The MMO market today seems to be following a similar trend. Innovative ideas are generally just ideas that worked poached from other mmo's and formed into one new "next-gen mmo" that really isn't all that different. This type of development is "playing it safe" and developers are producing titles that are garunteed a success rather than taking risks at creating a truly innovative experience.

While giving your players what they want is great, doing so too often will generally lead to the game being branded with a carebear sticker. The developer caters to the players every needs, and alot of players then turn away due to the game becoming too easy. This renders consequences meaningless, the work you put in is always rewarded and takes away that sense of accomplishment. Being able to obtain the best gear, and having no real drawbacks from dying or failing with little to no effort makes the game all of a sudden boring and undesirable compared to what it used to be.

After a lot of discussion and research the majority of gamers in todays market want a game that truly provides freedom, and choices that effect the living world of the game they are playing. To have this sort of environment you need realistic consequences, unforgiving and sometimes frustrating consequences to be more specific. Games need to give back the true meaning to hardcore gaming, return the great feeling of accomplishing what seemed an almost impossible task. Set apart the great players from the mediocre, and make it obvious.

The cookie-cutter world is generally faction against faction, one side against another. These are predetermined for the player, you are not free to make your own decision, just because your the same race as someone doesn't mean you should have to play nice! Imagine a world where once logging in for the first time you must be hasty about making friends and forming an allegiance or be seriously disadvantaged and become easy game for everyone else. While the game still has the need for wars and fighting, your not forced to side with anyone you don't want to. Wars would then having meaning and justice, you make choices on who you go into conflict with determined by your own reasons. There might be that group of thieves who have been ganking your guild members when walking alone in the woods, or another guild of stronger players who are bullying you into paying them "protection".

You want justice, you want to put an end to the situation and hopefully make a name for yourself that will ward off other guilds with cruel intentions. The adrenaline and sense of accomplishment from taking down one of these guilds would be far greater than say winning a battleground or arena match. To do this games need features that make you think twice about every move you make, instill real fear in the player of what might happen if they do not succeed. When you are killed by mobs or players, everything you have on your possession is at stake. Things like this stop players from running into groups and trying to kill as many as possible, the only real consequence being a ghost run or small wait time. Would you run into a group of players if you could lose everything you had?

I am guessing alot of people by now would be saying, "Well that's already present in games", but listen up. While these kinds of features may be present in some MMO's, there should be more of them and ones that take the greatest elements of this and polish it into a truly player controlled MMO. The best example I really believe exists at the moment is www.darkfallonline.com who while have come close to providing this experience, could never match up to one of the powerhouse developers resources. Which is sad really. I would love to hear what people have to say about this topic, and welcome and messages with your opinion. Below is what I would call a great mmo.

Character Creation and Classes

Having a unique look provides a status symbol, the more work you put into how your character looks, the more you will stand out. Systems present mostly in single player titles are already proving to be amazing, and developers are catching on with games like Aion. The depth of customization is an important factor in a game, if this becomes more mainstream it will attract alot more players.

Classes shouldn't be limited to single choice selections, even adding sub-classes is only a band-aid fix. Skill Systems from games such as Oblivion provide the ability for the player to truly mould their own class. Sure there is always going to be a need for certain roles to accomplish things within the game, but players then have to make the choice on what makes the perfect class for that particular role.

You may have a healer that can weild a sword and shield, but they will never be as powerful as the healer who focuses all their skills within healing. While there are many pros and cons to every build a player could make, it seperates players making a good healer and a mediocre healer alot less a developers balancing issue and more because of that players choices.

Players will already begin to feel unique. Allowing intense amounts of cutiomization to fall into the players hands will always reach a positive outcome.

The World

Games are only limited by the developers imagination (and sometimes reality just doesnt like their ideas) and the resources they have to bring that to life. It's already proven that developers can provide vast landscapes and seamless worlds. We also know that developers will take a long time to produce a title because they know it will bring in a profit, so deadlines can't always be an issue. So why aren't we seeing bigger worlds, bigger than any other developer has made before? Developers make their own terrain generators which pretty much do the work for them, so why aren't the sandbox MMO's giving us more room to play in?

People as a natural instinct fall in love with their own creations, so the obvious solution in a game would be to give the player tools to make their own creations within the game world. By loving what they have made, they are falling in love with the developers game. Player cities, small towns, houses in the middle of a forest, shops, structures, all of these things are present in current titles but not to the extent they should be. The more control players have over a world, the more variety you will have. Cities will be built, cities will crumble. The world changes depending on the players choices as a whole.

An example would be Star Wars Galaxies which allowed its players to create their own cities and towns in empty land which spread over a huge amount of planets. A guild's strength is shown by it's accomplishments, although this isn't always projected the way it should be. Having great gear is a benefit to the player, but your guild having the biggest city in the game, boasting the most profitable stores, would definitely show other players your accomplishments without any need for inspection or research.

Giving guilds power means their names have more meaning, seeing a player running towards you with a certain guild tag might tell you to run instead of taking your chances at fighting him. Being the top guild means something. Amongst giving the players tools to build cities and towns, you also need to provide a living world. One where things grow, seasons change and the creatures have a life of their own.

Games have some pretty impressive AI these days, but once again it's mostly in single player titles. From a development point of view i'd be interested to see how hard it would be to make mobs feel more like living creatures rather than static punching bags. Creatures breed, they handle different seasons differently, so how hard would it be to make a "breeding season" where an area which they inhabit might be generally empty, during the breeding season its bustling with more mobs than there usually is. When seasons change, implement a waypoint system that causes the creatures to travel to a new area. All things that could create a more interesting world.

Crafting and Resources

While giving players the ability to create buildings is a great idea, you need players to gather the resources and build the cities. Crafting is often used as a side game, and generally isn't a main focus. Players can generally live without crafting professions, and this needs to change. Players shouldn't have to be a warrior or priest, crafting should be just as viable as a class. People should be able to experience a great role within the game as crafters and while obviously crafters wouldnt be able to participate in all aspects of the game, there should be enough available to the player to compensate for that. Star Wars Galaxies once again made musicians and crafters an important role in the game, and made them fun.

We should see more of this, players creating unique buildings, vehicles and weapons. Certain things should completely rely on a crafter, while having weapon and armor drop of a raid boss is fine, players shouldnt be able to just buy a house or shop. Players having to work with other players to obtain what they desire should be an important focus of an MMO. By creating this dependence on crafters, the importance of that "class" is implemented aswell.

While crafters wouldn't be considered a fighting class, there should be a need for fighting classes to work with crafting classes. The rewards should benefit both, whether it be personal or guild related. For example, a guild wants to build their first city, they have a team of crafters and an army ready to defend their newly built city. To build the city, they need the resources. While resources are easily obtained and usually at most just a time consuming tasks, players should have more control over resources. This gives a reason to fight over them, a player controlling an area rich with a certain resource not only reaps the reward of having plenty of that resource, but they also have a clear danger of being targeted by a lot of other guilds.

PvP and Combat

There's no doubt that there are some interesting pvp and combat systems within current MMO's, but they could be improved. I remember when World Of Warcraft first came out, when you had the best pvp gear, you stood out from the rest and people were actually scared to fight you. This sort of fear has been completely taken out of the game now, but it was there. We should hold on to this, once again with more realistic consequences for your actions. If you die and all of the possessions on your person can be taken, you are going to be much more reluctant to take on foes more powerful than you. You will become more careful in your approach and whether you take on tasks alone or in groups. If you could lose a great set of gear you would be less likely to afk out in the woods or go picking herbs in a highly populated area by yourself.

This once again puts emphasis on team work. Along with teamwork is the rush of adrenaline you get from the epic battles you come out on top of. With a game that had no faction restrictions, who could you trust? You never know if your friend is truly loyal, or might he use his advantage to steal the rewards when you least expect it? Meaning is given to friendship and loyalty within a virtual world. One that isn't felt in most MMO's, where you can't make that choice purely because they are the same race/faction as you.

Mobs should be smarter, they should learn to work together more efficiently and provide a great challenge for players instead of being squashed like bugs under your oversized boot in return for easy xp and loot. Grinding would become more interesting when it wasn't just mashing the same rotation repeatedly. If every fight was different, and provided situations where you needed to use a variety of skills, then grinding wouldn't be such a mundane task.

Things you create can also be destroyed, you may create a great city, but if it's too big for you to protect then you may just lose it. There should be strategy in location, size and layout of a player city, will you build it out in the open or deal with the extra hike up to the top of that cliff with only one entrance?

Overall

So I guess what i'm saying is, life isn't fair and neither should all games. Bring real emotion back into MMO's with more realistic consequences and choices. Provide meaning to the existence of each and every character in a world. When you accomplish something, your rewarded and you feel great because you have done something great, but be careful not to lose it! So who will be the company to set a new benchmark for mmo's and truly create something short of a masterpiece?