Yeah. Agree about drops. The way I look at MMOs, the way I looked at old UO, is that going out of town and doing things were a gamble. Your gear was your "antie" and you had the option of raising your "antie" for a bit of an advantage on the field in the form of Vanquishing weapons, potions, and hardening armor. Modern MMO have virtually removed all risk for playing. It's like playing poker with monopoly money, just for kicks, it's more fun watching power poker players play for real money on TV.

The risk of loosing something is more interesting in the possibility of gaining something. I'm sure there are some psychology studies that back that up. It's a design lesson I learned playing MK and Street Fighter at arcades, anyone else remember being 13 and you and your opponent were both at 1/4th health with 20 seconds let in the bottom of the 3rd round, no quarters left? People talk about ganks and grindfeasts but it was moments like those that defined oldschool gaming. It's like a game of Magic where the winner keeps the graveyard-- I hated Magic but those rules made it fun. I'm not saying we need absolute full loot but something close to it, tho that's not all UO had that modern MMOs are missing.

Don't get me wrong I'm no longer what PnP players would call a "PVP tard", I've learned to really enjoy solid roleplaying, but modern MMOs kinda skimp out in that area as well. People talk about "realism" in MMOs as either a good or a bad thing, and depending on the level of realism it's either one or the other. I think an MMO should be about as "real" as a fantasy novel. You were never concerned with where Bilbo dropped his 2nd breakfast stool, or Gandalf having to go "number 3," after talking to Arwen, but some level of realism needs to exist so that players can suspend their disbelief. I'm sure most of us can remember a time when we sort-of believed ghost stories, aside from a solid mechanic, UO's "play as ghost" system was believable and really sucked players into the virtual world.

I wish I had the budget/manpower to do something about it. MMO game design is something I've thought a lot about, I'm actually forming a wiki called "Survival Fantasy MMO" where I'm laying some ideas and dynamics down, all under a creative common license to prevent vendor ownership of them. I also lurk the CryEngine and UE4 scenes looking for talent that might be interested in the project. I need talent, not only in game design and art but also in economics and psychology. My dream is an MMO is something of a fantasy EVE online, with real-time combat and a mixed market economy, complete with a "Fed Chairman" maintaining it. Aside from being a capitalist and roleplayers fantasy land it would allow closet sociopaths to get that sickness out of their system, in a game instead of real life. Somehow we gotta teach these RPKs the value of human empathy, which I'm sure is doable tho it's not immediately clear how.

I have an RTS style conquest/guild-war system that puts past attempts of nation building/conquest like Shadowbane and even Darkfall to shame. Pages and pages of documents, I lost my D drive yesterday and I'm really bummed about it, I didn't have a backup. I know ideas are a dime a dozen in the gaming industry but putting them up on the marketplace and learning a bit about the tools involved in executing them is all I can think to do to move them forward. The Survival Fantasy genre is unclaimed frontier in the gaming world and I KNOW there is a market for it, AAA companies just haven't realized it yet because the indie attempts at it have been such total failures. Thing is those indie attempts have been such poor production quality people decide to stay with UOGamers. When it's finally done right I have no doubt it will be adopted on the same level as WOW.

Last edited by Bleakwise; 10/03/14 01:36 PM.
--The difference between Communism and Fascism is predicated on whether one hates one's self or "the "other."