Top 10 Favourite features from any MMO

[photek]

[Venkman]

lol.

I started on BBS's at 400bps. That was back when you cracked Apple //e programs in assembly code. And people bitched just as much then about it.

There was no internet, no email, this was in the days when media started advertising "fax", the mouse was a relatively new invention, I was still impressed with my "80 column card" and I used a TV to play Ultima II in color.

Somebody I'm sure will fact check all this shit, say some nonsense about "400bps was only available in year XXXX". This all lumps together for me.

Yea. I gots yer old right here buddy

[Koyasha]

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...

Considering how many times players have pointed out how the devs that think they know how their game works are actually wrong through testing and running the numbers, it does make the games better, for everyone, including people that don't pay attention.  If devs think the game is working one way and it's actually working differently in practice, then they're going to keep balancing and making changes based on what they think is happening.  Or they'll have to spend a considerable amount of time and expense figuring out exactly where the problem is between what they think is going on and what they observe happening in practice.  Either way, the data the players with access to this information come up with is helpful.

And all those things you mentioned don't give exact data, can't be recorded in logs, and are hard to correlate outside of game.  If I want to know how much money the average orc pawn gives me, I need to kill a huge number of them, then average out the money obtained.  Getting that average becomes infinitely harder if you don't have a log entry saying 'you have slain an Orc Pawn' then a moment later the 'you loot 22 copper'.  All that data goes into the player guides and forum posts that say if you want to make money fast, farm these mobs or do this quest, cause it's the best use of your time, that the average guy uses to reduce the amount of time he has to spend grinding to get whatever it is he wants.

In the end there's very little good reason to obfuscate this data.  Maybe make it not appear by default, something you can only access if you specifically turn it on, but the claims that not having numbers and such available increases immersion are silly.  The people who don't care about the numbers won't care about them, and the people that do care will be frustrated by the lack of information presented to them, they won't magically forget that they're actually playing a computer game with calculations going on behind the graphics.

[Endie]

Somebody I'm sure will fact check all this shit, say some nonsense about "400bps was only available in year XXXX". This all lumps together for me.

Yea. I gots yer old right here buddy

Yep.  I can say I got my first modem in 1983, but I dunno how fast that one was, and I'm not about to guess and get the picky bastard brigade on me 

[Phred]

Somebody I'm sure will fact check all this shit, say some nonsense about "400bps was only available in year XXXX". This all lumps together for me.

Yea. I gots yer old right here buddy

Yep.  I can say I got my first modem in 1983, but I dunno how fast that one was, and I'm not about to guess and get the picky bastard brigade on me 

I think, however, he's misremembering the speed unless Apple had their own proprietary modem protocol. My memories of the early days of BBS'ing was that there were 300 baud modems and the next upgrade was 1200baud. I think originally there were 75baud modems as well but if there were they had vanished by the time I got my first computer.

[Endie]

I think originally there were 75baud modems as well but if there were they had vanished by the time I got my first computer.

There were certainly 75 baud upstream ones, like the one I was remembering, but that was the upstream speed.  I think you're right that 300 was the earliest standard I can remember using, at any rate.  i can't remember whether that varied down/upstream.  i do remember 40-colum text pages filling up in lines oh God what am I doing I have become my father... 

[K9]

4) Scrolling combat text from WoW (or whever WoW ripped it off from).

[Venkman]

I think originally there were 75baud modems as well but if there were they had vanished by the time I got my first computer.

There were certainly 75 baud upstream ones, like the one I was remembering, but that was the upstream speed.  I think you're right that 300 was the earliest standard I can remember using, at any rate.  i can't remember whether that varied down/upstream.  i do remember 40-colum text pages filling up in lines oh God what am I doing I have become my father... 

Hmm, maybe it was 300 then. I did have a 1200, then a 14.4, then a 28.8 and 56k (X2 if I recall, with the other option being k56flex or something like that).

We're packing to move and I just found a TV older than probably everyone here  It's certainly older than the Internet at least.

[tmp]

Considering how many times players have pointed out how the devs that think they know how their game works are actually wrong through testing and running the numbers, it does make the games better, for everyone, including people that don't pay attention.

OK, i'll concede it can help to fix the bugs when the game is broken PoS and when some people bother to play QA for the company they pay their money. In theory though, this shouldn't be necessary, should it? That part about the devs otherwise spending time and expense to verify the game behaviour, that should be the natural and expected course of things, instead.

And all those things you mentioned don't give exact data, can't be recorded in logs, and are hard to correlate outside of game.

Yes; which in a way is the point. The examples you give why one would _want_ to correlate the data outside of game, are all about stripping the game experience and turning everything into neat set of numbers for one and single purpose: to minimize one's time spend on the "suck": the grind, the farming, the shit people apparently don't enjoy doing.

And personally, i see this need for combat log you cite as good example just how broken these games are on the basic level. And i'd much rather see the devs focus on re-designing the gameplay in way that allows to do away with both these sucky parts *and* then the log -- so people don't need to play with the excel sheets  to figure out how to minimize the time they spend in game like it's some sort of chore and a second job, but so they rather instead you know, enjoy just playing the damn thing.

In the end there's very little good reason to obfuscate this data.

With the amount of visual feedback provided at the same time there's very little reason to expose the lot of it, either -- as long as they narrow down to "because i need to know what parts of your game are broken, and i need to figure out the best ways to play it the least".

The people who don't care about the numbers won't care about them, and the people that do care will be frustrated by the lack of information presented to them, they won't magically forget that they're actually playing a computer game with calculations going on behind the graphics.

Honest question now -- if these number crunching people get frustrated... so what. Do you consider these games are actually better off pandering to needs of people who aren't ever able to forget it's just small numbers running behind the pretty visuals?

And taking it from another angle... those latter people, do you think they take the same approach to other game genres? Say, when they play FPS that often come with as many guns as there's weapons available to end-level MMO character, but doesn't actually list the damage numbers for them. Or when they play a beat-em-up game, that doesn't show numbers for any of the multiple attacks available, just chunks of hp bar going away under hits. Or RTS that takes the same approach to the damage/firepower feedback ... when they play all these other games, do they get extremely frustrated because all they see really just the little numbers being added and substracted behind the visuals? Or do they still enjoy plain experience of shooting another player's character in the face, even though it's just pixels on screen and no matter if that gun they used deals 75 or maybe 77 points of damage..?

Because if the answer is "yes" to that last one, then it raises question what is it about MMOs that breaks this immersion other genres can provide.

[Venkman]

Do you consider these games are actually better off pandering to needs of people who aren't ever able to forget it's just small numbers running behind the pretty visuals?
...
Do catering to their needs really make these games any more entertaining?

Yes. Log parsing by thousands of players is a check against the assumptions of a few dozen developers. You need this because the latter group will never have as many cumulative man hours logged in actually playing as the former.

I don't need them. Most games I'm watching the HP bar against my own and the buffs. But why not have the logs for the parsers. It's about options. And while that is a small crowd, there's a lot of different small crowds of players as relevant to the overall game in their own way. The best games have diverse players.

[tmp]

Yes. Log parsing by thousands of players is a check against the assumptions of a few dozen developers. You need this because the latter group will never have as many cumulative man hours logged in actually playing as the former.

That's bug tracking though, while i asked about entertainment. And no, i don't necessarily draw the equal sign between these two, given lot of stuff people cite as 'the most fun i ever had in mmo X' are actually results of imbalance, exploits, bugs or other abuse of broken mechanics.

In another way -- would adding the text log to FPS game make that FPS more fun? Or adding it to GTA? Or to Tekken? Mario? Harvest Moon? Need For Speed? MGS? If all these games can do well without it... why are the MMOs clinging to this crutch from the ancient times when the text feedback was simply the only source of feedback available? I just wonder if this apparent inability to part with the outdated roots isn't holding the genre back in a way... i.e. it's not about the presence of explicit logs per se, but rather if they aren't (one of) results of devs being stuck in the same old mindset of zones, mobs and 'you hit the foozle, the foozle hits you'. Where the basics are never questioned because 'it's been always done this way'.

But why not have the logs for the parsers.

Dunno; but maybe so the devs can't subconsciously rely on them as excuse why their games still can be shipped chock-full of bugs and filled with grindy suck, for the players to sort out on their own with the help of parsers..? And the diversity of playerbase is fine, but when part of your playerbase finds it more interesting to drag the text output of your game through excel sheet, so they can figure out the best ways to skip the most of it and how to spend the least time playing it... then what does it really say about your game?

[UnSub]

In another way -- would adding the text log to FPS game make that FPS more fun?

I remember reading through combat logs of Quake II and Counter-Strike to see who's been killing me and with what.

Text logs should be in MMOs, but you should be perfectly free to turn them off. I don't see what having them for those people who prefer to get their info through this way to use them.

CoH/V hid the numbers (not combat text, but a lot of things) for a long time. What happened? The players reverse engineered the data to get at the numbers to work out how the powers functioned. So it's less about the game than the players who choose to use it in that way.

[Venkman]

That's bug tracking though, while i asked about entertainment.

Good point.

In another way -- would adding the text log to FPS game make that FPS more fun?

No. Because your gear does not define your performance. There is a number of stats that ARE tracked for Clans, but MMOs are a different scope altogether.

You are your gear and stats in an MMO, and you're on a path of constant improvement. Over time, your improvement goes from being measured in double digits to single digits to decimals to infinitesimals. Log parsing becomes necessary for those folks who are seeking validation for their investments. Basically, ongoing research to answer "was it worth it". This isn't how everyone measures "fun". But I'd argue it's as fun for them as it is for others who receive salutes from guards in NPC settlements of EQ2 and LoTRO after performing certain grinds/actions. The effort by the devs is about the same. These games are all stats anyway, so why not show them? (and as to the guards, the emotes and stats were all there anyway, why not add a foozle for immersion?).

[Phred]

Yes; which in a way is the point. The examples you give why one would _want_ to correlate the data outside of game, are all about stripping the game experience and turning everything into neat set of numbers for one and single purpose: to minimize one's time spend on the "suck": the grind, the farming, the shit people apparently don't enjoy doing.

And personally, i see this need for combat log you cite as good example just how broken these games are on the basic level. And i'd much rather see the devs focus on re-designing the gameplay in way that allows to do away with both these sucky parts *and* then the log -- so people don't need to play with the excel sheets  to figure out how to minimize the time they spend in game like it's some sort of chore and a second job, but so they rather instead you know, enjoy just playing the damn thing.

I'm having a hard time remembering a recent game that didn't allow you to turn off dmg notices, even to the point of not showing the window at all in some cases. Why do you so feel the need to take it away from everyone else rather than just turning if off for yourself?

[Rendakor]

I for one enjoy reading the combat text. I started online gaming in MUDs, so it's slightly nostalgic. Because of that background, I instinctually pay at least as much attention to the combat log as the "visual cues" that you think are all we should watch. I do dislike games without visible numbers honestly. I don't play FPS games; in racing games I like seeing a high MPH number (as opposed to just a needle or gague with no number); I like seeing the damage my units do in an RTS; I'm a number crunching munchkin in D&D; etc.

Am I broken? Maybe. But don't try to take away my fun when it doesn't get in the way of yours.

[Nerf]

a lot of stuff people cite as 'the most fun i ever had in mmo X' are actually results of imbalance, exploits, bugs or other abuse of broken mechanics.

That should really be a fucking lesson to any developers out there, one of the reasons I'm having so much fun in AoC is because I feel so overpowered, even though I'm on par with quite a few other classes.

Sometimes you just want to fucking Brock Samson it up, not single pull until you're nearly dead and wait for your 3min cooldowns to refresh.

[Rendakor]

a lot of stuff people cite as 'the most fun i ever had in mmo X' are actually results of imbalance, exploits, bugs or other abuse of broken mechanics.

That should really be a fucking lesson to any developers out there, one of the reasons I'm having so much fun in AoC is because I feel so overpowered, even though I'm on par with quite a few other classes.

Sometimes you just want to fucking Brock Samson it up, not single pull until you're nearly dead and wait for your 3min cooldowns to refresh.

QFT. This is what made pre-ED CoH so fun. Now its more "balanced" but much less fun. Running in with my defender, hitting Fulcrum Shift then unleashing Psychic wail to drop an entire pack of mobs, bosses included, was awesome.

[Lucas]

Sometimes you just want to fucking Brock Samson it up, not single pull until you're nearly dead and wait for your 3min cooldowns to refresh.

I very much agree: that's why, in my opinion, AoC and Tabula Rasa have the best combat systems out there (yeah, ok, beside the other flaws the latter has, even tho I'm enjoying it). You can take on multiple enemies and make a mess of them with lots of blasts and blood and fast pace going on. Pure fun :)

[Slayerik]

1. Full loot FFA PVP - UO
2. Skill Based Advancement - UO
3. Player Housing - UO
4. Massive Battles - Planetside
5. Interactive Combat - AoC
6. Music System - LOTRO
7. Outpost Battle (endgame PVP) - Neocron
8. Market - EvE
9. Time based advancement - EvE
10. System Security Levels - EvE


Honorable Mentions...

11. AoC Quest Refinement , WoW Quest implementation
12. City Building / Sieges (Shadowbane/AoC)
13. Well done PVE Endgame/Raiding - WoW
14. Neocron Implant System


The strange part is ...I found myself trying to come up with something to put WoW in the top ten systems. Just additional proof that they innovated very little, and polished everyone elses existing systems.

[Bunk]

With all the talk of combat logs, I'll chip in and say that I hate it when a game doesn't give me numerical feedback as to what is going on. Big pet peave with AoC right now is the lack of numbers. Maybe it means I'm anal, but it really pisses me off that there is no way to know what is more effective - a dagger with + 0.6 fire damage, or a dagger with +1 dex, short of parsing a few thousand combat logs.

Give me WoW's detailed dps screens. Even if the game is about the story and questing for me, if a game has loot, I want some damn way of knowing which piece of loot is actually better.

[Signe]

Honorable Mentions...

11. AoC Quest Refinement , WoW Quest implementation
12. City Building / Sieges (Shadowbane/AoC)
13. Well done PVE Endgame/Raiding - WoW
14. Neocron Implant System


The strange part is ...I found myself trying to come up with something to put WoW in the top ten systems. Just additional proof that they innovated very little, and polished everyone elses existing systems.

Have you been in an AoC siege yet?  Just curious.  And for WoW, they have the best auction house ever.  I love their auction house.  I think I might have played Auction House more than any other bit of the game.


(Edit: words confuse me)

[Slayerik]

Ah yes, thanks...that one deserves mention absolutely.

The AoC thing was for city building , the sieges was more Shadowbane but I like the idea of it :)

[Tmon]

I don't have 10 that I can think of, but my all time number one feature from any MMO was the UO skill system.  It meant that even though I played for two years off and on from launch and never had a 7X GM anything I could still hang out with my friends and go do stuff with them without having to worry about keeping up on the level treadmill.

[Signe]

I like sieges, too.  I even tried playing Lineage 2 but the grind to get to the sieges was too intense.  I played Lineage 1 for ages because of the sieges, and finally left because I deleveled at level 50 and just couldn't do it again.  It would have taken months!  (Well, I had a thing about the Ant Caves and B-teles, too)  Sieges are so much more satisfying than raids.

[Nerf]

1. AC1's classless skill system, anyone can be anything they want if they've got the points to buy the skill.
2. Missile and magic tracking in AC1, dodging spells and arrows was 
3. AC1's Spell experimentation learning system (without splitpea)
4. Genocide's regulator/dev system, once you hit max level you got a dev character and could make content which went before the real devs for review and possible entry to the game.  (MUDs are MMOs, rite?  )
5. SWG's crafting quality disparity, people going to certain crafters because they knew that person made the best stuff.
6. AoC's voiceovers & destiny quest (1-20)
7. AoC's active combat system, Vanguard was a step in the right direction with combos and reactions, but this just blows it out of the water.
8. Eve's offline training, needs to have a bonus for actually playing the game though, use-based skill leveling would be my choice.
9. Suicide ganking for lulz and loots in Eve
10. World-changing quests and monthly events in AC1.

Seriously, what the fuck Turbine?  I know one of you pricks is reading this shit, hopefully furiously scribbling notes, but what the fuck happened to you guys?
AC3, it's all I want in life, just reskin AC1 with LOTRO graphics, call it AC3 and charge me $50, I promise right now I'll buy 3 copies.

[Hoax]

Things I like:
-Games where effort is made to keep the gameworld consistent, like a world, like McQuaid always was on about.  Fuck instancing unless you've created a convincing reason for what is going on.
-Games that focus their attention on facilitating player competition, through combat or other means.  The less I'm supposed to be amused by fighting "AI" the better.
-Games that allow for multiple playstyles.  Strictly-combat, non-combat, the more variety in the types of gameplay and the way to "grow" your character(s) the better.
-Games that work at launch
-Games that don't have target + hotkey combat
-Games where the players create the gameworld's story, instead of their being no meaningful story
-Games with one server

I'm out of easy ideas.

[Draegan]

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

Weren't public quests in MUME in 1996?

But why would you play MUME voluntarily?

Edit:
And in that vain, you can't really mention EQ without mentioning SojournMUD first.  Then whatever muds prior to that.

How about "keying" to access areas.  Ho-Ho!  Not EQ!  Try mutha fuckin Tele-Arena and my green rune.  It's all relative though.

[Koyasha]

Honest question now -- if these number crunching people get frustrated... so what. Do you consider these games are actually better off pandering to needs of people who aren't ever able to forget it's just small numbers running behind the pretty visuals?

The calculations and numbers are all there, it probably takes less time to add a combat log than it does to do any one of a dozen other things that needs to be done to make a game.  Minimal effort, makes a segment of the customer base happy, AND that segment of the customer base both assists in testing and indirectly makes other segments of the customer base happy by providing complex information and guides?  I cannot think of a single downside to this, unless it's 'covering up the fact that we ever make mistakes'.

And taking it from another angle... those latter people, do you think they take the same approach to other game genres? Say, when they play FPS that often come with as many guns as there's weapons available to end-level MMO character, but doesn't actually list the damage numbers for them. Or when they play a beat-em-up game, that doesn't show numbers for any of the multiple attacks available, just chunks of hp bar going away under hits. Or RTS that takes the same approach to the damage/firepower feedback ... when they play all these other games, do they get extremely frustrated because all they see really just the little numbers being added and substracted behind the visuals? Or do they still enjoy plain experience of shooting another player's character in the face, even though it's just pixels on screen and no matter if that gun they used deals 75 or maybe 77 points of damage..?

Because if the answer is "yes" to that last one, then it raises question what is it about MMOs that breaks this immersion other genres can provide.

Depends on the game and how relevant that information is to victory, defeat, or advancement.  Like Darniaq said, these games are more about equipment and stats than other things.  A considerable part of player input is designing their character with the right abilities, equipment, sequence of combat, and so on to maximize effectiveness.  This is part of the skill of MMO's.  Furthermore, the differences between one piece of equipment and another are often difficult to gauge.

I have heard players of fighting games talking about how many pixels of damage Ryu's hadoken does, for example.  If the numbers aren't there, and the information is relevant, people look for exact measurements of some kind to determine relevant information.  Mario, on the other hand, has no numbers of that nature.  You jump on a goomba and it dies.  Some enemies take several attacks, but it's always the same number of attacks.  It's not a bag of hit points and each of your attacks does a different number of hit points of damage, not to mention their resistances and defenses can alter that, with different situations causing even further differences in the effectiveness of each attack.  FPS's often don't have this (although some do) in that they usually have a number of different weapons, each with a different purpose.  It's things other than the sheer amount of damage a weapon does that define them.  You can't get a headshot with a lightning gun in Unreal Tournament when the enemy's around a corner, but you can bounce flak off a wall or hit them with a shock combo, and which one of those you do doesn't typically depend on which does more damage, but other circumstances.  Even so I've seen combat logs from FPS's and so on.  You think people don't analyze this in an RTS, for example?

A Battlecruiser could take 167 shots from a Marine. A Carrier could take 175. However, the Carriers shields would only stop 25 shots, compared to its armor handling the other 150. The shields appear practically worthless. It would have been far better to allow for the Carriers more elegant appearance and give it an armor rating of 3, along with a shield rating of 3. Then perhaps a 250 health point, 250 shield point split would have represented the unit more accurately. As it was, an EMP was of minimal usefulness and an entire principal facet of the Protoss concept was marginalized.

If there is something to analyze, it will be analyzed.  Making it harder to do so is not a good thing.

[Slyfeind]

1. Freedom to choose our own niche, even things the devs didn't imagine; SWG, UO
2. The Lord of the Flies free for all in ATITD, except we couldn't actually beat each other up but find other ways to cause trouble...then get ourselves out of it
3. Non-zoning world of AC1
4. Loot of AC1
5. The mythos behind EQ1's world; the stuff pertaining to the gameplay
6. Unlimited, instant character transfers across servers; Tabula Rasa
7. Flying a transport in Planetside
8. Seeing Norrath looming in the skies of Luclin
9. Consolation prizes in WOW's PvP. Even if you suck, you still feel awesome doing it.
10. WoW's auction house

[WayAbvPar]

SWG - Single Character One server/One character. Very controversial, but defines your character, rather than having an army of forgettable alts.

 

I was in the beta forever and this is one of the major things that made me not buy a retail box. HATE HATE HATE this mechanic.

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)

I hadn't considered it before this, but that is really a hell of a cool system. The ability to revisit any place you mark a rune almost instantly is really damned cool.

[slog]

1) Twitch Combat in a MMO environment - Jumpgate

2) Meaningful Stealther vs Stealther (scout vs scout) battles - Shadowbane.  Scouting for sieges was a big deal in SB.  The experience of spending 4 hours trying to outwit the other scout in order to provide information so your side can win a siege.  Nuff said.

3) WoW's macro system.

4) Flying Epic Mounts in Wow for the endgame.  I've seen it all, now let me just get there fast.  What a great idea.

[Sir T]

1) Twitch Combat in a MMO environment - Jumpgate

Vendetta Online is similar and is actually quite fun.

[Endie]

1) Twitch Combat in a MMO environment - Jumpgate

Vendetta Online is similar and is actually quite fun.

Oy!  No derails!  The "what MMO should I play" thread is over there.

[Cyrrex]

1.  COH/V Character creation - They could seriously just package a character creation "game" and sell it for ten bucks.  It was a shame you had to be subbed to experience its brilliance.

2.  SWG's original class system - bugs and imbalance aside, I loved the variety.  At one point before the NGE hit, I actually found a viable prof combination that was so rare that I had never heard of anyone else using it (though surely someone else must have been).

3.  Guild Wars lack of monthly fee - was it even an MMO?  I don't know, but I liked the fact that I didn't feel like I had to play simply to justify 15 bucks a month.  Easy to get into, and out of again.

4.  WoW quest, um, progression (?) - You basically always knew what to do and where to go.  I'm not entirely sure this is a good feature, but at least it avoided the frustration of some other games.

5.  AoC combat - this is the kind of collision detection we like.  If two mobs happen to be in the way of my overhead swing, they both get hit.  Where I am standing and which direction I am swinging actually matters a lot. 

6.  Various MMOs (AoC being the most recent example with some classes, SWG being the most extreme example) - hey Devs?  I like my toon to be a complete wrecking machine.  Let me tear through 3 or 4 mobs of the same level, all the time.  Shit, let me take on 10 of them.  MMO players don't want to be like the foozles.  Make us feel powerful relative to the environment, at least against the average mob.

7.  Here's a real WoW feature I liked - faction mattered immensely.  Hell, the PvE game and questing path (aside from the overlaps) was unique.  You couldn't go into some areas or cities without being auto aggroing every NPC and PC.  You couldn't even communicate with the other side.  Has any other game done that to this degree?  That is not a rhetorical question, I actually do not even know.

8.  M-Rating in AoC.  I like every part of it.  The innuendos.  The blood and gore.  The swearing NPCs.  The hawt female NPCs, and yes, their boobies.  This is the only way a game based on the Conan IP makes any sense to me.  I don't know if this makes it niche-ish, but if so it was one that needed filling.

Almost made it to 10.

[Xanthippe]

(Note: in no particular order, and I haven't played EVE, EQ or UO):

• CoX character customization - both cosmetically and in terms of powers
• CoX travel powers
• A Tale in the Desert's crafting system
• WoW's UI customization
• WoW's auction system
• DAOC's pvp/rvr system
• DAOC or WoW bgs
• LoTRO monster play
• WAR tome of knowledge
• AoC combat

Edited:  I left one out - I know that's 10 above, so this makes 11, but I can't decide which to delete for this:

• CoX's sidekick/exemplar system