Many gamers are asked or have ask themselves what would they put in a video game at some point. However, not a lot of those gamers ask the question “what would you put in a MMORPG?” well, I'm sure a few people have asked and answered that question but Alice and I recently brought it up and I decided to present my answer to the question.
I will be dividing this post into a few main parts that are mostly parts of any MMORPGs but still have my opinions on them.
General Concepts
-Races : I mostly like standard fantasy races such as Humans, Dwarves, Elves and so on, so in my MMORPG I would have those same races.
Besides the standard “good” races I personally like what Warcraft did with the “evil” races such as Orcs and Trolls, basically humanizing them. I know other games have also done this such as the Elder Scrolls series where Orcs are simply more barbaric humans but still Orcish looking, and to a lesser extent, Dungeons and Dragons where while Orcs themselves, are pure savages for the most part but their half-human offspring (if they mate with a human) can be much more civilized. In any case, I would like to have somewhat civilized Orcs, Trolls, and Gnolls (Dungeons and Dragons' Gnolls). Since writing down all of the reasons and types of races would be too long for just an overview, I'll list them off.
Races I would like to have in my MMORPG : Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, Trolls, Gnolls, Minotaurs, Spider people, Dragons (both friendly and hostile), Demons, Angels, Treants, Kobolds (Dungeons and Dragons again) and other standard Fantasy races that didn't come to mind but I still would like them around in my game.
While a lot of it copies World of Warcraft, I would alter their origin backrunds to still have the same appeal that the races of WoW do but also to separate it from their series they came from.
-Factions : I personally really like the idea of two factions that are primarily enemies, rather than three or more factions, or 2 factions and 1 neutral faction. Two factions separates the player-base into one or the other ideally which makes for even conflicts most of the time, however that statement in general is of course is very hard to control, and most of the time the balance between the two factions is somewhat in one faction's favor rather than being half and half. However, on the other hand, adding a third faction in there would further increase the player imbalance as even the most balanced situation would lead to an imbalance, such as 30/30/30 leaving 10% undecided, or 35/35/30 which puts two factions ahead of one, and again, this is assuming the most ideal results, which are never the case. More realistically three factions would possibly result in 30/50/20 or something along those lines.
Adding in a neutral faction would also result in the same sort of problems, with a lot of people probably preferring neutrality rather than dedicating themselves to one faction. World of Warcraft has somewhat created neutrality amongst the factions by adding a paid faction transfer system which created a group of people who faction transfer almost as soon as it's time limitation before using it again is finished. I again, don't really like that idea but it did allow players to switch factions at will which in the end is what a neutral faction would be able to do. That or it would limit players from interaction at all with the other factions making it undesirable except by a small group of players to begin with.
In the end, my MMORPG would have two main factions, and a bunch of non-player factions that the player would be able to interact with.
-Classes : One of the very first things I look at when I first hear about a MMORPG is probably the classes. I like classes in RPG games because they make each character feel and play differently unless you're comparing two characters of the same class, but onto the main point.
Another thing I really like is the idea of advanced classes after reaching a certain point in a player's class and I would definitely have those around, but the general classes would be :
Fighter
Mage
Priest
Archer
Rogue
These five would cover basically every type of standard class in a fantasy MMORPG which is fine with me, as each class covers a role that would be desired by someone when they pick up a fantasy based MMORPG. Instead, to further enhance the experience of choosing a class or simply playing as what would be a basic class, I would add class specific quests and factions where each class would have one in that regard but be limited from another classes' quests or factions. In any case, here are the names of the advanced classes, and a general idea of the way they would function.
Fighter
Weapon Expert – Focuses on using one weapon type to do damage, excels in this weapon type above all melee classes, uses expertise stances to provide self buffs that allow a few skills to be used, whereas another would allow different skills to be used. Cannot specialize in ranged weapons. May carry a shield and tank at the expense of offensive stances.
Berserker – Uses rage gained in battle by being hit or hitting enemies to do damage. As rage increases new skills open up that exhaust rage, and damage increases as rage increases. Finally at maximum rage, the player loses control of being able to choose their attacks and instead attacks wildly, all attacks turning into rage filled attacks where they cause the player to lose health with every strike but do massive damage.
Mage
Evoker – Specializes in offensive magic, uses standard mana as a resource. Is able to sacrifice damage for a set amount of time for additional mana regeneration. Under 20% health, may use desperate casting to cause random harmful effects to enemies and allies around the Evoker, such as sheeping random targets, or burning them, ceases after 3 casts.
Conjurer – Specializes in defensive magic, uses standard mana as a resource. Conjures Support Pillars in order to aid party members, also able to turn those pillars into offensive turrets when needed.
Priest
Cleric – Defensive Healer, is allowed to wear heavy armor. May also melee to regenerate mana with below average melee skills.
Purifier – Offensive Healer , wears light armor. Deals holy ranged damage which also transfers damage into healing to nearby party members. May sacrifice healing power for damage if desired.
Archer
Ranger – Gains a offensive pet as well as minor melee skills, and normal archery skills. Being near the pet or with it attacking a target provides buffs to the Ranger.
Marksman – Improves Archery skills, increases armor penetration of arrows fired, and has a chance to instantly kill a target with low health if fired at from afar.
Rogue
Assassin – Specializes in quick and disabling attacks, allows the player to choose between poisons for disabling opponents further, or enhanced melee training allowing the player to stand up to an opponent in melee better.
Spy – Balanced rogue, specializes in traps, and ambushes. Allows the player to mark a player that has been out of combat for at least 30 seconds at which point if the spy engages him with the mark, all allies around the spy will gain damage buffs, and all enemies around the target will be stunned for a second, and gain minor debuffs, if there are no enemies around the marked target then only the marked person will receive the debuff. Finally, if the spy is engaged before then and engaged by the marked person, the spy will lose all ambush benefits, and the person will be unmarked.
Besides all of the small details I put down, there is a endless amount of things I could also add to each class. Generally however, I would like all of the classes to be balanced, and provide a fun experience that mainly aims for large scaled PvP content, and all types of PvE content, leaving only small scaled PvP encounters such as 1v1s to 10v10s, unaccounted for.
-Story/Adventure based
-Character alignments and decisions
-Cosmetic Outfits
-Story Setup : I haven't thought too much about this part especially since for the most part I like the World of Warcraft universe, I don't exactly like the way it's story progressed as of World of Warcraft but it's definitely going places, and I'm not a Blizzard employee so I can't really change it. Overall however, the story that World of Warcraft has so far is not that bad. If I were to simply change it to make it more unique to what I wanted then I probably would make it a darker world, and change the motivations of the two factions on why they want to fight each other. Giving other unrelated races more involvement with story lines would also be a nice touch. With that, I would also have more character (NPC) involvement in the player's experience in both PvE and PvP, and finally I would progress the general story faster than it is now.
With that aside, if I was going to make a completely original story I would try to make it darker but not suffocatingly dark. While a lot of the Horde's current characters fit that role fine, the Alliance somewhat lacks in the dark department, in general I think changing the motivations and rewriting the what a character's personality is, would be the quickest way to darken the universe. So to that extent, I think I might just completely create new characters, make both factions still feel at peace within each other but hate the other faction passionately with good reasons, thus resulting in a conflict. I would also try to make the story more about the internal conflicts within the factions as well as the external ones with their opposing faction. While there definitely is some of that in WoW, I believe there could be more.
While this section was a bit iffy, in the end I would try to separate my MMORPG from simply following WoW's story by completely setting it up differently in a darker world with more player involvement with the story.
In any case due to the length of this section and my inability to think of anything else at the moment, I will be breaking the post up and continuing it in the next post, so if you liked this sprawl of ideas, look forward to the next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment