Dan’s list if he wouldn’t mind. But another area lost in translation is goals and the speeds at which the player reaches them.

6) Levels are not give-me’s

In Dungeons & Dragons levels were not the carrots players were trying to obtain. Playing Dungeons & Dragons we knew there to be only 20 levels and trying to reach them a l i v e was the main carrot. Players had to move about the dungeons at a much slower pace, because there was not many, if any at all, instances where the players would be so over powering they could walk through them. I hear all this talk of dungeon crawling, but I still call it a fast jog when compared to the pen & paper days of table top gaming.

7) Presentation

Presentation of the games story or the quests story. Having gone back to EverQuest II to take another look at the voice over system and how it is able to present the quest to the player. I have to say that this is by far the best approach so far in terms of presentation, immersion, playability. While there are still other areas of the quest systems that just don’t gell well for me coming from a Dungeon Master Role (never did get to just play). You can see on my own blog that Quest Systems are a place where I try to delve in to, to try and get the most out of the story and the game. I still have a great deal more to write just on the quest systems.

Combat Reset

I know there was talk about the AI and yes it is an area that needs help, but it also needs more help in just about every aspect of the computer industry, So I don’t try to be to critical of this area. But combat and its representation to the player is an area I know we can fix and should be taking a hard long look at why we are asking the players to basically become an EverQuest Bard with all the constant button mashing. And I know there will be cries from the masses about no auto-attack, and I agree we don’t need to go back to the EverQuest Warrior, but I know (and have seen it in Dungeons & Dragons Online) that there is a much greater and more enjoyable combat model we can employ.

Yes we can look at keeping the DPS if your heart is so set upon this mechanic, but if you want to bring pen & paper Dungeons & Dragons to the MMORPG, then your game manual will need to explain better what all the numbers are really doing and how they work. Reduce the numbers some, and make them meaningful to the game (each individual number). Systems like WoW, EQ, EQII, Vanguard all make the numbers meaningless, in that getting a breastplate with +2 more AC than what your currently wearing means little to the game or the games engine.

9) Mulitplayer or Single Player Design

Last but not least, stop creating single player games with massive people in them. This does little to ‘translate’ tabletop role-playing games in to today’s MMORPG. Today’s games are created with the ideal that if a player pays the monthly fee (should your game have this revenue model) that the world must always be ‘turned on’ for them. They are created as if your the only player in the world, at least the NPC’s sure think that way.

I mean how many times does farmer Jones need you to collect his chickens in a day, and why didn’t the rooster cage you got the parts for work? Will the game tell you this to try and help immerse you in the world - NOPE. They just spit out the same dialog to the next newbie who wanders by about needing his roosters caught, and then running to Smitty Ryan to get the parts that the Farmer ordered.

Then there is this new trend of making them more ’solo’ friendly, or ‘casual’ friendly and I would venture to say you can do this without making leveling your carrots. If your combat is fun and addictive, action packed, stratigical, and tactical, levels would be an afterthought. Think of Counter-Strike heart pounding action - mix in the combat arts and spells of Dungeons & Dragons - add some dynamics to the combat engine (like for example hits / misses) so that I don’t hit my encounter mob 90% of the time and bases on his armor is what kind of damage I do. DPS does little to equal fun in combat for me, the game becomes about min/maxing instead of using your classes true skills and talents (like Dungeons & Dragons poses).

10) Think of more than just Combat

Yes, I know that a majority of your players will be spending a majority of their time there and I didn’t say take away from the games central focus on combat. But give us more things to do beside kill, kill, kill, and log off. What happened to mini-games, why is there no games in the taverns or inns. I know EverQuest II has the gambling game, but its not quite what I am looking for. I am looking for something more that will draw players in to the games inns, taverns, feasthalls, and so forth. Lord of the Rings Online has the music you can play, but it is hardly seen that much (but I don’t spend a lot of time in the Inns) as I don’t see people playing with this cause there is no carrots.

I blame both the developers and the players, since many of us have tasted the end-game, and games are made with the ideal of letting players get there easier and easier, that is where the focus is when it should no be.

Should a person have that “bounty” in their quest tab, they can fight em without any issues, if they don’t have the bounty quest and they PVP the person being hunted, they can get nailed as well.

I dunno. Difficult to explain without doing a full writeup. I just thought it would add a new twist to PVP and having players be on the bad end of quests.

Instead of the mighty dragon dropping the Uber Sword every time, how about it drops the [named] [weapon] with [power] instead? The name is generated via a cabbage-patch-kid-name algorithm, the weapon is a single list, the power is a collection of 3-5 random buffs; and a random number generator spits out the result. Yes, the back end infrastructure that drives this won’t be easy, but it would be worthwhile.

And while not entirely practical with 1000+ players on-line simultaneously, having Improv GMs log in to dynamically push quests (ala Neverwinter Nights) and respond to player actions would also ensure more diverse, unique stories. Again, not a simple thing to implement; you’d probably need an entire CS department of improv actors, but it would enable players to explore outside the scripts, and spin the stories in ways the devs never imagined.

Simply put, the player doesn’t change, its (as I believe Ryan is clearly stating), the responsibility of the designer(DM) to fulfill the needs of the player.

So what is it that a DM in a P&P game provides that current MMOs aren’t fulfilling? Lets make a list of the most important things.

1) A constantly responsive experience
A variable experience depending on the players involved, and how that want their experience to play out.

2) Rule breaking

Someone in charge who can change the rules of the game if the situation calls for it.

3) Tailored story telling

A story that uniquely revolves around the players involved, their characters, their strengths/weaknesses/foibles.

4) Accountability

Someone who is accountable for a poor experience (and complimented on a good experience).

5) A Relationship

To sum up all of the above, a DM that knows you, and wants to have a good time too, while keeping your good time close to their heart. (In our hearts, this is the designer ideal, but a little thing call large subscriber bases impedes this greatly)

So how do we provide these things? Well, we tailor our MMO experience to the user by paying devs at game companies to constantly create new content and serve as DMs for the user base. We construct a robust tool set that allows these virtual DMs to place NPCs, change dungeon layout, determine AI for mobs, add loot, communicate with players, change player statistics, kill off players, and many of the other things that real world DMs do….

Okay, so that is a little unreasonable. So we decide on what the best of these things are and we see how to incorporate them where we can. We continue to refine our scripting and AI to create for a more dynamic experience.

There is a whole other conversation here about how users actually EXPECT different things from MMO’s than they do from P&P. To name a few things: they expect consistency of game-play (loot drop tables, locations of dungeons, abilities of NPCs, etc.). They expect NPCs to behave in fair ways. In short, since there isn’t someone sitting in front of them moderating their game experience as they go, they expect a controlled environment that doesn’t surprise them.

Now I know Ryan is going to say “Well heck, that is exactly what we need to change, their expectations”. And I agree, but I also think we need to keep in mind, a fair experience is what gamers expect now, and if they encounter one that is often unfair, they will often not stick around (at least your more casual, non-achievement driven users..and once again, a whole other talk about your expected user base could be had).

Okay, I’ve rambled on for a bit without really making any great points, but I hope I’ve advanced the conversation a bit.