Top 10 Favourite features from any MMO

[Lucas]

1) UO -  Seers and IGMs system for constant, dynamic and roleplaying in-game events;

2) UO - "World/Sandbox" feeling ;

3)UO - Skill based advancement ;

4) UO - PvP FFA system (Pre-Renaissance).


And in no particular order:

WoW - Interface modifications ;

Tabula Rasa - Combat System ;

WAR -  Tome of Knowledge ;

WoW - Perfect Quest System ;

WoW - loot tables balance ;

WoW - Newbie experience.

[Woody]

1.  SWG's player housing
2.  EVE's skill training system
3.  DAOC's pvp
4.  SWG's crafting system pre-CU
5.  WOW's polished quest system
6.  EVE's pvp system
7.  SWG's non-combat professions, pre-CU
8.  SWG's initial jedi system with death penalty
9.  SWG's open planet design, loved being able to go anywhere
10.  Anarchy Onlines instances

[Signe]

Anything that didn't involve human interaction, generally

Now that you're out of lurk mode, you're almost ready to interact.  It won't be long now! 

[Count Nerfedalot]

in no particular order:

Customizable/Configurable UI - EQ2, WoW

Appearance Tab - EQ2

Player editable in-game map - uuuuh, AC + ACExplorer is closest to decent I've seen so far.

Sidekicking/Mentoring - EQ2 (edited from CoH as I'm reminded how much better EQ2's is)

Auction/Consignment/Bazaar/whatever - EQ2 has the best I've seen so far

Post-creation Character appearance redesign - SWG, CoH, EQ2

All classes getting a teleport home spell - umm, was AC1 the first?

Ignore - OK, I think they all have it, but it was a really really important thing to have!

Faction system - EQ was best so far.  We don't have the tech to change the world, but at least it can react to us based on our actions.  WoW's faction is just a poorly disguised content cockblock with no gameworld meaning to it.

Multiple professions - FFXI (edit: honorable mention to SWG, but I REALLY hated having to forget stuff to learn new stuff, rather than just temporarily setting it aside somehow.  ESPECIALLY with the asinine single-character server limitation)

[Sir T]

Anything that didn't involve human interaction, generally

Now that you're out of lurk mode, you're almost ready to interact.  It won't be long now! 

Don't bet on it.

[Koyasha]

Post-creation Character appearance redesign - SWG, CoH, EQ2

EQ1 actually has/had the easiest post-creation appearance redesign, in that you were allowed to alter any alterable facet of your appearance without limit or cost at any time and any place (post-Luclin).  Admittedly, what was alterable wasn't that much, but you could definitely change it anywhere, anytime.

[Raph]

I find it interesting how many of these were in games prior to the ones cited. 

Weren't public quests in MUME in 1996?

[Rake]

AC2 - Runcasting - Pre Nerf. Made for some of the best action to date.
AC2 - Real Exploration No limits to where you could travel, with some imagination needed in places. And a beautiful world to do it in.
AC2 - KvK Like RvR, but you get to choose the faction you join not fixed by your starting area/race.
AC2 - Allegiances Some of your exp goes to your Liege, who has an incentive to help you out.
AC2 - Untraining This made your skill choices not so final and allows you to completely redo your character without losing your identity.
AC2 - Dyes Customizing your armour should be a standard feature in every MMO.
SWG - Single Character One server/One character. Very controversial, but defines your character, rather than having an army of forgettable alts.
SWG - Utter Confusion When you first enter the world, you had no clue what to do. Screw hand holding nub zones! Confusion ftw.
SWG - Sand Box World I missed the UO boat :( but freedom rocks
TR - NPC's don't appear out of nowhere In TR they come in drop ships (complete with AI too). Hate how we are supposed to swallow that mobs just miraculously reappear, especially when you have to clear the area to get to something, and they just respawn on your fucking back.

Many of these appeared in earlier games and aren't limited to just these games, but these were just a few of the many points I wanted to list and I wanted to have a few AC2 points for all those who love to hate the game 

[Tale]

I find it interesting how many of these were in games prior to the ones cited. 

Weren't public quests in MUME in 1996?

The internet tells me Age of Conan has totally ripped off WoW's ideas. Blizzard should sue all the companies making MMOGs.

So I am sure nothing happened in MMOG history until I played one.

[Kail]

I don't claim omniscience, they may have shown up in earlier games... these are just the first games I played which I recall these features showing up in:

EVE - Offline skill advancement
EVE - Skill based advancement (as opposed to level based advancement)
EVE - Entire "universe" accessible to any player (not divided up into shards or servers or whatever)
Guild Wars - Hireable NPC Henchmen
Guild Wars - Ability to take a subclass
Warcraft - Large instanced battlegrounds (AV)
Warcraft - Consistent, compitent artistic direction
Warcraft - Runs well on old computers
Lineage - Only played it briefly, but IIRC, there was an actual class for guild leaders ("Noble" or something) which was an idea I liked

Nothing else springs to mind...

[Merusk]

I find it interesting how many of these were in games prior to the ones cited. 

Weren't public quests in MUME in 1996?

Folks can only reference their experience. We're not games historians, we're gamers.  Those who work in the field may need such an in-depth knowledge, but I'd rather focus on things relevant to my career if I have to spend time learning minutiae.

  There's also the chance that while we know something existed in other games, the specific implementation referenced was seen as better than prior or latter experiences. e.g. When I referenced WoW's Raid design but EQ's dungeon design.

[WindupAtheist]

Since we all know every other person playing UO quit when Trammel came out, leaving only me and one Japanese guy with 200k accounts, I'll point out that while the Age of Shadows expansion was generally shit looking back, the customization of housing it added was le awesome.  Yes, there was still too much urban sprawl, but that was just a matter of world design and the fact that they expected like 300 players per shard when they were first building it.  The house construction itself is the best there is in any MMO, even today.

[Kirth]

The achievement/Title system in LOTR is something I thought was cool. (Hoping WAR's tome of knowledge is something like it but more).

The Directed play/Questing from WoW, I don't care if other games did it or whatever. I came from EQ1 where my leveling as a ranger consisted of fear kiting Zelnaks in Dawnshroud peaks for 30 levels , and some grouping. So when I played WoW for the first time the way they  hid the grind was one of the things that initially clicked with me. Yes it was alot of Kill x Collect Y but it progressed you thru an area and opened up exploration and in some cases gave you tibits of lore (Difias etc..) and broke down your play into little sub-goals.

The AA Systems from EQ1, now this one may seem like a strange choice but I like that the more you play one character the 'better' that one character becomes. This fits in with my dislike of playing alts in these games, I tend to only focus on one character and develop that one best I can. I haven't since experienced something similar to EQ1's AA that felt the same.

[LC]

Since we all know every other person playing UO quit when Trammel came out, leaving only me and one Japanese guy with 200k accounts, I'll point out that while the Age of Shadows expansion was generally shit looking back, the customization of housing it added was le awesome.  Yes, there was still too much urban sprawl, but that was just a matter of world design and the fact that they expected like 300 players per shard when they were first building it.  The house construction itself is the best there is in any MMO, even today.

Housing was fine until they made it totally secure. I could go out and place a new house any day of the week.

Here is my list:

1. Housing in UO before the lock changing patch.
2. Thieves in UO before they got nerfed.
3. Sandbox UO/EVE world.
4. Player Justice/Policing in UO.
5. Dyeing of items in UO.
6. Skill system from UO.
7. Ability to take a group of 3 guys, and kill a group of 15 guys in UO/AC.
8. Smaller guilds in UO. (I hate being forced into a huge organization full of people I don't know in order to accomplish anything.)
9. City building in Shadowbane.
10. The melee and ranged combat from AoC merged with spellcasting in AC1.

(These are not really in order.)

[Murgos]

1. The unsubscribe button of UO.
2. The unsubscribe button of EQ1.
3. The unsubscribe button of Shadowbane.
4. The unsubscribe button of DAoC.
5. The unsubscribe button of AC1.
6. The unsubscribe button of LotRO.
7. The unsubscribe button of AC2.
8. The unsubscribe button of CoH.
9. The unsubscribe button of WoW.
10. The unsubscribe button of AoC.

This post brought to you by the non-functioning armor and attributes, the pointless guild cities and the unitemized world of Age of Conan.   

[eldaec]

Daoc RvR
SWG Resource Gathering
EVE markets & crafting
EVE skill advancement
CoH character design
CoH support character archetypes
CoH pve battle mechanics
CoH sidekicking
CoH, Daoc, or EQ2 LFG tool
Vanguard forum drama

[Threash]

1) AoC combat - every game i play from now on needs this or i wont play it

2) shadowbane char creation - i NEED another game were you have to alocate stats plus all the different runes you had to choose from, every single character was truly unique.  Fuck the current pick a race/class/gender/face system of every game since then.

3) WoW tournament realm - this saved the game for tons of people who were ready to bail for the first thing to come along, being able to make 3 max level chars of any race/class and have the same gear as everyone else for 20 bucks = win.  The fact that it was season 2/tier 5 before melee dmg got way out of hand is another plus

4) WoW customizable UI

5) WoW BC endgame - yes i liked it, shut it.

6) EQ zone design - nothing since then has been as lovingly crafted

7) AO housing - i dont actually know how it compares to other games since its the only game ive played with housing besides lotro, but i loved having my own place at level 1 it makes a lot more sense than being a world saving homeless bum until you are rich enough to afford a cottage like in lotro

8) lotro deed/accomplishment system - very addicting

9) shadowbane freedom in character development -  "gimp as a dagger dwarf" was an insult one month and a fotm the next, a friend played a dual wielding dagger throwing elven mage that relied on procs that WORKED incredibly well, the amount of customization and freedom to make your char exactly what you wanted is unmatched in any game so far, the fact that you could end up with really fucked up beyond redemption chars was mitigated by the extremely fast leveling so experimentation wasnt punished.

10) Does NWN count if we played in persistent realms? cause i really fucking love multiclassing.

[Oban]

1: The ability to pick and choose skills and professions with a point based system without having to create a new character. (Pre-NGE SWG)
2: The art and graphic design of the Final Fantasy universe.  (FFXI)
3: Loot pinatas. (Hellgate:London)
4: Five man dungeons that could be completed without the traditional holy trio of tank, damage dealer and healer (Pre-TBC WoW)
5: The ability to stealth in to a dungeon or quest area to complete a task without actually killing anything. (WoW and DDO)
6: Amazing travel powers that alter gameplay in and out of combat. (CoH and CoV)
7: New abilities that altered gameplay dramatically and came at a reasonable pace (The first twenty levels of CoH during a double experience weekend)
8: Real character customization (CoH) and the ability to colour armour / alter appearance (Guild Wars, SWG, UO)
9: Social dynamics combined with cutting edge AAA gameplay that elevate simple play to a new level (F13.net Forum - MMOG Discussion - numerous topics)
10: Being able to stop playing or get up to go to the bathroom without having four to thirty-nine people you have never met before hate you. (Any MMO that allows solo play as a viable method of advancement:  WoW after patch 2.4, CoH, CoV, Guild Wars, SWG, HG:L and F13)

[Wershlak]

Sidekick/Mentoring system - CoX/EQ2 - seriously there is no excuse not to have this. We like playing with our friends
UI - EQ2 - Completely customizable out of the box. No need to download/install addons
Job System - FFXI - Feel like messing around with an alt? start a new job
WoW - balance of instanced VS non-instanced content.
UO - No Levels. Please someone try this again.
Combat system - DDO - collision detection, click to swing combat, active blocking.
Guilds - EQ2 - guild exp (I'd rather level my guild than me) - guild banks, fully customizable permissions/ranks
Group resource gathering - Vanguard
Taunt/deaggro abiliies in EQ2 actually did something in PvP. Imagine that!
Monster play - LOTRO

[Raph]

I find it interesting how many of these were in games prior to the ones cited. 

Weren't public quests in MUME in 1996?

Folks can only reference their experience. We're not games historians, we're gamers.  Those who work in the field may need such an in-depth knowledge, but I'd rather focus on things relevant to my career if I have to spend time learning minutiae.

  There's also the chance that while we know something existed in other games, the specific implementation referenced was seen as better than prior or latter experiences. e.g. When I referenced WoW's Raid design but EQ's dungeon design.

Yah, I know. It's just interesting to see how recent so many of the references are.

[lamaros]

Yah, I know. It's just interesting to see how recent so many of the references are.

Generally speaking if it's been done more than once the one that did it later did it better. The fact that there are older games on the lists should be an indictment of recent MMOs for not picking up on the good stuff and/or and making it even better.

[eldaec]

Yah, I know. It's just interesting to see how recent so many of the references are.

It's it is worth remembering that the last successful MMOGs to launch (excluding AoC as it is so recent) were the EQ2/CoH/WoW generation, and even these were years ago. Not much is very recent in this genre.

And while mentioning MUDs like MUME is all very worthy, translating it across to what people would recognise as a modern MMOG is non-trivial. Espeicially for something like public quests, where the impact of the system varies wildly depending on the context and presentation of the quest.

The sleeper was a public quest. For obvious reasons you won't see that on anyone's list.

[tmp]

Yah, I know. It's just interesting to see how recent so many of the references are.

My 'net connection in 1996 consisted of 14.4 kbit modem, charged by the minute. Through the nose. While the interwebs extend beyond the soil of U.S, the infrastructure can take its sweet time there to develop.

I did see a few people play MUDs around that time perusing the university network, but frankly they never caught my interest. Watching combat numbers scroll by as some guy repeatedly whacked some generic foozles and very little else happen ... tbh i still can't help but sigh when i see the "combat log" in yet another new MMOs, it's like the devs are so firmly trapped in the text-based origins, it never occurs to them to just do away with it. Or with most of the text feedback that's pretty obsolete at this point, for that matter.

[Zombie]

UO : Skill based instead of lvl/class based
UO : Housing
UO : The travel systems. Moongates, gate/recall and later on runebooks (made travelling quick easy, and its still felt like a world without wasting huge amounts of time getting anywhere)
DAOC : Siege and rvr (Large scale pvp)
DAOC : PvP ranks
DAOC/WOW : battlegrounds (Quick and fun pvp)
WOW : Nice stylised graphics even on low end computers
WOW : Auction house (hoping AoC just steals this as the trader is near useless, and the wow auction house + auctioneer is near perfect for selling/buying)
WOW : Addons/Customisable ui 
AOC : melee combat system

[Merusk]

Yah, I know. It's just interesting to see how recent so many of the references are.

My 'net connection in 1996 consisted of 14.4 kbit modem, charged by the minute. Through the nose. While the interwebs extend beyond the soil of U.S, the infrastructure can take its sweet time there to develop.

I did see a few people play MUDs around that time perusing the university network, but frankly they never caught my interest. Watching combat numbers scroll by as some guy repeatedly whacked some generic foozles and very little else happen ... tbh i still can't help but sigh when i see the "combat log" in yet another new MMOs, it's like the devs are so firmly trapped in the text-based origins, it never occurs to them to just do away with it. Or with most of the text feedback that's pretty obsolete at this point, for that matter.

Text logs, like Dice rolls in P&P games are there for the min-maxers and to make sure things are working right. You can close the windows if you so choose.

[tmp]

Text logs, like Dice rolls in P&P games are there for the min-maxers and to make sure things are working right. You can close the windows if you so choose.

I do close these windows. I just don't see the point in the first place, of getting million lines how "You loot 30 copper" when i *see* that happen on the screen and the amount of money my character has is updated to reflect that. Or how i "Gain agility buff" or whatever shit, when that buff appears in the visual list of buffs that affect my character at the moment. Or that i hit a kobold for 15 points of damage when that number also appears right above that kobold *and* their hp bar updates to boot. Or that i craft an useless_sword_01 when said sword appears in my inventory after the crafting process is done. Etc and so on. The game already lets me verify if things are working right, and that text that used to be necessary because there was no other way to convey that info before... is truly redundant now. It mostly just shows how the devs see their own game -- the same old excel sheet, now with GUI.

And the min-maxers? Frankly, fuck them and their number fetish. Do catering to their needs really make these games any more entertaining? I ask because i don't recall _lack_ of explicit damage/dps tooltips ever have impact on amount of fun derived from any other genre...

[Amarr HM]

I am going to put forward what I like about Eve cause it's the only MMO I have ever played.

* Timebased skill advancement.
* PvP still gives me the handshakes.
* Fleet warps are so cool.
* Frigate club (a bunch of peepsutilizing noob skills to take down vets proving team spirit wins)
* Daily drama posts.

[schild]

* Daily drama posts.

Every single game ever made since the advent of newsgroups ARPANET has had this.

[Lucas]

My 'net connection in 1996 consisted of 14.4 kbit modem, charged by the minute. Through the nose. While the interwebs extend beyond the soil of U.S, the infrastructure can take its sweet time there to develop.

I can echo that: I first connected myself to the Matrix Internet in January 1995; here in Italy, that was basically the early early paleolithic :P (talk of "Usenet", "Telnet" and similar stuff only started to appear in italian gaming and specialized magazines about two or max. three years before)

[Endie]

My 'net connection in 1996 consisted of 14.4 kbit modem, charged by the minute. Through the nose. While the interwebs extend beyond the soil of U.S, the infrastructure can take its sweet time there to develop.

I can echo that: I first connected myself to the Matrix Internet in January 1995; here in Italy, that was basically the early early paleolithic :P (talk of "Usenet", "Telnet" and similar stuff only started to appear in italian gaming and specialized magazines about two or max. three years before)

When I were young this were all fields.

Actually, acoustic couplers.  If someone walked across the room I'd get nonsense on the screen.  And Compuserve redefined paying through the nose to play a game.  I knew people that straight out, no shit, here's-the-bailiffs bankrupted themselves.  Prestel and Micronet, as well as BBs running some crude multiplayer stuff, were much better value.

[photek]

I also joined the Internet on my 57.600 baud modem around 95-96, and I never forget downloading C++ (13.XMB) file for several hours, when I payed per minute. If you remember, when somebody picked up the phone, internet went poof, so at 92% my mom picked up the phone. Needless to say I was... disappointed  . At least I got it though and was the local guru at school for programming from there on. At 10-11 years old. What can I say, I got pong when I was 3 years old, it was only going one way from there 

[Endie]

I also joined the Internet on my 57.600 baud modem around 95-96

1200/75 crew represent.

Yes, that is 75 baud ("bps" in your fancy-pants lingo) upstream.

[photek]

1200/75 crew represent.

Yes, that is 75 baud ("bps" in your fancy-pants lingo) upstream.

Bet you could get like 7kbps with that ? Nerf !

[Numtini]

My first modem was a Radio Shack 300 baud manual direct connect--non-accoustic, but you dialed from a phone then flipped a switch on the modem when you heard the tone, then hung up the phone. I used it with a CoCo2.

There were a bunch of games on the Cyber at U-Mass, but I mostly used it for chatting in CONFER and occasionally trying!to!send!gateway.athena.mit!email that never really worked.

[eldaec]

When I started on the internet we had to shout ones and zeros down the telephone manually.

And by telephone, I mean an empty baked bean tin and a piece of string.



Strange thing was, most webpages just said 'checksum error'.