Make a great game first. One of the fallacies in MMO design is that you need to start with all the other games in the genre as a baseline, then work your way from there. This is not true. You need to first try to make a great game. Make sure the game is fun. Would the game be fun if there were no persistence or multiplayer aspect to the game? If not, is that okay? Take advantage of the benefits of the massively multiplayer genre, don’t use them as a crutch for poor game design. There are definitely many reasons MMOs are the way they are, but don’t put features in them just because you think they are supposed to be there, put them in because they should be there. Which leads to another lesson about why things are the way they are in many MMOs…

Add features because they are fun; don’t add features if they aren’t. Period. You should never add a feature to your game just because you think it’s a standard in the genre. Maybe it is, but why is it? Is it because it’s fun? If so, does it cohesively fit in your game? If it’s not fun, does it… wait, no, if it’s not fun then don’t put in your game. Simple. Don’t put anything in the game that you think is a standard in the genre without first examining why that is so, and include it if it’s a good idea.

Don’t half-ass anything. If you’re going to add a feature to your game, go all the way with it, or don’t put it in at all. This is doubly true for new features, because new features tend to be major selling points for a game. If you boast that your game has the most versatile character creation system ever and fail to deliver, you’re dumb. If you put in a feature just because you feel like it’s now the norm for the genre, and you half-ass the implementation, that, also, is dumb. This leads to next week’s wonderful lesson about features in general.

Soloing is not an abomination. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen players make fun of those who almost exclusively solo in an MMO. After all, why would you play a massively multiplayer game to play alone? Well, soloing is in no way abnormal in an MMO, and players (and developers) who claim soloing in an MMO is weird are outright wrong. Many gamers simply desire the shared presence of a virtual world, and don’t desire much direct interaction with other players. Knowing this, you would do well to ensure that solo play in your game is not just viable, but an integral and fulfilling part of the experience for many players.

Technological accessibility means making your game work well for a broad range of system requirements. Making your game simply work on a broad range of machines isn’t good enough; you need to ensure that the game works well and looks good even at the minimum requirements. Players won’t stand for a horrible looking game even if it runs on their low end system. You’re essentially creating a variable experience for the game and you’re actually facilitating negative impressions by making the game look like crap on low end systems. It should look good at the minimum spec, great at the recommended spec, and even better as a computer’s specs get higher.

Be careful when “planning ahead” technologically. It’s no secret that epic MMOs take a long time to make–longer than all other genres, on average. So, be extremely careful when you decide to base your system requirements on your predictions of technology’s future. The reality is, technology changes at a variable pace. For example, determining that a 4.5GHz PC with 2GB of RAM and a GeForce 9 series card will be the standard in 3 years is, at best, a potential misjudgment and, at worst, completely ignorant and erroneous. If you want your game to be accessible to the widest range of people, you need the broadest range of system requirements, which leads to the lesson for next week.

Technology doesn’t sell. The FPS genre is well-known for creating the most cutting edge games using the most cutting edge technologies. In fact, you might say that an FPS can do pretty well if only it is technologically superior to others. This is absolutely not the case for MMOs, particularly because of the large number of people that have to be able to be on the screen at once. If you’re relying on your cool technology to sell your MMO, get ready for failure, because any cool technology you incorporate into an MMO has more than likely already been seen in another genre. Sure, cool tech in an MMO can help sales, but not that much.

Quality is paramount. In today’s market, and the market of tomorrow, quality is becoming more and more important. There is so much competition that creating a product with the assumption that quantity (of features, landmass, etc.) is greater than quality, you will almost undoubtedly fail (especially if you attempt to follow the same business model as other games). Polish the hell out of your product, and don’t make any small sacrifices or they will pile up over time. And, never say that quality is what matters most without following through.

No MMO that came before yours was perfect. Even if that game has 5 or 10 million subscribers, it is not perfect. Never directly attempt to clone another game, and don’t be afraid of little innovations even if you are making a similar game. Blindly copying even specific features of a previous game is a fallacy; instead, you should determine why it was done the way it was, figure out if there is a better way to do it, and make that feature your own.

Resist the desire to make frequent, minor tweaks. Any small tweak you make to a spell, an item, or anything will be perceived as a nerf if that tweak is downward, and will be perceived as negligible if that tweak is upward. Things don’t have to be perfectly balanced as long as they’re nearly balanced. For those minor tweaks upward, bundle them together as part of your major patch and the effect will be felt more significantly, and that’s also the time to make tweaks down if you have to. Note the word “minor.”