Heck... you want to give the opening monologue to my lecture at GDC Austin next month? ("Cover Me! Promoting MMO Player Interaction through Advanced AI") While we are not exactly talking about the same thing, we have the same general lament... MMOs are stale and predictable right now.

I definitely agree that the MMO industry is in dire need of someone to try some really new concepts. It's not just a competitive advantage for an individual developer; it's important for the long-term health of this entire segment of games.

The "class" mechanism is just one of many design assumptions that is long overdue to be challenged, however. Here's a partial list of sacred cows that I'd love to see barbequed by some rogue designer:

* online games must be massively multiplayer
* design focus on play mechanics instead of on satisfying play styles
* emphasis on rules-based gameplay over breadth and interactivity of world
* emphasis on rules-based gameplay over character actions and world events
* overuse of fantasy genre
* obsessive design focus on competitive gameplay
* characters must choose a class with predetermined abilities
* classes are defined by D&D-inspired combat roles (warrior, mage, healer, rogue)
* even non-combat content can only be experienced through those combat roles
* characters must advance in power through increasing levels within a class
* levels are gained by repeatedly performing simple actions ("grinding")
* grouping is required to access high-level "end game" content
* characters cannot die (permadeath can be avoided or isn't even possible)
* NPCs implemented as no more than standalone loot bags or quest dispensers
* loot drops are random, leading to repetitive killing of NPCs
* gameplay takes place on a few relatively small, static land areas
* areas are divided into even smaller "zones"

All that said, I can also see some reasons why it's tough to innovate in this field:

Money Changes Everything: good MMOs (especially MMORPGs) are expensive. Investors won't pony up millions for a major new game without seeing a business plan that shows them how they're likely to make their money back plus some. That means risk reduction... and that means designers are forced to kowtow to whatever Marketing says will sell because that's how you reduce risk.

Go With What You Know: Most designers have only worked on MMOs wrapped around the usual assumptions. So when they get tapped to be Lead Designer or Creative Director or Executive Producer for a new game, it's not a surprise that their design clones many of those assumptions.

Must Have Balance, Daniel-san: It's hard enough to balance the many interlocking gameplay mechanics of a complex game like an MMO even when you're using the now-standard mechanics. Replacing most or all of those familiar systems with systems that are dependent on new and untried concepts can only make the play balancing process more difficult, lengthening the development cycle and increasing development costs.

For these reasons, I'm sympathetic to designers who don't create wholly new kinds of games every time they lead the design of a new one. Everybody can't be a Will Wright.

But it sure would be nice to have more than one well-funded Will Wright around making MMOs... or at least a few more people who share his enthusiasm for breaking new ground in game design.

Finally, regarding the company with the venerable text MMO who was going to try some new ideas in a graphical MMORPG but has instead not done so... sounds an awful lot to me like Simutronics and their game Hero's Journey. :) Good for them for licensing the HeroEngine MMORPG development system to folks like BioWare and Zenimax Online... but too bad for what Hero's Journey might have been, and for what it might have shown the industry was possible.

Even if we just move in baby steps it would be a welcome change. Right now classes are so locked into pre-defined functions there's no room for individuality. At least in some MMOs you have choices...

Skill based MMOs have obvious mix n match choices (tank mage, archer healer, etc.)
Class based MMOs can still have some flexibility too. Shadowbane a ton of flexibility. You could be a Warrior with a cross bow and plate armor or any number of crazy concoctions.
Eve Online allows for fitting of ships which makes meaningful choices on how you approach combat.

I'm all for dramatically innovative steps forwards, MMOs have a lot of room to grow, but even if they're going to take baby steps they could at least move towards interesting game play choices not 1 size fits all classes.

I'm fairly positive that I know what company you're talking about. I think the main issue is even if a company somehow has millions to blow on making a truly original MMO, they're taking a huge risk, and how did they get all that money in the first place? You can't sell new and original to publishers, they want to know what you're doing is "tried and true" for money making. Designers can only go so far... and sometimes what sounds like a fantastic design becomes a nightmare for programmers, or otherwise unwieldy, or even just plain not that fun.

Isn't anyone tired of MMORPGs yet?!

Yes, Luis. That's why some of us are thinking that a radical kick in the pants to the standard set of mechanics is overdue.

The hard question is not "why," nor even "what," but "how."

(Please note, however, that calling for alternatives to the standard mechanics is NOT a threat to existing standard-mechanic MMORPGs. My position, at least, is that as long as there are some such games still being created and operated, it's OK -- desirable, even -- to have a few games serving as testbeds for new concepts in MMORPG gameplay.)

Well. As a game designer aspirant I should not say "no" to a challenge, even I'm not interested in the genre... so let's go...

My middle brother is the best MMOG player I ever seen. Well, it's something interesting to say, how could a MMOG player play better than other, if there's no skill involved in MMOGs? Well, there are skills involved in MMOGs, the game just fails (if it can be said) into showing them off. There's something about MMOGs which is the possibilities of comunication, and that's a game mechanic, not only a feature. Comunication (not only by usage of words) matters. If there are many player styles in MMOGs, he would fall in a "class" diplomat/business man.

Apart from what mechanics should be made to promote that (or maybe not too much apart) I'd not use classes if I made an MMORPG, but skills organized just like OOP classes, where every skills belongs to another "parent" skill. Adding possibilities of learn them a kind passively, like watching other people use, and also having attack and defense proeficiences, so a powerful skill is an unknown skill... don't show it off too often.

Plus, good excuses to enemies to appear in the map, and let them collect player's loot, get exp and levels and get a few other monsters to make a gang... why not?

And then, develop a character personality, make them auto-quest the player by having ideas or desires based on their personalities and make the player be rewarded for good role playing. To help all good play, put in exemple players to show what can be done and teach other players what is possible. Make them use comunication skills, make them induce role playing and pay other players to be their guards or assassins...

But then, being a good game is not the purpose of MMORPGs, they're to be click'n'watch systems with "see I'm stronger than you" appealing. Not too much else... and players will prefer these games to remain exaclty as they are.

Luis,

There are games that already allow for teaching/learning skills (DragonRealms) as well as games that allow monsters to level up from killing players and partially loot them (GemStone IV). Neither of those things fundamentally changes the way the game plays.

Automating rewards for roleplay probably just means the powergamers will figure out what key actions they need to perform to be considered "roleplaying" well and repeat them ad infinitum.

I think you misjudge the social aspects of MMOs (regarding the "they're to be click'n'watch systems" statement) as they can add more depth than the game itself provides... but it seems backwards that the social stuff happens often in spite of rather than because of the game. But if you somehow "force" social situations to happen, there will always be people that complain about it (and I'm one of them).

I admit I offer no solutions here.

Hmm, as far as the current standard for MMO class systems go, in addition to the challenges of getting the alternative method to work, you'd also have the challenge of communicating to potential players firstly that you've provided an alternative and secondly that this alternative is at least worth trying out. The problem being that many will find the familiarity of the tank/DPS/healer(/crowd control) combination comforting/comfortable and to try a system that breaks that mold might actually be just a little bit scary. This does however make the pay-off much larger should said player struggle through the unfamiliarity long enough to find they like the alternative.

I was talking to a game designer on twitter recently and it occured that the combat system itself has gotten a bit stale in the sense that generally its a case of sitting back and pressing buttons on a mouse/keyboard control system (For a while now I've personally found this rather dull at times). An alternative would be to use a combat system more akin to say, Fable, and instead of adding a metric ton of different abilities that take up toolbar after toolbar, you actually stick with a relatively small number of abilities and what would happen is the visual spangliness of attacks/abilities would scale up alongside damage, so at first a knockback attack would just knock the monster down, but when you're at level 30 (Sorry, assuming a level based system here, its an easy way of increasing the games longevity) that same ability would send the three monsters in front of you sailing a few meters through the air before landing on their backs.
Additionally, whilst by default the character would be a generalist, you could micropay to specialise in a particular direction, so for instance a player could specialise in the direction of being damaging and disabling towards one monster with lots of damage dealt to your one target, or you could specialise towards being a group damager that can hit as many as 6 targets in a single attack instead of the usual 3 with that character.

Robert Farr - Game Design Student.

One possibility for doing away with the whole tank/dps/healer mix is to remove the archetypal healer altogether and replace it with a crafting set that all players can pick up that has three parts:
Farmer/Herbalist - Grows herbs and crops for use in the other two crafts.
Cook - Makes foods that make a player stronger going into battles.
Alchemist - Makes potions that can restore health, mana, disabilities.

The set of crafts would be painless, straightforward & relatively inexpensive to use and all players would basically be expected to look after themselves. It would then become more about how each individual player likes to fight, rather than whether you've got the healer and the tank roles filled in your group.

I'm sure that part of the stagnation that we see in MMO's also stems from the fact that the majority of the ones you hear about are all still in relatively the same genre. They're still RPG's, just taken to a massive scale. I know that there have been people who have tried them, but MMOFPS, MMORTS, etc. would be places to start looking for something different, rather than just refinements on MMORPG. MMOFPS I'm skeptical of mostly because it would present the same challenges as a normal FPS game, just bigger.

There are more genres out there to start taking to the MMO world instead of just sticking with the same. A real MMO city building sim (e.g. massively multiplayer SimCity), for example, would start posing interesting challenges.

I'm also a bit opposed to assuming a typical MMO group quest should consist of 6 players, that one has become my personal pet hate, because when its a low level quest later in the games life, it becomes harder to pull together the required number of people, especially when your also struggling to find that healer or tank to fill the group out. I quietly wish that group sizes tended to be around 4 large instead of 6.

I agree.

A renew will be welcome, so, when i see all people who post and have the same mind, i assume that some are talented programmer, graphic artist, game designer .... read this website, so why don't make a call, to create a team, and begin the developpment of this new mmorpg who will break the rules in your free time ?

No, it doesn't look like people are tired of MMOs yet. MMOs take a lot of money to be made, and if even casual or console games that are cheaper to make struggle to innovate it will take even longer for MMOs to change. As long as people keep paying for what we have, it will hardly change.

This is amazing commentary guys, thanks. I think one crucial element missing, and the reason for all the class balance rabblerousing is very simply the lack of any social cohesion in MMO's today. Outside of the Guild/Raid group dynamic, taverns and locale's in MMO's everywhere are empty, there is no reason to interact with other players.

Games like DragonRealms and Gemstone III made interacting not only fun, but useful in two primary ways; teaching skills (which requires a skill based, not an experience bubble based system), and passive out of combat skills.

Foraging and mechanical lore were two great examples of this system in action. Completely out of combat, players would forage for raw materials, often in some passive social setting, and once they had found them they would manipulate them in various ways to craft ropes, medicines, etc.

In some cases the actions themselves drew curiousity from younger players who wanted to know what those berries were and how you were crushing them in your mortar and exactly what for.

Combining this element with teaching meant you would often find groups of players sitting about for hours talking, practicing skills, teaching each other and interacting - well outside the 'combat construct' and still quite in character.

Players of MMO's have forgotten how to 'Role Play', in fact, RP has become the 'silly stepsister' of MMO's, an afterthought to be put in to keep 'those players' happy.

The reality is, MMO's started out as 'alternate realities' where the player felt encapsulated into his or her avatar, thinking it an alter ego. Today, players simply manipulate one of many 'toons', a dumb shell that does not live within the context of the game, but merely moves about as an automaton devoid of any real cultural or heritage binds to the character.

Another issue is items. At the high end of the game curve in MMO's today, the ultimate goal is to have 'the set' of gear, be it epic or whatever. Ultimately the goal becomes not to be an individual, but to be precisely like someone else. This eliminates the ability for players to individuate a character, making it unique and personal to them. Really, its just all about having the same 'doll' that everyone else like minded has.

This is corrected easily, but fairly smashes several current design approaches in modern MMO's. For one, the uniqueness of look and feel of an avatar hides it's abilities; knowing every single thing about your opponent in MMO's today seems to be par for the course, but it wasn't always so.

Long ago, you could walk down a 'street' and encounter a woman in rags, but would you mouth off or assault her? Not likely. Your inability to discern her abilities made your encounter and estimation of her complete guesswork. As she brought the magical smackdown on you so came the revelation; don't mess with what you don't understand.

But there is no lack of understanding of potency in MMO's. You can look at a character and know mostly everything about them, measure the power they have versus anyone else.

I'm long winded here, but ultimately it seems like what we've lost the most of in MMO's is the suspension of disbelief.

@ Bart You make really good points. Much of what we are seeing in lack of innovation is because there is too much money, and not enough art in the crafting of MMO's. Developer's are not going to divert from the not only tested and profitable, but also the funded elements of how the bread gets buttered.

Someone needs to step up and fund an MMO specifically to break the mold. Who cares if you don't get 12 million people. If you get 1 million people you win. If you sustain 500k people, you win, etc.

There are a few 'indie' companies out there who are, well, not breaking the mold but at least stretching it a bit. Aventurine, a Greek developer, recently released an MMO-FPS-RPG which uses skill based advancement where using skills improves the character's abilities. Other interesting features include a realistic stealth system (meaning no stealth skills at all and the player has to use cover and shadows to hide manually), no way to 'case' a character and know his or her skills (there are no levels or classes and no persistent name/health bar over the player's head), and a very large seamless world.

On top of this, it's not a theme park game, focusing more on clans building and capturing real estate, building ships and fighting naval battles, and just exploring the world.

The game is still in the teething stage really, but it is worth supporting if only for the small company having the courage to stretch the MMO boundaries.

There are lots of sacred design structures that have grown over the years.

I agree that classes are a big issue these days.

However, I think that the "endgame" paradigm is probably the most wasteful and destructive.

Over the years, somehow the MMO game itself has become... "not the point" of playing the MMO. Everyone feels the need to skip; right to the end and sit there... grinding out something (gear, money, etc.)

Starting and midgame content becomes hurdles to get by as fast as possible, rather than something to enjoy.

Then when the inevitable expansion comes out, the race to the end begins again.. AND all that endgame content basically becomes worthless (there is too much of it for people leveling from 1 to to the new level cap to need to complete to get to the endgame, so a majority of it becomes a ghost town. There are games out there with 5-10 different chunks of endgame rotting in the corner.

I've always liked skill (rater than class) based games better because content stops being something to get past, and becomes something to do with your character. Endgames with traditional classes make the grinding even more grindy, because there is even less new stuff to do if you have played that same class over 4 games (with their grind as well). This is not to say you can't have good stuff in a class based game, rather that the grind gets multiplied by having seen it before.

As someone mentioned earlier, I'm not sure if it is the classes themselves, or rather the pre-defined roles everyone expects (even skill based games do healer tank, crowd control).

On the other hand, I'm not going to lay all of the blame for boredom on the sameness of classes.

The games have become less social, in many ways it is the players' fault as much as the games. I have a lot of friends I met playing EQ1, or even Neverwinter Nights back on AOL). We are all in our 30's and 40's and basically did all of our meeting of new people. We have guilds etc. and import them en masse to new games.

So a lot of the sameness in modern MMOs is not jsut the classes, we are importing huge chunks of culture, experiences, friends and personal history to each and every game we play.

I was one of the only one of my EQ1 and earlier friends that Betas Star Wars: Galaxies. I walked in with no existing guild support (to the Beta). it was refreshing, not just because of the skill based system, but because I hadn't brought in 30 people worth of Baggage.

To this day, I tend to Beta test (and sometimes try new MMOs) without telling my friends right away.

I'm not saying the field isn't relatively stagnant (because it is). The current phase seems to be latching on to gimmicks to grab new players, often at the expense of alienating traditional players.

The industry has also latched onto fast leveling to endgame, solo based gameplay. It is real easy to feel "done" with a modern MMO. People buy, then play 1-3 chars to max level with their already existing friends (if anyone) and leave to do the same thing in the next game, all in less than 6 months. Every single person I knew that played Tabula Rasa (including myself) did that, same with Conan.

Endgame grind does not equal longevity.
Generic classes + Engame grind = moving to a new game to see your class do something a little different for 70 new levels.

I think a lot of the comments are really looking/glossing over the way EvE Online or other PvP MMOs do things. EvE Online tends to provide more of a framework than a set of challenges for their players. By doing this they, and taking a hands off approach to a player's behavior, they open up their game for more social and emergent behavior than other MMOs. To me the future of innovating MMO play is going to be in this direction, not in PvE focused games.

The problem with PvE focused games is they are inherently working against their greatest strength. The draw of an MMO is playing alongside thousands of other players. PvE works directly against this by splitting up players into small groups and giving them a similar experience to what they could get by hosting up an RPG using a matchmaking service. The other problem with PvE content is that it will always be 'solved' at some point. Very well done randomly generated content and AI could change this a bit but that's definitely unfeasible at this point in time. PvE MMOs right now focus on showing a player through different sites with different challenges. At some point the player is going to accomplish all of this and get bored. To make sure the player sticks around you provide more and more content stretching out what you have for as long as you can. This creates the boring grind people hate and stifles the innovation in MMOs as so much production time is devoted to content generation.

On the flipside a PvP MMO has a much greater flexibility. By allowing users to create their own stories you provide a much larger amount of compelling content with far fewer production values. Not only does this free up your commitment to content generation but it also has a greater strength. By being focused on PvP and player interactions you are playing to an MMOs strengths not against them. Suddenly those 2000 other people your players are playing with (or 100,000s in the case of EvE) are much more relevant. Players will still form off into their groups but those groups have a much greater cause to interact with each other now. Social interaction is one of the leading forces that keep people playing MMOs and by playing to those strengths rather than against it you create a much more compelling experience.

If MMOs are going to innovate I think it's going to need to be in this way, you simply can't dress up a PvE experience enough to make it feel like more than the grind it is.

@Whitfield VERY well said, and something I completely left out. The endgame phenomena is a rapid beast of seeing how fast players can consume newly released content. Much of this could be remedied by making existing content more extensible, or contain more hidden depth than just 'designed for levels x through y'.

I think this end game/content release cycle is destructive and renders the hard work of world builders and content designers as a mechanical 'what have you done for me lately' cycle rather than a creative work of art.

Edward - spectacular article with great feedback.

I have been developing a game world focused on post-apocalypse (gamma world feel if you've ever played the pen & paper game)... Tons of movies and platform games have explored this area, with suprising amounts of interest. Most of this interest though seems to stem from 'gamers'. The rest are 'would be gamers' but do not know it yet. Pulling them in... the essential catch. My main problem and concern is how far away from the mold can I stray without alienating existing gamers. I have flirted with the skill system over the class system, but keep coming back to the class model. To give players a customizable feel and the ability to exceed at what the player wishes to accomplish, I allowed skill selection after assigning a base set of skills to each class. Afterall, in real life, if you always wanted to be a 'soldier' you would attempt to learn specifically about this interest, picking up various skills that would put you on the path of a soldier (such as marksmanship, firearm maintenance, physical conditioning). I have also considered... after 100s of years from an apocalypse, how much traditional value would be left. Personae would essential piecemeal together skills and gear, giving me incentive to consider character creation much differently. Skills would be the framework, and once in game you would either not have a class or quest one: find a npc trainer or a book (like finding a book about colonial marines).

The other thing I keep re-thinking is levels. Since 24 years ago when I started playing D&D, levels have been beat into my brain. There have been several P&P games that did not use levels, for example: Battletech, shadowrun, star frontier, travellar & LotR. These games focus alot on skills, gear, contacts, interaction & exploration. Rewards from defeating monsters rather than experience involve simply surviving the encounter, getting some loot (maybe) and sometimes increase a skill (or add to a pool that eventually will increase skills being used). This tended to more rapid gameplay than grinding. It also encouraged players to not stagnate. It also forced me, as a game master, to create lots of missions with intricate objectives (not monster bashing).

So... I guess I am totally in support here of being tired of the same old classes and such. After 24 years of hardcore gaming, I have almost and nearly seen it all. PnP, MUD, MMO. I decided last year to quit gaming (MMOs and PnPs) and start developing my own. I have a few friends involved here for support and content. However, they seem to love classes, levels and experience hoarding, LMAO. What about the billions of people out there in the world that do not even have an opinion? Or the millions that do game online right now... how will both sides take to an innovation on this scale?

On the note of end game content... Well, I honestly don't want 3-6 players ransacking an operating military outpost that is led by a crazed cyborg and its many robotic counterparts in a short 30 minute session. Rather, I do like raids... Watch any Mad Max movie, alot of the action occurs on the basic party level, but raids form some of the very entertaining content: marauders on bikes, dune buggies and horses really appeals, lol. If most or all end game content was instanced, it seems to me it would allow for a fair amount of reuse. Instances can be scaled in every sense of the word. Public end game content, thats a beast unto itself. Not as forgiving when every player who knows where monster X is located will be there as the spawn counter nears pop time.

I will probably be carefully monitoring this BLOG because it is the potential biggest hurdle of online games (MMO to be precise).

@Andrew Birmingham

I agree, there are soem great experiences to havign a massive raid battle.

However, Raid is not equal to endgame content.

Back in the day, there were raids at all levels, now we just have raids at the level plateaus where the level caps used to be.

P.S. Gamma World 2nd Edition (the one with the universal chart) was one of my Favorite PnP games systems ever. Even though 2/3 of the systems weren't in the actual rule books, but broken up and published in the end of the 1 set of modules they had published for it... it was a very well done system.

Correction: Gamma World 3rd Edition. 1 and 2 were very D and D ish.

That's great you mention GW 3rd edition. I have re-read it and treasures of the ancients over the past 2 days in addition to the gamma knights supplements and the d20 system books. I want the feel of a FPS but with a core system underlying it. Exploring should take precedence over grinding out combat skills and levels in limited content areas. The fun of PnP and in particular, Gamma World, was the concept of 'Wild and Wahoo'... doing things on the spur of the moment, by the seat of your pants. I like that alot but not all the time. I feel the d20 system in addition to the other games i mentioned can provide content for most if not all personae interacting. You mentioned the 1 & 2 edition being very dndish. Very correct. Look at the designers. Anywhere you see Ed Greenwood, you will notice fantasy play. Hes great imho! I wanted a small element of that, but nothing like true post apocalypse should be like. Scarey and nightmarish in some regions. Horror and drama should reign supreme in a majority. Even community centers should have some peril (randomly) if not planned by raiding factions.

As far as end game content. Raiding at any level - yes, i loved doing that as games have grown. Early raids I participated in MMO style have all have great ups, downs and middle roads. Sometimes raids would just be more than 1 party (like 8-12). Where it relates to this Blog, raids and people who barely knew how to play their class. LOL!!! In GW... survival and raids would be pretty evident. People are by nature chaotic it would seem. Give them something to raid for hands on fun and it only takes 1 social person to start one. If they dont worry about a class and level and moreso about having fun, I would hope it would become more appealing than grinder MMOs. My wife and several people at work that have never even played an MMO or PnP game like the sound of what I describe (usually a short 30 second -1 minute description I made to players about a scene they encounter). All the game players I have personally talked to seem to like what I offer but also have concerns about no levels or classes, even the ones that played the PnP games without them. Arrr, always a paradox somewhere, eh? At least GW style classes are geared for anyone and easy to bite into.

Oops. I said I read 3rd edition in the past 2 days. It is 4th edition by bruce nesmith & james m. ward. 3rd edition was wacky and cool at the same time. Like you noted, spread out, lmao. The other game master of our bunch used it several times before we went 4th edition. I actually liked it too, rapid play and the color chart for success or failure. Very scalable! The progress of the electronic gaming world makes this much easier to use than it was by hand and dice. That system influenced other games, the first being star frontiers, which came out with Zebulon's guide to change the entire system.

Too bad they never fished the changeover to Zeb's Guide rules.
SF was one of my first RPGs back in the day.

We live in a pretty D&D centric world now. I think it would eb great fro a lot of today's designers to go back and look at some of these older systems. There are a lot of good ideas (and some really bad ones... like the nearly unplayable FASA Star Trek and Dr. WHO games for example).

It would help to break us out of the same same games we see so much now.

oddly enough Champions is finally getting closer to the MMO world. Unfortunately, I feel the realtime console combat is too gimmicky for my tastes. It was a very good system, and I enjoyed the modified chunks that became City of Heroes/City of Villians.

Now I feel old ha ha ha.

I have long felt that we need to get away from the Gary Gygax Dungeons-and-Dragons model for MMOs, including classes, skill building, and the Tolkien-esque worlds. It's been done endlessly, and it's stale.

Instead, I've been thinking that a persistant historical-fiction FPS model might be more entertaining. For example, an early FPS, Battlefield 1942 had classes of sorts (assault, sniper, medic, engineer, anti-tank), but players weren't locked into any class. If you came on a body in the game, you could swap out gear, and change from Assault to Anti-tank. There was no skill building, but most players had a preferred playing style. Some perferred driving tanks, some flew aircraft whenever possible, some were snipers, etc, but that didn't mean if you normally carried a sniper rifle, you couldn't pick up a bazooka if necessary.

So have a persistant FPS game, and instead of 16 or 32 players on a side in a small map, support a world where thousands could play. Choose a setting: Roman Empire, Greek City States (300 anyone?), King Aurther's Britain, Feuding Japanese Warlords, Aztecs, Incans, , Egyptians, Shaka Zulu, whatever you choose. Some people will prefer infantry, some people cavalry, some would be archers, but just have the gear available->crafters, and get out of the way. No skill building (other than mouse/keyboard/game knowledge), and no money/skill/gear/quest grind.

Anything but yet another grind fest with tanks, healers, and nukers, please, and canned predictable quests and back story. Let us make our own stories, dammit!

Some of the ideas mentioned above already exist in small MMO out there.

Owain abArawn - check out World War II Online. The graphics aren't up to the latest quality, but it's a player skill based FPS game where smaller groups contest for maps that make up the larger world of Europe. It's developed by a small company, but has a very loyal following. It has strategic level roles as well as front line combat troop roles. No grind in the form of skills or levels is necessary, as you can jump into the fight right away. However, there is a player driven social environment, where clans or guilds get together and plan attacks on certain maps.

On that note, I'd love to see more games like this, with different settings - Feudal Japan, medieval Europe etc.

The focus on gear and levels has also been noted by other companies, and there are two fantasy based FPS style MMORPG from smaller European companies that are branching away from that. One from Sweden I believe, is called Mortal Online, and it is in beta at the moment. The other from a Greek/Norwegian team, called Darkfall Online, is similar. I would describe them here, but there's too much to describe really. They both claim a focus on providing a 'sandbox' environment, letting the players create the content. Google them and take a look.

Sorry, I don't know of any decent post-apocalyptic MMOs that break the current WoW mold. Fallen Earth, from an independent American developer, is somewhat like that, but it looks to lack the depth of exploration of the societal repercussions of the apocalypse that you mention.

Infinity: The Quest for Earth probably deserves a mention here as well as a game under private development that promises (threatens?) to do some very different things.

Among the most important of these features are probably: millions of highly detailed, procedurally-generated planets; atmospheric flight transitioning between nap-of-earth and deep space; and no character skills -- it's all about player skill.

I don't necessarily want to play a game that eliminates character abilities entirely. That's a bit too hardcore for me! But I salute the designer of Infinity for being willing to make a game that questions the assumption that character abilities are a requirement.

On the other hand, the procedural generation of a truly vast number of locations in the game universe will, if Infinity ever sees the light of day, smash some theories about what's not possible in an exploration-oriented gameworld. If nothing else, I hope the creator of Infinity is designing his code so that the world engine can be licensed -- that could be an incredible resource for someone willing and able to integrate it with a compelling character ability and narrative system.

On a related note, I no longer argue with negative types who say that some of these things "can't" be done. Only a playable game has a chance of persuading them that these alternatives to MMORPG conventions -- tank/DPS/support roles, classes, character advancement, etc. -- might actually work.

Then we'll get to argue about whether these things *should* be implemented... but that's a different discussion. :)

There's one major problem with all this, and that's inherent in the very nature of games. It's one of balance and role. For instance, if all players have all options, then there will be a optimal set of abilities for any one encounter. So we restrict them, we say, all right well you can't just heal yourself AND do lots of damage, so we'll make you pick one. Now even though you don't define the role, players will take it on themselves to do so.

One of the ways to avoid this is to make a more *player skill* oriented game. One in which the archetypes aren't "necessary". In this sort of environment, design needs to be geared towards the concept that any one player, with time, effort and skill, could overcome any obstacle. Having more players who can help out, merely reduces the amount of time, effort, and skill involved. Then you need to make the player's options interesting, to encourage players to branch out from their ordinary roles. In this way restrictions are important, but they need to be clever. Take for instance Guild Wars and it's skill/attribute system. It allows only 8 skills on the bar at any one time, so while a player could both heal, and fight, they then couldn't defend them self at the same time. This skill choice makes players think far more carefully about what they would include. Now one would think this would cause players to build into the ordinary archetypes anyway (and a lot of the time this is indeed the case), but a quick look at Guild Wars pvp shows some interesting ideas. There isn't always a healer in a team, a lot of the time people will each carry their own skills for healing and then rely on each other to mitigate damage to the point that incoming damage is manageable, sometimes people work on disrupting their opponents rather than duking it out. I personally have run a 60-70 match streak with just an Assasin, Necromancer, Paragon(no heals) and a Mesmer. In this instance we lack what the normal archetypes would insist we need to succeed, we have no healer, and no one capable of tanking. But through an interesting (and well thought out) combo of skills we were always able to keep our opponents off balance and win.

There's no reason this concept couldn't be taken further, the removal of class altogether. How about enhancing character creation to include several weapon types, and several skill options, these might determine you're characters path throughout the rest of the game, and if the number of options is great enough, could lead to some highly varied characters. I might choose to wield a scythe, use physical combat abilities and necromancy (technically I can do that in Guild Wars already), then if the skill range is clever enough I could use these abilities to fill almost every role in combat.

The primary advantage of such a system, is you couldn't guarantee that when building a party you will have access to the primary archetypes, you might instead have to form a motley assortment of characters and abilities into a workable group, and if the game is designed well enough, such might just be feasible. In fact, if it is feasible, you will find players far more open to trying out interesting ideas as they won't feel locked into using the same combination to succeed. For instance in WoW, there is no room to not take a healer during a raid, without a healer you *WILL* die. So there's a choice already made for the players. With the introduction of aggro, without a tank, you *WILL* die. There's no room for a character who just throws down support spells, or creates walls to choke enemy approaches. There's no character who raises a horde of undead minions to get in the bosses way while the other shoot safely from a distance, there's no way for a group of tenacious warriors to gang up on the boss, to gather around a fallen ally, get him to safety and chuck a potion down his throat so he can get back in the fight.

Christopher, one reason for the lack of choices in WoW, as you describe, is the cop out that developers all use of substituting hit points for AI. Raid levels aren't necessarily hard because the mobs are skilled or use effective tactics as much as they are insanely overpowered or nearly invulnerable. How much easier is it to give a mob 100,000 hit points than it is to develop an effective, adaptive, flexible AI. This is one reason why developers find themselves on a perpetual treadmill of providing updates, expansions, and additional content. Their current content is static and predictable. Perhaps a better solution would be to implement a dynamic unpredictable spawning system with mobs that have better AI. That way, your content refreshes itself, and players can never be quite sure what they will encounter, where they will encounter it, or what it will do when it is encountered.

I would think that in the long run, that would require less development effort than the constant update/expansion cycle.

Reading a lot of what you guys (and gals) are saying on the topic, I wanted to drop a few words of my own. I've been playing MMOs for the last 10 years probably, everything from Diablo 1 to currently World of Warcraft, which I've been playing since it released. The latter of these being why I want to jump in on this band wagon. The greatest thing about when I played Star Wars Galaxy was that it was very, VERY open for players to play how they wanted to, with so many different options. I liked that a 'profession' could be making droids, and there were countless numbers of ways to make said droid. I just loved that. But in the games such as WoW, D1, D2, and many of the other current ones, like said in the past, you have your hunters, rogues, healers, tanks, and that's about it. No one is willing to push the bucket. I spent the time leveling to 60 in a game, which was the highest you could go, then all the content that was open and even a challenge to the players, was just fully repetitious and BORING after a while. Said game released and expansion allowing you to level to 80, which I reached a few months ago, and yet again, the endless repetition of things to do in the game. Yes, I can create a new character and level all over again, but the stuff you do to level is the same stuff you already did, removing any surprises or new experiences. They are coming out with yet another expansion, and talk is of adding another 5 levels that you can obtain. But, I think it's time I cut the cord on this game, because I know what the end result is. I will spend time trying to hit level 85, and then I'll be stuck in the tarpit of content, yet again. Sorry, I know this is a more of a rant, but it's just from a gamer's prospective on why MMOs are taking a fall. I understand completely that there are other types of MMOs out there, and they are not limited to just MMORPGs. There are games like EVE, SWG, racing MMOs, and many others that we can venture to for a change of pace. Most MMOs, though, do limit the number of people that you can 'group' with to acocmplish tasks, and don't really allow for that world interaction that most people strive for. Those games tend to include things like 'world chat' to try and makeup for it.

@ Owain abArawn

Kind of jokingly... Doesn't Pokémon already offer the random spawning points and mobs? =)

@ Bart, others - If anyone on the thread has a game they'd like me to check out I'd be happy to, and I'll review it in my blog.

@Ed Hunter - "Outside of the Guild/Raid group dynamic, taverns and locale's in MMO's everywhere are empty, there is no reason to interact with other players."


I remember the good old days of early Ultima Online, sitting around in a tavern in Brittania having a game of chess with the random stranger. :(

I think the whole concept of player interaction has never been removed from the games. Heck, it's probably more viable now with friend lists, grouping, raiding, guilds etc. But society needs to be able to slow down and accept these as a medium of entertainment. I got into a "slow-paced" MMORPG when I was in high school and the social aspects of the game made it more enjoyable (at least in my memories) because there was time to be social. Society as a whole seems to be ramping up towards instant gratification and constant action. It now becomes very noticeable from generation to generation, and the arts (video games included) seem to be copying life with their constant action and instant satisfaction.

@ J Z

The death of "downtime" in MMOS has killed a lot of the social aspects to speed leveling to endagame content.

I met most of my online friends playing EQ1 (and FPS games). Then some more in SWG (which had cantina and entertainer interaction required for their "blue bar" mechanic... so we have semi-enforced social interaction and hubs). I've gotten to know maybe 5 people well since SWG, and I am someone that does a lot of PUG activities in every game i play.

After that all the tools the games added mostly helped people keep track of the people they already know.

In a lot of ways game forums have taken over a lot of the"open" social aspects of the MMOs they serve.
Everyone is too busy soloing furiously to stop and talk ingame anymore.

---------
Back to the Classes discussion. I almost always play unpopular species/class combos. I get to be on the wrong end of group snobbery a lot. My worst run was probably the years I spent as an EQ2 Bruiser... who I swear existed in most guilds as novelty alts. Even with a good reputation it was hard to get groups unless an overpowered group just wanted to fill the last spot (which they often didn't to keep loot shares higher).


Probably the thing that bothers me the most about classes is that kind of snobbery (especially in games with holy trinities). 80% of classes fight for less than 1/2 the group spots. Then DPS counts become the measure of your existence.

Mostly I think my problems with classes are more about what they have become, rather than the basic theory of them.

@Andy Hayward Anyone able to get me into the Aventurine MMO Darkfall to review it?

I think that VoIP programs like Ventrilo put serious constraints on the potential for virtual socialization.

If you assume that a large portion of the community within an MMO has the drive to push themselves to progress through the game, they often tend to fall into the routine of approaching many aspects of play from a utilitarian viewpoint. For example, resource gathering or quest grinding becomes about efficiency to many players once they move beyond much of the novelty associated with the learning stages of play.

The same concept seems to apply to communication and social interaction with achievement and progression based MMO experiences; players communicate to get the job done. Ideally game scenarios could be utilized to shape the player experience and strongly encourage deeper, more meaningful and perhaps more personal social interaction. Placing constraints on proximity or activity or some other game condition involving the player's ability to communicate with other players would potentially allow for the development of more interesting social atmospheres in the game. For example, if you were unable to chat with friends unless your character were within shouting range, the use of elements like taverns would be much more natural.

Unfortunately, the placement of these constraints on communication is completely thwarted by VoIP programs because players simply would not embrace communication systems with constraints when they are easily circumvented using third party programs.

Owain abArawn
Naw, AI has little to do with it. Sure good AI could spice the game up a bit, but even if the enemies are predictable, that doesn't mean the players should be limited in their approach, see in wow, even if the enemies were unpredictable, the players would react the same way. The tanks would still rush out to get clobbered in the face, while the healer tries to heal him and everyone else runs around shooting pretty balls of light.

The real problem lies in class design. In games like WoW, the classes/talents are built to "fill a role". This means that you're already building a niche character as soon as you pick a class. DnD has an advantage here, while there is a social connotation that some classes should do a certain thing (clerics are healers, fighters are front line etc), it has enough options open that a player could do something completely radical. The Cleric could take a bunch of fighting and support spells and go front line, while the fighter picks up a bow, learns some alchemy and sit at the back taking pot shots and rushing over to those who need a heal. Multi-classing in fact allows for extreme flexibility in character design.

Games should take a similar approach to their design. It should be a case of here's a set of skills, perhaps class determinate, perhaps not. Now use them to solve this problem, rather than, here's your class, here's the problem, use your class as is expected of you.

To be honest the best way to do this would be to avoid traditional classes and mechanics altogether. No aggro holding abilities makes tanking a useless concept, put mages under pressure more, so that terrain controlling and evasive abilities become necessities, hell pull a dnd and make them pick a school of magic so it's not all boom boom. Remove the healer class, instead expect everyone to take care of themselves. Pull a GWs, give rangers traps and pets, and make them choose, between using these things and being your regular old *twang thunk*. Even more important, add INTERESTING abilities, with cool interactions.

Wow has snares and a few conditions, but nothing spectacular, and nothing that's not used in anything other than the occasional niche scenario (unless soloing). It's not like you can truly blind enemies, or have long running battles with a boss. Guerilla warfare isn't an option, enemies heal when you leave combat with them. Enemies who get hit by abilities take no notice of it and just keep charging (well they've started implementing this sorta stuff), simple knock back and interrupt mechanics could make something as bland as a ranger far more interesting. Many of the clever abilities don't work against the bosses because they're immune to them, and while this sort of thing could show up once and a while, simply removing a tool from the players toolbox for balance, should suggest the skill needs fixing, or the boss does.

A proposition: (Do note it is a rather noble one, inspired by the comment "Someone needs to step up and fund an MMO specifically to break the mold. Who cares if you don't get 12 million people. If you get 1 million people you win. If you sustain 500k people, you win, etc.")

We clearly have members of many fields and experience levels here, discussing ideas for an MMOG to break the mold, to be unlike anything else seen before. And we need to expand on that, this simple comment system can not contain such a thing. Lets take all our ideas and comments, and expand it, find and discuss what could be done to improve MMOGs, most specifically the original idea of a virtual world. I remember first firing up WoW after discovering pen and paper RPG's (I am a younger programmer), and I thought about being able to interact with that or this, needless to say I was fast dissappointed. I want to expand on that original concept.

So on to my proposition, lets A) Discuss and develop these ideas to points that have valid concrete arguments, with a multitude of valid solutions. (Forums + Wiki; anyone?) From that point when in the future anyone needs to complain about something, point to a wiki page. We can tell devs and industry people what people in their communities, and developers for that matter, want. And then we can move on to B) This is where I said my 'rather noble' concept comes in. Make an MMOG. Money can be replaced by donations and volunteers, there are plenty of free development tracking websites out there, or we can host our own.

So thats my crazy proposition. (Anybody got some free webspace? I can make some, but it will be slow like no other)


But on to my take on MMOG's, I recently saw an amazing gmod... not sure what to call it, mod? mod of the sandbox mod? It's not your typical lua gamemode, or lua weapon you just throw togeather this thing is... insane? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMa-zx4dLnA) Long story short, they took the source engine, through gmod, and made a web of linked together roleplay servers, including flash games and youtube! I know that dosn't fit with most MMOG's but it is still a step towards making an immersive universe. Combine this with LOVE, the one man MMOG project in which you create your own community/city and explore an ever changing world. And you have mini MMOG's coming into existence.

I believe the future of MMOG's lies in the community fanatics, people creating games they believe will be appealing, massive industry games are getting worse (Not just MMOG's), and the community is going to pick it up. If I and many other amazing game loving people, were given control of something anywhere near an A-List MMOG, it would be an unbelievable game. I have had over the years, many ideas for MMOG's I write them dutifully down hoping one day to actually make them. And not one of them mentions a traditional class system.

Give me a game like Dragonrealms where I can sit in a city for days on end, and yet have enough options to feel like I am still advancing myself (including simply RP-ing), and I'll probably die happy.

I miss the Empath's guild where nearly EVERY wounded player would end up because that's where you knew you could find a healer, and all that was expected in exchange for healing was a gem or two.

I miss the thieves hiding on every street corner (Especially outside the bank) waiting for another player with heavy pockets to stroll by so they could rob them blind, and I miss their hidden guilds who's locations were at that time a violently protected secret.

I miss foraging for herbs and then spending hours crushing or mixing or drying or any of dozens of things you could do to try and make them into some sort of healing salve/potion/cream/whatever.

I miss the GM run events...wars where players could lose (and face the consequences of occupation and refugee camps), game changing events that could sap a profession of some of it's main abilities for a time (or even of their main guildhall until players put up the funds to rebuild it), or simply the opening of new areas - which they then required players to find themselves with no help from above.

I wants a MMO with that kind of interactive freedom. Hell, Dragonrealms is still running and as far as I know only fairly recently have people begun to finally reach the top levels that were technically available back when I played. And yet I saw fairly little bitching about the grind. Who needs an end game when the game itself is fun to play?

Christopher Wragg

I think AI has everything to do with with it. Consider your typical mob combat scenario. I come across a small group of mobs. I approach to just beyond agro range, and pick a target. If I am a fighter, I use some sort of ranged attack to effect a pull, perhaps a bow or a thrown weapon. The target leaves his group of mates, and runs up to me solo while I switch weapons. I beat on him until he drops, or perhaps he tries to run as he gets low on health, and so a hamstring or something similar to slow or stun him and I finish him off. While this was all going on, accompanied by the loud clang of steel on steel and screams of the dying, the rest of the mobs stand about, scratching their collective butts. I check my health, wait a few seconds if necessary to get back up to full health and repeat the process on the rest of the spawn.

I have used variations on that same formula in UO, DaOC, ShadowBane, Star Wars Galaxies, WoW, Vanguard, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, and most recently, DarkFall, so I think I am pretty secure in asserting that all those games, over a span of a decade, have all used pretty much the same dogshit industry standard AI model. Raids are only different in the number of friends you need to drag into the party to compensate for the insane number of hit points/damage capabilities of your typical boss. The AI is usually just as stoopid.

Now consider how much success I'd have with those same tactics against a group of other players in a free for all PvP environment. I'd never get the first shot off before being charged, flanked, mobbed and pwn'ed.

So consider the same scenario with an improved AI. If I can see them, they can see me, so no sneaking up to an artificial short agro range. If one mob spots me, he alerts his partners. If I am in full plate, glowing with enchantments, carrying a +9 polearm of vanquishing whoop-ass that's throwing off electric blue flames, and they are all in patched leather carrying rusty cutlasses, they probably should decide to run like hell, and faster than me, since I'm carrying 100 pounds of gear.

If not, then one mob should charge me, while another uses a ranged attack, and another runs to flank me, another moves to cut off my retreat, etc, etc. Just like actual players would do. They should stun me, slow me, poison me, perform unnatural acts upon me, piss on my corpse, cut off my head and put it on a pike, and otherwise convince me that this wasn't my smartest move of the day.

A challenging PvE encounter shouldn't require a 100,000 hit point boss to compensate for stoopid AI.

With braindead AI, players WILL limit their approach because they will choose the path of least resistance in order to kill things with the least effort and the maximum profit. Classes depend on braindead AI, because without stoopid mobs, how else is a taunt from a low DPS tank supposed to work? Another player will look at the tank with his dogshit dps one handed weapon, and will very correctly decide to bypass him to get at that squishy mage who is winding up a face melting spell if not interrupted, or that healer, or whatever is an actually a greater threat than the tank, who is typically the lowest threat in the group.

The fact that you have different templates for PvP toons and PvE toons, solo toons and raid toons illustrates the failure of not only MMO AI design, but class design as well. How is it that a warrior, which should be the premiere killing machine in PvP is typically the least favored, lowest damage inflicting build? He's a FRICKIN' WARRIOR, for God's sake!

Mortal Online, from what I've read, will be going back to the UO skill based model rather than the class/level model, where you can mix and match from a wide variety of skills rather than being forced into a restrictive class based straight jacket. That is a step in the right direction. I think they will also have a UO like PvP model, so even if they do feature brain dead NPC AI, at least other characters will present a proper challenge.

In this current age of WoW clones, that's about as much as players can hope for.

What annoys me is that how to create the MMO 2.0 is already known yet no one talks about it! It’s so darn obvious, why is no one mentioning it in this tread!

A MMO today is generally an rpg with a great deal of people playing together. And that is the problem!

An rpg will after a set amount of time grow stale because it is a rpg.

The solution is to combine several genres and use the strength from each one.

All the technology is out there one just has to make use of it!

We got the technology to auto generate landscapes.
Sim city got the technology to build cities. Even old game like populous got the technology to manipulate landscape and build cities
Grand strategy got the technology to make big things like politicks manageable.
And a various simulations from flash games for trading to farming exists.
Rpg got rpg stuff

Make them all interact with one another. Make the casual player playing that farm flash game have and effect on the mmo and visa versa. Make the leaders of big groups play the game as a grand strategy game and select people to build cities for them in uninhabited places and make these people again command adventurers to get rid of unwanted stuff at the building site.

The first to unlock the way to combine several genres like flash games for casual people to strategy games for gamers, into a MMO will unlock the possibility to get more wealth to be generated than any other mmo yet has done.

If I had my choice I'd make a purely skill based game, with guilds/classes simply being organizations you join to focus on core skills and perhaps gain access to specialized talents/spells/training.

So say you just created a character, maybe with a selection of backstories/origins to give some customization of starting skills, but in general you have the same basic skill set as everyone else (know which end to hold a sword at, know that dodging in combat is at least good to try, ect.) From here (in my game) you would have an option...do you go straight out and start adventuring and train as you go, or do you join say the Adventurer's Guild or the Academy for some guided training in basic skills? Maybe the guild would grant you some combat training, while the academy would train you in more arcane skills (I'd personally like specialized guilds, Mage/Warrior/Paladin and such, to require some basic experience in their main skills to join. Just cause)

So you decide to just go wandering and see what you can do. You go out and manage to kill a wild pig, then you check your skill page and see that you have started learning a bit more swordsmanship and dodging. Then off in the distance you see some flashes of light and go to investigate, finding another player flinging fireballs at another wild pig. Now (in my mind) if you decided to sit and watch, with my skill based system you would eventually start to pick up the basics of how he casts that spell simply by observing it - and if you watched him long enough you might even gain a rank in magic and be able to cast a weak version of it yourself. So even though the other player may have taken the easier route and learned to cast the spell from a master, by observing people cast the spell long enough another player might at least pick up the basics so he could practice it himself.

So guilds would be for those who wish to either advance quicker in certain skills or gain access to specialized training using those skills. Adventuring without joining a guild would simply be a slower/broader and more patchwork way of advancement. And with being able to learn skills by observation...you have an easy and IC way of encouraging players to spend time in common areas, such as players sitting around an arena dueling while others sit around talking and learning some combat skills in the process, or maybe even sitting in a tavern talking while trying to raise their drinking skill by watching the guy at the end of the bar who keeps knocking em back (but that's just me, lol)

As for levels in general...I personally wouldn't miss them, but if anything maybe have a core experience total of your skills, so that whatever you spend your time doing it all adds up towards your next level and whatever boosts that brings. And if you join a guild, maybe have a seperate ranking system based upon your skill ranks in whatever skills they focus on. Rather than these guild ranks granting stat boosts, it might simply represent you advancing through the guild hierarchy and therefor gaining access to more advanced training.

A few thoughts...

There seems to be a strong connection that perhaps shouldn't be there between classes and roles. Certainly classes can be very restrictive or non-restrictive as desired; allowing people to be a fighter of any specialty really is that easy (you could do so way back in 2e D&D with proficiencies). There is then the idea of roles (which is often rolled into classes)... and that's probably harder if not impossible to change. Part of it is perhaps because these roles -work- and are time tested; real world and otherwise, the super specialized combined arms party work better than other options. Heck, it's older than RPGs - Sun Tzu once said "Clamor in the east, attack in the west" which basically sums up the idea of a tank drawing aggro while a rogue attacks and does damage. He also said something along the lines of "When Wu attacks Wei, attack Wu instead of moving to assist Wei." Basically, kill the cleric/support before worrying about the guys attacking you directly.

In addition, these roles work in part because of the very simple options available. When all you have is combat, well... that's all you're going to need no matter how much flavor abilities your classes may have. You can be an undead mage all you wait that doesn't need to breath but if you're never put in a position where breathing is important, it's a pretty pointless ability to balance around.

Lastly, classes as a mechanic themselves shouldn't simply be thrown out completely. They can work in context of the game you're working with and in. In addition, having specialized classes can also influence the game community. A system that is classless or allows anyone to have the abilities of all classes inherently de-emphasizes grouping (because everyone can do everything, they don't need anyone other than friends)... which may be a bad thing depending on your opinion. But it can also be a good thing if you're trying to focus on a particularly theme for your game.

To clarify a little on the first part of my comment, ultimately a (well-crafted) class system is little more than the optimal path/dominant strategy distilled. In a well crafted class system, the various classes are merely the things players would be doing anyway within a given context.

On the second part, as an example, I bring up Maid the RPG. Overcome your giggles to take a look at the game rules; the game emphasizes through it's rules interaction and character. While characters and the game could certainly be run as very combat oriented, ultimately, doing so would prove cumbersome for people use to the 100+ pages of combat rules in D&D (or what not).

I jotted down some MMO game ideas a few months back. This MMO I envision would take out levels completely and instead put the focus on long and involved quests and world exploration. The rewards for doing these things are the main way to progress, making that the game's ideal way to play. Killing of mobs wouldn't be a way to gain XP (because there is none) instead mobs will just be an inherent danger while traveling, or an obstacle on your way to completing a quest. Another goal of the MMO I envision is to create a classless game, but with classes! (Huh? What the heck are you talking about, how is that possible!?) Read below for the bullet points I jotted down about my game idea, I realize there may be some holes in the gameplay, obviously, but I wasn't really attempting to create an entire game when I wrote all that down. All I was trying to do was take an idea and run with it and not forget it.

An MMORPG without levels.

All players start their first life equal, but as different classes. Later lives start to blur the class line despite being tagged as say a "warrior". That warrior might have many different skills from past lives (other classes). For instance if that 2nd life warrior lived a first life as a sorcerer then he might have access to "frost bolt" despite being a warrior. The warrior's base stats might lower the damage of the frost bolt, and the amount of times he can cast it (because of a smaller mana pool), but he still has access to it. As far as gear is concerned, sorcerers for example will be able to wear heavy armor as long as they have lived a past life as a heavy armor wearer and earned those proficiencies then created their second life sorcerer to carry over those proficiencies.

To carry over an armor proficiency it will take a skill slot meaning that is one less combat skill you can carry over. If a sorcerer carries over "heavy armor" to their second life then they will be able to wear heavy armor and light armor (because the class itself gets light armor innately). If they want to be able to wear any armor they'll have to take an additional skill slot and dedicate it to "medium armor" plus they will have had to played an entire life as a medium armor wearer and earned that proficiency through quest then passed it down their family line.

Skills are the form of progression, not levels.

Characters start out in their "prime" physically, and the idea is that as the body gets weaker the mind gets stronger.

Skill gain is non linear. While there will be skills that certain classes cannot learn (in a single life) there will also be multiple skill paths possible for characters of the same class.

Skills will be truely learned through action and quests not simply finding a trainer and training.

Characters can die permanently.

Characters can die of old age.

Depending on actions characters will "wear and tear" faster than others causing a sooner death.

When a character dies their knowledge is passed down their family line allowing the player to start a new character that is in their "prime" physically that retains knowledge discovered by their family.

Equipment from a past life can be left behind for family members, but they will suffer aging penalties that lower their stats. Preservation on three items to start can occur which will retain 100% of the item's original stats. These preservation slots can be increased over time. At some point all equipment will be able to be preserved.

Each time a player plays a life they can only be one class, but if a past life has been played as another class then skills from that class can be transfered over.

Not all quest lines and areas will be accessible in 1 life or even 2 lives some will require multiple lives to be led before being accessible.

Some quest lines and areas will be class specific and may even require multiple lives in a particular class to be led before gaining access to them.

Some of the most powerful abilities will require multiple lives to be led in a single class giving that family line a high specialization in a specific class.

Character creation will include a family crest that will be extremely customizable. All characters in a family line will wear this family crest or it will be visible in other ways.

Characters will be referred to by last name so that friends can always contact each other. First names can be changed with each new life, but have no effect on messaging.

Lifeline is basically how much time a character has left before they die permanently. This time can be shortened at a faster rate by doing certain quest lines (quests can take in-game years to complete) or actions in the game.

Lifeline timer can be stopped or started by the player. The reason for letting the player start and stop their own lifeline is so that during those times that they are lookign for a group they aren't dying if they don't want to be. Certain actions will always decrease time from a character's lifeline. If a character is currently on a quest or in a group they cannot die permanenty. If a character has been grouped for over 8 hours a check will be made to see if they should be permanently dead and if so they will die. This is to prevent people from staying online and grouped to remain alive. Another exception to the not dying while grouped rule is that a character can die after any new skill is gained or quest line is finished whether grouped or not.

There is no penalty for dying permanently because that would be counter productive. The point of the game is to live through a life and learn different things with each life lived. The only drawback to dying is that certain quest lines may not be accessible in your next life unless you choose the same class again. Some characters may die before they have fully learned all they can at which point if they want to learn things from that class they will have to start a new life as that class. So that this doesn't get repetitive there will be quests for second life characters that were not accessible the first go around.

There are a few things that subtract from a player's lifeline. Completed quests, certain discovered areas, real time if lifeline timer is turned on, and getting "knocked out" (HP to zero). The penalties for getting knocked out other than lowering your lifeline is an equipment quality hit. Equipment will be breakable entirely, gone forever if you die while the equipment is red. Players will sometimes not want their lifeline timer to run out too fast so that they can get the most out of their chosen class before having to start another life. Lifeline timer will not be affected from being knocked out in the first 3 days (actual playtime) of starting a new life. This prevents people that died an earlier life too soon from choosing a new class for the only purpose of getting a single skill then just getting knocked out to move on to their next life.

Since there is no grinding the simplistic "kill x of this" or "collect x of that" type quests are not going to be in the game to litter up a quest journal. Each quest will be a long quest chain. Some quest chains will be entirely soloable while others will not. Some groupable only quests can be outgrown to where a character in a later life is able to solo a groupable quest, and the reward will probably still be worth it because rewards are more than simply gear, they're also skills that can be used in your next life.

The game will be soloable throughout, but players that choose to group more will advance their skills at a quicker rate and will usually obtain more powerful skills in less lives. For instance a solo player will be able to solo certain quests in their first life, but will have to solo other quests in a second or third life when they are stronger while a player that groups more will be able to complete the quest chains that the solo player did in their third life on their first life. It really won't matter to the solo player because they will be progressing all along at their own rate and can still play the way they want, alone. The solo player may even have more fun trying to mix and match class skills best to conquer certain quest chains solo.

With each new life areas open up that were previously blocked off. This allows players to continue to discover new things even after they have been playing for a long time. Past areas can be re-explored with a new character, but it isn't required (so the game isn't the same for each life). Benefits to re-exploring past areas is that skills gained from those areas in a past life will be strengthened slightly. These re-explorations can only give this benefit once per life. Since it is a re-exploration the hit to the lifeline will not be as large as the original exploration, but there will be a hit. The player will have to decide if they want to re-explore to power up a certain skill or possibly live long enough to unlock a new skill later in life.This adds another layer to the game allowing players to re-explore certain areas to strengthen abilities that they like the most without lifeline penalties. Not everyone's abilities will be the same even if they have the same skills because people will choose different re-explorations to do or will not do re-explorations at all. There will be no cap on ability increases because each life should take a significant amount of time to complete which means characters will not overpower content faster than it can be developed.

If a player can learn every skill of every class in the game over many lives then it ruins all customization because once everyone does that then everyone will be the same. To prevent this each time a new life is started the player will be able to choose a specific amount of skills only to begin that life with. Any skills gained during that life will also be added onto the skills the character can use for that life. All skills gained throughout the entire game will be available during character creation for a new life. So a player could potentially have every skill from every class in the game, but they would only be able to load a specific amount each life. So if two players both had access to every single skill in the game they would still customize their character differently each life they started. As a character plays they will unlock more skill slots that can be used for their next life this will be capped however at some point.

Because a player can die permanently and will have to start a new life they will be able to customize their new life while playing a previous life. This is so that a player doesn't always have to go back to character creation each time they die permanently. At any time they can bring up a character creation tool to start planning how they want to live their next life (appearance, skills, attributes, preserved gear, etc).

Main goal for the game is to give players an alternative to grinding levels. Instead of grinding levels people are playing the game to discover many different areas and and to gain knowledge. Certain dungeon's and quest lines will lead to different skill gains, and not all quest lines or dungeons/areas will be able to be played in a single life. This will give players a reason to explore the entire world and every quest line they possibly can to gain the most benefits. As skills are gained they can be passed down to family members when a character dies. This will make for some interesting skill combinations. Some people will choose to play with different classes each life while others will choose to stick with one for a long period of time. The first example will have a great variety of skills while the second person will most likely have more focused and powerful skills. This method of lives and passing of skills allows players to play the game how they want and mold their character how they want to mold them. It also keeps things interesting because people don't get bored of a single class or wish that they had created another class later in the game because they can do that if they want to and still be adding to the strength of their main by doing it!

@ Owain abArawn
Now you miss the point, the lack of *choices* available to players has little to do with AI. If anything simple AI, raises the number of choices available to players (working on the concept of, if you are not being forced to react, you are instead free to act at will). For instance, given more complicated AI in a game like WoW, wouldn't raise the choices available to players, if anything it reduces the number of "correct" actions that can be taken. As such the classes would still have the same restrictions placed on them and more complicated AI would simply mean everyone dies.

If the enemy is smart enough to bypass the warrior, then what point having him, if the enemy is clever enough to kill the mage, the mage will die. The classes in WoW are not flexible enough to handle such a scenario. My point, is that without even any increase in AI or change to the enemy abilties, skill choice and use could be made far greater. This raises the number of choices a set of players could make before and during battle. As I was saying before, classes shouldn't be built with such harsh roles built into them. The players should be presented with a scenario, and then given the ability to work out their own way of surmounting it. Clever use of AI should merely alter the nature of the challenge.

In regards to other points in your post, most MMOs make use of linked mobs to simulate groups of enemies, even WoW has that. Also aggro is a clever concept, so without a warriors taunting abilties a mob would in fact run for the most annoying healer or mage. Taunts themselves aren't the offender (although they could be improved for greater game variability), its the simple fact that the mob *has* to be taunted because the classes couldn't deal with it otherwise.

@Blake Nicholas
"If a player can learn every skill of every class in the game over many lives then it ruins all customization because once everyone does that then everyone will be the same."

Not really true, although without decent balance then there will be a "most powerful" way to fight. If everyone has access to everything then personal preferences begin to show (assuming balance is correct). But your later attempt to balance it is very Guild Wars-esque.

@ Christopher Wragg

Well yea there will always be a most powerful way to fight, that's why I added the re-exploration to the game as a way to power up skills. By adding that I think it makes kind of an endless skill gain. One of the problems with MMOs and any kind of class or skill based system is that it has an end so once the end is reached, or known then people will start to maximize what is possible with the given tools. The only way to stop maximizing and stop people from coming up with most powerful builds is to make the game endless in some way. If the player can't possibly predict what kind of skill modifiers and gains they will get if they continue to do these re-explorations then it becomes impossible to determine if there is indeed a perfect build or most powerful skill set. The re-exploration idea for the game is primarily for "end game" players as a side thing to work on that will lead to much better skills.

"more complicated AI would simply mean everyone dies."

Not at all. More sophisticated AI means you need to employ more sophisticated tactics. If you stick with the tactics I described above of "pull, hit attack keys repeatedly until mob dies, rinse and repeat", then yes, a more sophisticated AI is going to give you grief.

If the enemy is smart enough to bypass the warrior, then the warrior needs the necessary skills to deny the enemy the ability to advance. Collision detection would be nice. Here I am with heavy armor and a tower shield, but a mob can walk through me like I wasn't there? That's bullshit! If he goes past me and presents me with an undefended side, I should be afforded an undefendable one shot kill to punish blatant stupidity.

Neither taunts nor agro are clever concepts as much as they are hacks to make up for the lack of effective collision detection. Agro should based on the which member of this party is going to kill me the quickest, and the guy in heavy armor who's in my face hacking at me with 3 feet of sharp steel, and who will open me up like gutted fish if I turn my back on him ought to be of sufficient threat to hold my attention without his having to shout, "NEENER, NEENER, NEENER, PIZZA FACE!!!"

The most unbalancing thing in these confrontations is the face melting mage. There have always been ranged attacks of one sort or another, but historically, they became ineffective once your troops were in contact with the enemy. You couldn't fire into the opposing force without fear of hitting your own troops. Once you have forces in contact, ranged attacks should be limited to those who can be hit without fear of hitting your own, such as rival mages/healer/archers.

I have no problem with games that afford players the ability to play a role, but I dislike those roles being enforced through the use of classes/levels. I think the ability to select different gear for different circumstances would be more entertaining. Some days, heavy armor, sword and tower shield may be the best, other days, boiled leather, bow and short sword may make more sense. A one size fits all AI does not lend itself to this kind of flexibilty, however.

Just remember that having a more complex AI doesn't mean that EVERY creature has to suddenly become a genius...more complex AI could simply mean giving that Giant Rat more rat-like actions rather than making it suddenly know exactly which one of you is the caster.

It's only certain mobs that would really need a devious sort of AI pattern, going up against a bunch of bandits on the road it would be the leader I would expect to be smart...not every one of his cannon-fodder followers.

So improving AI, while I don't consider it the solution to the problem of classes, is perfectly fine - just as long as they don't go overboard and make the whole MMO feel like a chess game against Deep Blue...

"Just remember that having a more complex AI doesn't mean that EVERY creature has to suddenly become a genius."

Well, it kind of goes without saying that AI should vary from creature to creature. It's the one style fits all AI I am criticizing. I should get different behavior if I attack a Dragon than I will if I attack a blue bird, but in many games, the response is identical. The only difference is in the number of hit points, and the amount of damage inflicted.

As a design goal, developers should want to make npc responses indistinguishable from a live player's response. If I were to play as a monster in a game, my actions should make sense in terms of my own survival, and hopefully, I wouldn't be stupid about it, worthy only as a resource to be farmed.

You don't have to make every mob a genius, but they shouldn't do things that are stupid.

I suppose my chief complaint is that mobs are too simplistic. They are predictable, and unless insanely overpowered, they offer no challenge.

One exception I remember were Liches in Ultima Online. They could be tough even for a reasonably experienced player. They would paralyze you, they would poison you at every opportunity, and if you tried to run from them, they'd teleport in front of you, and they hit hard as well. They employed many of the same tactics players used, and for a new player, hearing a Lich laugh had significant 'pucker' power.

PvE in most MMOs is merely an exercise in farming, not much different from chopping trees for firewood. If it were up to me, MMOs would have more Liches, and fewer giant rats, metaphorically speaking.

@ Owain
You somehow latch onto minor points in my posts and miss the overarching sentiment. It is admittedly frustrating. For instance;

"If the enemy is smart enough to bypass the warrior, then the warrior needs the necessary skills to deny the enemy the ability to advance."

Here you prove my point, which you're disagreeing with just above it? AI by itself isn't enough to make classes varied. If you change AI you MUST alter class as well to balance your game again. My point is that without ANY adjustment to AI, one could alter class/skills in such a way as to make a different set of tactics viable, increasing the variability of your game without necessarily breaking it. Of course better AI is wonderful to have, but AI is expensive, and the stronger it is, the more difficult for players to actually work out a viable strategy, causing you to walk a much finer line between enjoyment and frustration. Simply altering class and skill combinations to be unique and interesting is a much more viable and effective option than tweaking enemy AI.

Christopher Wragg

Frustrations abound.

First, I don't see that I am proving your point on anything. As currently implemented on most MMOs, there are multiple interrelated failures. Consider that a mob can walk right through me on his way to a caster, even though I am busy cutting his guts out with my sword. That is a combination of a class fault, an AI fault, and a basic combat system fault.

Because current MMOs have decided that warriors can be strong defensively but weak offensively, that is a class fault, and a pretty unrealistic one at that. As a side effect, even though I am jamming my sword into the beastie, it perceives the mage as the greater threat. That is a combat system fault, due to lack of effective collision detection, and an AI fault as well. As a result, the class fault is compounded, requiring the use of an artificial Taunt special.

Consider the following real world scenario. I am faced with two opponants. The opponant that is closer to me is armed with a knife. Behind him is a person holding a gun. Yes, the person holding a gun is a significant threat, but if I ignore the person right in front of me holding the knife and try to push past him, the person holding the gun never need fire because I will be killed by the knife wielder. That is a failure in intelligence on my part, and in an MMO, it is a failure in AI

As I see it, the problems are inseparable. One reason the classes are simplistic and unnecessarily confining is that the AI is simplistic as well. Why should you need to alter classes/skills significantly? There is no need to provide players with a varied set of tactics when mobs adhere to a set of fixed predictable tactics. Even if you DID provide players with tactics 1 through 10, if mobs only use mob tactic x, and mob tactic x is best countered with player tactic 7, you can be sure that players will pick up on that almost immediately, and tactic 7 will be used exclusively against all mobs, because all mobs in every MMO I've played typically use the same tactic.

Simply altering class and skill combinations is a waste of development effort when mob AI is static and predictable.

Alright I'll address the issues you raise in reverse order;

Firstly lets pick some simple mob behaviour, we'll say the enemy attacks the first character to attack it and doesn't deviate (as simple as it gets). Alright so what tactics does a current MMO like wow give you, it gives you snares and it gives you a tank/healer combo. Cool that's two perfectly viable, equally effective methods of defeating said mob. Now if said mob is a boss they tend to make it immune to snares, and thus the tanking tactic becomes the only effective tactic. So what if we give rogues a dodge skill (not the dice roll already implemented), it requires timing, but if performed well they can avoid an attack, this ability can be used as long as the rogue has energy. So now we have another viable tactic for defeating that mob (certainly no worse than tanking). Lets add a few more such ideas....and you can see where this is going. The point is not to build a scenario where only tactic 7 is effective, but tactic 3, 6 and 9 are also equally viable strategies.

For instance, what if we took Priests, and rather than improving their heals, they could work it so that shielding people is an equally powerful substitute for healing, so all of a sudden the fight that could only be done with tank + healer, can now ALSO be done with rogue + shielder, or with tank + shielder, or with rogue + healer. Adding just 2 new sets of abilities has raised the number of viable tactics to 4 from 1.

Now to the above point...how does your scenario change *anything*, so the mob can't get past the warrior, due to more effective collision detection and threat, sweetness (I actually approve of this change), so it's back to bashing on the warrior, same as the taunt ability.....at least before if a warrior was poor at his ability to maintain aggro things *could* go wrong. So how do you fix that, how do you make the game fun again now that you've removed one of the risk elements? You add risk elements back in, and how?? You add skills. You give the mob the ability to shunt the warrior a distance away (skill), you give the mob an evasive ability (skill), you alter AI further to allow the mob to dance about the warrior, but now the warrior can't do what he needs to, so you might add a snare or speed boost for him (skills), or the mage needs to survive better so you add various mage escape abilities (skills), or you tell the mob to ignore the mage (alright that's AI), and we're back where we started, with the mob bashing on the warrior.

While I think AI can make the game a lot richer, a lot deeper, I don't think it adds nearly as much to what players are capable of, or their diversity, as skill combinations can. Not to mention that of the two AI is the more expensive to develop, and/or run. I'm beginning to feel like a broken record, but play a bit of Guild Wars, with 1200 skills, and with only 8 allowed on a bar at a time, the variety in what each character can do, and how they can do it is wild. Through clever building you can have mage tanks who never need a heal, warriors who use mesmer stances to survive mage assaults and then pummel them to death from close range, and the game survives these skills, it's balanced and well made, and apart from a tweak here and there it all works, even with simple AI.

In my example, hopefully the AI would not be so simplistic. The mob, facing not only a warrior but also a mage or a healer, would be foolish to engage, but would rather fall back, call for reinforcements, or just run. If it had reinforcements, it might wisely decide to engage the warrior so that his partner can slip past to engage the mage/healer. If the mob deems that it is sufficiently skilled and my party is weaker, it may engage anyway, and then it falls to my skill as a warrior to keep the beast at bay and defeat it. So how do I do that?

You suggest various specials. Dodges skills, evade skills, snare skills, speed boosts, taunts, all activated, I presume with various key mashing combinations. Hit a key, the dice roll, and something magic happens, or doesn't if you fail the roll. Meh.

One thing Age of Conan added to melee combat was the idea of directing your attack and defense. With one set of keys, you can defend equally in all directions, or concentrate your defense to a side where you expect the next attack to fall. Similarly, you can direct your next attack to a specific direction. If you attack a quadrant that is weakly defended, you do additional damage. An undefended zone yields massive damage. A strongly defended zone yields little or no damage.

So instead of an artificial 'dodge' skill, perhaps instead either I or the mob has to physically dodge an attack by moving correctly to avoid it instead of just hitting a button, and letting the pseudo random Gods decide if you dodged or not. Now our engagement is more like a basketball player trying to get past a defender in order to get to the basket. The mob feints left, and if I fall for it, it cuts right, slips my block, and now perhaps has an opportunity to effect an attack on the mage. As he passes by, instead of hitting a 'hamstring' button and hoping for the best, I have to make a successfull low strike targeting an exposed leg in the hopes of doing an actual hamstring or inflicting an otherwise disabling injury.

Technically, this is challenging. Given the current client/server architecture of MMOs, network communication lag would present a serious barrier to the kind of real time performance and response to make this workable. Perhaps one approach would be to offload the actual combat to the client, which would handle the AI and tactics and animations, and would report only the results back to the server.

This is my vision on how my ideal MMO would function. It would be less of an RPG, and more of a realistic combat simulation. At this point in time, I doubt the technology exists to implement my vision, but perhaps developers could use this approach as a design goal and implement something that might approach the ideal. As mentioned, the melee combat model in Age of Conan is a step in the right direction, in my mind.

In time, who knows? RPG games have come a long ways since I played Wizardry on an Apple IIe in the early 80's.

And now your really straying off topic. All this, while a lovely idea, doesn't actually improve class diversity. The warrior is still a tank and the mage is still a nuker, all your above scenario does is increase the layer of complexity that allows each class to fill that role. Effectively you've just grabbed a difficulty meter and ramped it up to high (added complexity does that). Your above scenario still requires the warrior to get between his mage companion and the foe, it's still the warriors only/best option.

Being able to call a shot to a particular body part is effectively the same as a skill, it's just called by a different name. Your basically just adding another set of abilities to the player's repertoire, which is what I was talking about before, but being able to call shots that way doesn't change the overall nature of what your class does. Being able to cripple is the same as a hamstring ability, being able to disarm is the same as chopping off an arm etc, one is just simple and stylised and works well because of it, the other has a stronger grounding in reality and is harder to implement/use.

As I mentioned in the first comment, I will be giving a lecture next week at GDC Austin on how better AI in MMOs can encourage better community gameplay. Rather than respond to 20 different people here and on other similar posts on this subject, I posted a mass response to my own Expert Blog.

AI and MMOs - The Controversy
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DaveMark/20090906/2942/AI_and_MMOs__The_Controver
sy.php

I think you do need those "magic four" roles, especially in cooperative play environments.

But I also think you should somehow innovate the way they are played. A friend of mine and I approached this problem by innovating on the resource mechanics of the classes and their roles. Each of them (4 at the moment, more are planned, however) has a unique and very distinguishable way (passive ability) of generating "mana", the resource required to use abilities.

It's a team vs. team Warcraft III mod called "Capture the Egg" (Warcraft III TFT v1.23 required, doesn't work with 1.24b atm)

http://war3.incgamers.com/?p=mod&m=11469

Oh. And we also didn't put in levels, experience, or items.

I'd be glad to hear what you think about this approach, especially if you think this puts some more spice into the classic 4-role model.

The single most gutsy step towards the direction the OP seems to want can be summed up in five words:

DON'T SHOW PLAYERS THE NUMBERS

Once you have the numeric underpinnings removed from view, you are freed to do pretty much anything you want (skill-based systems, procedural content, silent balancing and revisions), as "the man behind the curtain" is now hidden again. This will help greatly with immersion; realize, though, that it will also eliminate a major source of positive feedback and achievement which players have become accustomed to. Watching the numbers go up provides a sense of progress and relative stature, and if this significant source of positive feedback goes away you need to have something to replace it with. It will certainly alienate some (many!) players, but it will also attract others who otherwise might have passed it by.

Vegard Johansen:

That's brilliant and something I've been thinking about for a while. As a kid I used to generate beautiful landscapes using fractal-based tools like Vista Pro and early versions of Bryce. If one would to add "civilization spawning" formulaes, a totally randomized landscape, complete with cities, roads, rivers and even maybe a totally simulated natural ecosystem, an MMO could be totally ever-expanding. You could generate monsters on-the-fly using Spore-like random generators.

It would be a totally hands-off approach to MMO design. The developers would simply have to include the core storyline of the game with its series of supporting quests and missions, and the occasional patch fix (i.e. "The wandering reindeer have eaten all of the low-hanging mistletoe, hindering the Alchemists' crafting progression - we have fixed the issue."). Together with a skill-based system, advanced "if I can see him, he can see me" A.I. and an assortment of more organic/less artificial game mechanics, the MMO could be forever self-expanding and totally unpredictable.

And player housing? Let them build wherever they want! If a wandering Yeti tears their home down while they're offline, let it just be considered a "hasardous, less popular place to build". :P

And Owain AbArawn, I'll be following your posts from this day forth. Fascinating stuff. :)