its still relevant, folks enjoy this even now.

I must say your wanting of multiple classes per character brings back the fond memories I have of FFXI. I think that FFXI had my favorite class (called Jobs in the game) system of any mmo I’ve played. It was simple but wonderful. In FFXI, your character could be any class, no alts needed to try out a healer or tank if you rolled a mage at the start. You simply went to your house and changed your job. Now you had to level up your different jobs all from level one if you wanted to play a new one, but it still gave the player as many options as possible. FFXI also used a sub job system that allowed you to use two jobs at once, your main job would be say level 30 and then your sub would be half of your main job’s level, so it would be 15. So you would gain all the abilities of a 30 warrior and 15 monk (or whatever combo of classes you wanted). Now your sub job had to be leveled also, so if your subbing a lvl 1 monk to a lvl 30 warrior; the monk’s lvl stays at 1 it doesn’t get jumped to 15. This lead to all sorts of interesting combos.Now this gave way to a lot of level grinding, but theres no real difference between that and rolling an alt; except that this was progression one on character instead of a horde of different characters. Now this system is slightly different from the one you described, with having two classes fully leveled on one character at one time. The ability to have two classes fully unlocked on one character at the same time would seem like a bit too powerful. It would be very difficult to balance a game where any single person could have level 80 abilities from two separate classes at any given time. If the game employed a similar system to guild wars, where you were restricted to only having 8 or so spells/abilities usable then a system like that could have a better balance. But I’d still be cautious of class system like that.

I am all for more mmos using a sub class system, or even complete and utter thievery of FFXI’s class system. I feel that the more options you give a player, without them having to leave something behind in one way or another is always a good move. This is not to say that choices shouldn’t matter in a game, but I do feel that in terms of classes, crafting, and harvesting, give the player as many options as possible. Cause you know what, those that want to have different class, crafting profession, or harvesting skill are going to get it one way or another. Be it rolling an alt or reseting their crafting/harvesting choices. You might as well just cut out the middleman and just give the player all those options at the start.

An example would be, you are a lvl 20 warrior about to ding over to lvl *21*.

Brad B.
“What haven’t modern MMOs used the Rebirth/Teir system, that is for the people who don’t know, you have a max level of say 255, once you reach 255, you can “rebirth” your character, go back to level 1, but gain the skills of two classes at the same time, but it takes more xp to do this. ”

I think that you have a great idea with the two classes, but I would actually like to see that implimented in the D&D method. An example would be, you are a lvl 20 warrior about to ding over to lvl 11. When you get that level you get to choose to either put that level into being a higher level warrior, or say being a mage class. You are then a level 20 warrior level 1 mage. This was done (albeit not too well imo) by Guild Wars. You would have all the spells and abilities of a person of both classes and would then have a hell of a fun time trying to figure out the best balence of what spells and skills to use depending on solo, grouping, raiding, etc. With a max level of 80, you would then actually have a max level of 160 effectively.

Imagine haveing two classes in one character. You could be either the healer or the main DPS in a group depending on what was needed without having to level an alt that does not progress your main characters stats, gear, etc…

Just a thought!

Exactly - Thanks! That’s a great example of a context that makes intuitive sense, thereby adding to the fictional consistency instead of distracting from it.

Mechanics for mechanics’ sake don’t tend to play well (here: content randomization), but set it in the idea of “releasing prisoners,” and it could actually improve the experience on multiple levels.

Good on ya.

@Brad B - Remortation could work to add replay value, but you have the same problems as with AA’s. When your next expansion comes out, do you assumed people have been remortating? If so, how much? If you don’t, does that make your early expansion content obsolete?

The canned UO sequel (UXO, iirc?) had an interesting take on remortation, where you selected one of your characters to be your avatar, and your alts were her disciples, with some amount of positive feedback flowing both ways between them. Your avatar could do stuff for your disciples, and levelling your disciples strengthened your avatar in means I’m not privy to. It all seemed pretty interesting. Plus, you could have interactions between player avatars and other player’s disciples. Perhaps some form of Mage-Custos mechanic as seen in the P&P Ars Magica game.

On the subject of competitve PvE in an enclosed environment, there are many, many ways it can be done which would be immersive and internally coherent.

And on the Opera event, Blizz could have implemented something similar in the final encounter of the Arcatraz too.

I hate games that force or require grouping while levelling, like WoW does to some extent and LoTRO does a lot, where you have a long questline and you can’t continue it until you get a group.

I’m not keen on those that discourage soling while max level, like how in WoW, having done a certain number of dungeons/raids, there is pretty much nothing meaningful or challenging you can do solo.

I pay to play, I want to choose how I play.

Maybe something as simple as making solo-level, group-level, pvp-level, and raid-level completely independent of each other. You can be a level 121 soloer, but if you have never grouped, then you are, in scaling terms, a level 1 when you run your first group mission.

That way, choosing to play solo, or not, never deprives you of the ability to experience group, raid or pvp content.

The trick, I suppose, is to have distinct solo/group/pvp/raid oriented stats, abilities and gear without it all seeming too artificial.

(If you do want something answered in particular, feel free to use the email address on the About page.)

@Chris Crowell: “It would seem that a clever MMO could create random elements within an instance by varying those. In Karazan, the Opera event has a few different ‘plays’ that could happen, it certainly adds spice to the evening not to know which one will be presented. Having a base of general predictable challenges with some randomness that has to be dealt with on the spot would go a long way to reducing the repetitiveness of instances.”

It does reduce the repetitiveness, but that does come at a couple costs. It’s just a matter of if a given team is willing to absorb those costs.

1) Content development/testing/balancing time is increased.

Environment art time stays largely static (to use Karazhan’s opera house stage as an example), character art requirement can be impacted (unless reusing 100% existing models), and event development, itemization, and testing/balancing increased by a linear factor of the number of events.

Those are some of the lowest-cost enhancements to make - Not a terrible investment by any stretch, taken in a vacuum.

2) However, one potential negative: Domain knowledge requirement of the players is increased significantly.

If an area has 11 “events” (instead of static bosses) and all of them have three potential rolls, you’re essentially requiring the players know 33 distinct encounters, or at least make them able to adapt to 33 of them on the fly in order to progress. That might be a bit too much for some audiences to willingly bite off. It’s a judgment call for the developer in question.

3) Fictionally, it works well in the Opera House in particular - A stage is the ideal place to have multiple “shows.” It fits perfectly. However, in many other places/games/genres it might not work quite as well, and piercing the veil regularly might not play well with certain audiences.

In general, I think it’s pretty interesting concept when used sparingly, at least among today’s traditional MMO audiences.

I don’t know that I’d be willing to bank on it having the draw power to be used as primary content for an entire game, though, unless it was an unusually hardcore audience in a game being made by a team that had an overabundance of events designers and testers.

One line of thought you stimulated is that instances are made up of terrain visuals, terrain gameplay elements, inhabitant population, abilities and AI. These all add up to make the situation. It would seem that a clever MMO could create random elements within an instance by varying those. In Karazan, the Opera event has a few different ‘plays’ that could happen, it certainly adds spice to the evening not to know which one will be presented. Having a base of general predictable challenges with some randomness that has to be dealt with on the spot would go a long way to reducing the repetitiveness of instances.

Now if a Player PVP killed you…he got everything you had on you..money, armor, weapons, bandaids, ore. At one point he could get the key to your house if you were silly enough to carry it, and if they knew where you lived, go and rob your house!

When you went out mining, you had to have a pack horse to put a limited amount of ore which you had to then smelt at a forge, and then carry to your bank or house. All with a risk of a mob or someone killing your horse and you!

I think risk really made it fun. And if you decided to become a PvP’r..you were labeled a murderer, and were not allowed into cities.

I’m all for the tough MMO. Risk vs Reward. Not impossible, but challenging.

Unfortunately the state of MMOs today is that people ARE skipping the skill building leveling content. I don’t mean in the form of RMT but simply from the ability to solo-rush to max level. People solo from 1 to max level and suddenly have the desire to try raiding. They’ve never grouped with anyone before so not only are they clueless how to play their character in a raid but they also lack the social graces to be a productive member of a group. Of course this is a bit of an hyperbole but what percentage of WoW guilds do you think actually stay together more than 90 days?

One of the major differences between modern and classic MMOs is difficulty and solo-ability. MMOs used to be tough, and playing the lone wolf required a special brand of hardcore player. Now we have this term ‘casual player’ and every MMO you see coddles players to the point that theres no XP penalty, no corpse loss, spoiler sites aplenty, and solo grinding guides available for $12.99 on the web. There’s no need to treat other players with respect on your way up, because you don’t need their help to advance.

You can treat people like dirt 1-70 and once you get to max level you’ll still have dozens of guilds on your server willing to accept you to boost their pool of raiders. If not, just pay the fine and transfer servers. Your infamy is internationally known? Pay the fine and change your name. Perfect anonymity. (And we all know the aaa-formula anonymity + audience = asshole )

Too many assholes. Thats basically why I quit playing WoW and probably won’t play any more MMOs in the near future. Nevertheless, I don’t see a game bringing back the concept of a “hard” MMO any time soon, because it would be flushed down the tubes faster than you can say “naked corpse run.” I pondered long whether it was the MMOs that changed, or the players that changed and came to the conclusion that the MMO changed the players. I can’t blame blizz for it tho, we asked for it like children asking for candy, and now we are all spoiled.

What haven’t modern MMOs used the Rebirth/Teir system, that is for the people who don’t know, you have a max level of say 255, once you reach 255, you can “rebirth” your character, go back to level 1, but gain the skills of two classes at the same time, but it takes more xp to do this. You can rebirth through all classes, so eventually you will reach 255 in every single class in the game, each of these getting progressively harder. Now the Tier system kicks in, and what this allows you to do is start all over, at level 1, with only one class, BUT, you get some massive ability bonus, each time you Tier that stacks, so you could tier multiple times.

Now besides being a grinders nightmare (oh god, there is HOW many levels in this game), would this provide a solution so that leveling content actually has a use? Presumably, you wouldn’t be able to wear your high end content when you first rebirth or tier, but if you could get powerful beginning level equipment that will help future progression through the level progression, you’d value it significant more then you would now. You’d also see people at max level actively trying to plan out equipment bundles for their character when they go through each Rebirth. This coupled with leveled cap’d areas in MUDS, also tended to make significant use of Newbie transactions.. where a high level character would need such a such a item from this zone, could you get it for me?

AoC really is a lesson is what not to do, when making an MMO.

I, personally think the days of basic levelling MMOs is over… WotLK will be an interesting experiment for all the WoW players.