Founding an old MMO on new ideas
has posted an interesting thought experiment: what if you took two of the world's biggest MMOs, EVE Online and World of Warcraft, and combined their best features into some kind of super, Frankenstein, monster MMO? I'm actually really interested in this, because I've been playing WoW for a long time, and have only recently come around to playing EVE. So what would World of EVECraft look like?
First of all, I completely agree with RPS-- the best new MMO feature in both games is EVE's skill system. Instead of killing X rats (rats both in the old standby MMO monsters, and in EVE's jargon for "Pirates") to level, you simply level. That's it. Choose a level, wait a certain amount of time (from a few minutes to a few days), and at the end of that time, even if you've logged out in between, you get that level. It is the perfect system for MMOs, because it really does make your character persistent-- they're leveling even when you're not.
And as RPS points out, it does away with the basic idea of "levels" anyway-- no longer must you wait until your friend reaches your level to join you, and no longer does a foe simply become insurmountable based on a number. The skilling idea also helps in PvP as well-- no matter what your skills are or how good you are, you'll get better over time.
So what can we take from World of Warcraft?
Blizzard's skill at crafting worlds people want to be in, first of all. WoW perfectly balances the old D&D ideas with Blizzard's own spin on the legends, and created a fantasy world that is the best any MMO has lived in yet. And even though skilling should be time based, there is still a place for equipment and gear. EVE's gear is incidental-- if you have need of something, you can probably afford it, while in WoW's endgame, gear is everything (by comparison, EVE doesn't even have an endgame).
RPS is right to say that EVE is an excellent example for MMOs in the future-- even in the short time I've been playing it, I can see that there are some ideas there that really break the mold, and when implemented back into incredibly popular fantasy MMOs, we'll really see something more amazing than either of them on their own.
