The Ultimate MMORPG 76
MMORPG.com has up an editorial looking at one man's vision of the perfect Massively Multiplayer Game. From the article: "I have read about the new games on the horizon, and they seem to all have one thing in common: They focus on a few key features, and leave out brilliant concepts that have already made it in to modern games. That means that in order for the players to get all the features they enjoy in a game, they would have to play more than one MMORPG, if not many MMORPGs. I do not know about you, but I struggle with playing one at a time."
Rather than make the "Best" mmorpg (Score:4, Interesting)
Why dont you concentrate on things that make all mmorpgs suck?
SomethingAwful [somethingawful.com] has a hilarious yet very insightful look at your typical mmorpg.
MMOGs are very hard to keep balanced (Score:3, Interesting)
WoW did a great job of creating balance, but a lousy job of fostering player growth(60+ game sucks). Everquest did a decent job of finding a happy median between the two, but the high level game became very very slow.
Expert gamers are all about finding exploits to increase their power, a good MMOG must reward savvy players, but at the same time protect other players and the economy from being exploited...usually it's the stuff designers never considered or intended that end up causing the most problems. All in all it's a very difficult problem to address.
That means that in order for the players to get all the features they enjoy in a game, they would have to play more than one MMORPG, if not many MMORPGs.
Ultimately, more features == more exploits.
Re:, Wars, Survival, Wealth - Anything But The Gri (Score:2, Interesting)
the whole idea is to do away with grinding, in fact grinding will hurt the gameplay, and it does seem to address few of your points, like:
1. the island regrows/heals itself based on player's involvement
2. everyone dies, sooner or later
3. besides the normal hunting/gathering, players can reproduce offsprings