My Dream MMORPG

There are so many MMORPG’s in existence today but almost all of them follow the same basic principle. Leveling, grinding and raiding. It’s the MMORPG hook to get you addicted and feel like you have to keep ‘working’ to level your character and achieve some end game goal. I’m always imagining games that come out that could have been better – in my eyes – and keep thinking of ways to make them so.

One of my favorite games is actually an older one that we are all familiar with, either we’ve played it or we’ve heard about the horror story that was Star Wars Galaxies.  To me the game was revolutionary in some ways, mostly because it was my first MMO but also because it didn’t follow the mold most others follow.  Not to mention it was Star Wars, come on – who that is into computer games doesn’t enjoy them some Star Wars?  But perfection in that game, just like any other was in a galaxy far, far away.  If I were a game publisher and George Lucas gave me the keys to the Star Wars IP, this is where I would have taken it:

The Grind

I’m going to do a multi-part post here every few days about the different aspects of the game I have in mind but I’ll some it up here.  First there would be no grind in “Star Wars: The MMORPG”!  That’s right – the grind would be gone.  The original Star Wars Galaxies had some really good highlights, like the crafting system but in the end it was still a game of make 700 hydrospins before you could open the ability to build a blaster scope.  I made that up, but you get the idea.  No, none of that in my game.

In my MMORPG, the grind would be dealt with in a way to make leveling and getting new abilities fun.  How?  Well a very in-depth and well written mission system, that’s how.  This would work well for every ability, not just crafting.  To unlock abilities you would have to run a quest or chain of quests that dealt directly with the ability you were trying to unlock.

Let’s say you were a tailor and you wanted to be able to make a pilot’s flight suit for example.  You would start a quest in some fashion or another with the end goal of learning how to make the suit with a nice back story of a pilot in need of a new suit.  Once you complete the quest and turn in the suit to the pilot, you would now know how to make that same suit from now until dooms day.  Each individual item and ability in the game would have it’s own mission or quest associated with it.  Very time consuming to make such a game but very worth it in the player’s eyes.

Crafting

We’ve already covered the basics of how you would progress and get new crafting blueprints – but there are so many crafting trees in a game like SWG.  I liked that about the game and would use that same principle.  Everyone who wanted to be a crafter would start at some basic tinkerer level and progress from there along trees to becoming shipwrights, armorsmith, architects, etc. depending on what missions they took to advance.

There would be no direct choice to go down one tree or another – though the trees will be fairly well defined in the mission system so players didn’t blindly go down the wrong one.  Player’s would have a certain amount of blueprints or schematics of items they could learn how to make, giving the players unlimited options as to what kind of crafter they want to be.  Either you could max out in one or two trees, depending on balance issues when making the game or you could be a ‘jack of all traders – master of known’ kind of crafter.

Combat

There are two ways to do combat in a game such as this.  One is the traditional MMORPG style of click whatever ability and wait for your avatar to go through the motions.  That is still fun, kind of but to me it’s not as fun as the traditional FPS style of combat game-play.  However you can’t just have free-for-all FPS style in an MMORPG.  That would defeat the purpose of leveling if it were all skill based.  So what’s the solution?

I’d like to introduce a hybrid MMO-FPS style of game-play to combat – both on the ground and in the air/space.  Overall, combat would feel very much like an FPS – bullets or blaster bolts would go where you aim them, not so much based on the abilities of your character.  However there would be a slew of abilities and unlocks to make you better because your character knows them.

Examples would be a steady aim style of ability that keeps your crosshairs a little more still for those longer distance shots or a multi-shot ability you could pop once in awhile to put down a quick burst of fire down on your enemies, granted a probably not very accurate burst.  Depending on what combat tree you went down would unlock abilities inherant to that class along with the ability to unlock weapons and armor that the class of combatant can use.

Factions

With a few exceptions, most MMO’s take the two opposing faction approach.  I’ve always been one to support a third option for factions.  In a game like Star Wars, the factions are pretty well defined.  Everyone knows that there are going to be Rebel and Imperial factions, but for now in SWG the only other choice is neutral which is not a faction, it’s just the lack of one.

The developers talked and talked about putting in a third criminal or possibly Hutt faction to add some additional flavor to the game.  This would be a primary focus for my MMORPG.  Without variety and options the game would quickly grow stale.  Besides, three factions is a much better solution for checks and balances in a game such as this – where the galactic civil war is raging both the Imperials and the Rebels would have to keep the pirate’s in mind when making a big play for a planet.  It just adds more strategy and depth to the game.  Not to mention, who wouldn’t just love to be a space pirate?

Each faction would have their own starting planet and have to expand from there – fighting other factions for territory or claiming neutral territory as their own – then defending it.  A game such as this is not soley about combat however, so the different faction players would need to be able to have dealings with members of opposing factions, so a uniform system would be put into place.  If you are wearing your factions uniform, you are open to attack – if not, you are off duty and can neither attack or be attacked except for in certain wild areas.

Of course, players wouldn’t be able to just change uniforms on the fly – SWG had a pretty good system for becoming declared or flagged – I’d follow something pretty close to those lines for PvP and PvE in the game.

Quests

Everyone loves a good story – that’s the appeal to the grind in other MMORPG’s out there.  And in mine, of course there are going to be a ton of quests and missions to unlock abilities – but there needs to be more.  There must be a main story-line quest that players can participate in.  Each faction would have their own version of the greater story-line to participate in.  The story quests need to give players rewards of course to entice them to play along and would be an ever expanding quest – meaning no end, period.  

The quest will be well written into the future before release and you would only be able to go so far into the story each month before the next part of the quest became available.  The post-release dev team would keep adding to the story and to the rewards, as well as creating an in-game and on a website story board to describe what has been going on in the story.  Players would have the chance to affect the story in favor of their faction from month to month – the feeling of accomplishment is a powerful thing.

Miscellaneous

Of course the game would have a host of features at release.  The small things to me can be as big as anything else.  Mini-games, combat useable vehicles, customizable player housing, in-atmosphere and space flight and much, much more.  

Keep checking back here for updates and more details on everything you’ve read here.  I’d love to see your feedback, tell us what you’d like to see in your dream MMORPG!

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