Friday, December 12, 2008

An MMO Experience : WoW in Calimshan

I've occasionally think about MMORPGs to the extent of what would I change? What have I liked and what would I like but haven't seen yet? Since most of these ideas are asinine to the point of madness, I'll only share some of them. It seems a lot of people are wanting a strong PVP element to their games, unlike the very limited one in older games such as EverQuest. However what we currently have in the terms of player vs player are nothing but rip offs from First person shooters.

We have Capture the Flag, Region Control, and "Team Deathmatch". While these ideas seem, to some, unique due to their placement in a different genre they are not. In fact they're boring. If I wanted to play CTF I would load up a shooter. So HOW could PvP be done in an MMORPG such as World of Warcraft or EverQuest 2?

I'm going to borrow SOME from City of Villians. Let guilds establish a guild hall that is in-game. The construction would be financed by the guild coffers, as would general upkeep. However have it be more dynamic than it ever before. Once constructed and placed in a city, have the guild leader have to sit upon his "throne" where a series of menus would appear. Building new defenses, hiring NPC guards with warriors being cheapest and mages,clerics,archers being more expensive. You can even put traps or magical wards, but they all cost money.

Where would the guilds get this cash? These guilds can do it in a number of ways. One is to send out "parties" to dungeons or other cities and acquire it by questing, like the general adventuring we MMORPGers already do. The group would do their own thing, and the guild would acquire an reward depending on the difficulty of the instance. However any wipes would deduct from said amount.

But there would be other ways. Have the guilds, if they are more evil inclined, to demand protection money from the local populace. These would be areas guilds would have to control and protect. If a guild does so, it would provide a slow but steady flow of income. I would love to see a game that blurred the lines of interaction with NPCs. Many games make everything that isn't a player character non-existent in the form of activity and interaction. Have them talk, cry out for help, or talk about the recent actions of players if they were noteworthy.

But what about the good guys? Have them, after acquiring help from the local authorities "raid" the guild halls or to combat a nameless third faction that is basically against both groups. The third NPC faction would be the force that simply wants to destroy towns utterly. If a town is utterly destroyed, both good/evil forces could work to taking back what was left, and rebuilding.
Whomever restored the area would then be able to decide how the town was rebuilt.

I would love to see an MMORPG give players the ability to edit their surroundings with a powerful editor to let them make their own little chunk in the world. This idea is just one I personally think sounds good in my head, and there is a lot of factors I'm not listing here just because it would take way too long and probably bore you..if I haven't already.

If your wondering about the title, I was constantly thinking of Calimshan when I had this idea. If you have no idea what I'm talking about it is a city in the Forgotten Realms fantasy world*If you know who Drizzt Do'Urden is then more than likely you know about Calimshan*

Anyway, I've rambled on long enough =). If you have any MMORPG ideas for various elements or just your own complete MMORPG idea slap a comment on here.

2 comments:

  1. Well there is one game I think you've overlooked. Shadowbane is quite similar in what you're looking for. A guild can build their own city and everything. I've played it off and on for the last year or so and although my character really isn't high enough lvl to count for anything I've done a lot of exploring. The game itself is very PvP based but also, a guild can buy what's called a "Tree", (can't recall exact name), and plant it, from that will spring a small town that eventually gets larger. You can name it and everything. You get to decide how your city looks from the ground up. I've seen some that range from small hamlets to militarized metropolises with tons of npc's to boot. I say check it out as it's one of the many free ones...Well...Free to an extent. I think that you have to have had an account for some time. Not sure on that. I know when I made my account, the game was free up to the most current expansion, which you had to buy if you wanted to use it's features but other than that it was free. I still have that account and the last time I checked it was still free. I may look into it again later this weekend if I find the time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The way Shadowbane does it isn't exactly what I mean =)

    It is however a step in the right direction.

    ReplyDelete

The MMO Experience © 2008 Template by:
SkinCorner