because thats all there is to progress your character. i use to be a "hardcore" (LOL) raider, but i refuse to get into that crap again especially with the garbage that passes for humans i had to deal with in WOW and EQ2 in order to progress my character.

 

I can sympathize with hitting the level cap wall -  I've never been a raider, but hitting the level/skills/reputation cap is often the end of my motivation as well.  It bothers my completionist tendencies to not get at the materials in raids, but in the end I reject carrots that lead me away from my comfort zone and just try to blind myself to its existance.

Originally posted by AdamTM

Originally posted by TGSOL

Dynamics. Raiding shouldn't be a choreagraphed dance where victory is the result of merely performing the proper moves in the proper order. Players should need to adapt, in real time, to unpredictable and ever-changing circumstances in order to succeed.

Thats actually the holy grail of mmorpgs in the first place, problem is its technically not feasible unless you involve a second player-driven faction.

The problem is that the game can only fight players in a few ways:

Imperfect information-the game has tricks and traps you don't know about so the first couple times you get smashed, but once you figure it out the change is trivial. The thing about raid bosses is that the trick is learn and burn. You learn the trick and then burn the monster. Humans make different fuck ups every time and they make a lot and if you mess up there are still a lot of chances the enemy will mess up again and put you back to even or ahead and on and on it goes. Raid bosses have one trick. Its bosses constructed on Shadow of the Collosus thought patters. Your entire goal is to figure out the trick. But raid bosses are played over and over and over. They took a single player game idea where you completed a task and moved on and eventually you beat the game and put it in a game that doesn't end.

The mistake is that you can't take elements from finish and forget single player games and put them in a multiplayer game.

The problem is that all these console game kiddies come onto mmorpgs with this idea that it should be like that and then the industry shells out to make all this complex content based on those beliefs and they fuck themselves over.

Also all the players are dealing with identical content. A developer team of 100 cannot keep up with a player base of 10million 1 million of whom progress to raid content. Thats a 10000:1 player to developer ratio.

We have so many other problems as well. Ressurecting players but not monsters is stupid. Players should stay dead in a raid, or monsters should be able to respawn. As long as one side can continuously grow stronger while the other side just keeps getting weaker you have a problem.

There are a million other changes we can make to produce a design more conducive for a persistant multi player world.

One problem we see in single player strategy games is that the game doesn't get smarter and the player does. This is compensated for by having higher difficulty scenarios and settings give the computers more basic power. More resources and units and lands.

How can game content that is static deal with something as dynamic as individual player skill levels? The answer is that it can't, we need to get rid of static content.

The main problem is that the perfect is the enemy of the good. Many solutions are shot down because they won't solve the problem but really we should be working to minimize it over time and not expect a solution.

Random elements (different mobs, different patrols).

Random layout.

Random loot... and I don't mean a chance within a pre-determined pool of loot.

When things are static, they get stale after doing them once or twice. When they keep changing, it makes the longevity increase exponentially.

That's a large part of why so many older games like Diablo 1 & 2 stayed interesting to play through countless times.

Originally posted by kantseeme

Originally posted by Moaky07

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

 

---

Originally posted by Quizzical
If you need a carrot on a stick to get people to do content, then the content is poorly designed.  The solution is to fix the content, not to try to tell players that they have to do it anyway, even though it's boring.
Now, that's kind of your point.  As for how to make raids interesting, I really don't know.  I don't see any obvious answer of, if they did this or that differently, the raid would be interesting.  But I'd submit that there isn't a compelling reason why the game has to have raids at all.  If a game can't make it interesting to watch grass grow, then the solution is to not make players watch grass grow in order to play the game.
For dungeons, I'd submit that players shouldn't be pushed to repeat the same content a zillion times if you can avoid it.  If you are going to make players do the same content a bunch of times, then it needs to be randomized quite a bit, so as to be a different experience every time.  Randomization that has a broad variety while always giving something with suitably tuned difficulty and loot is very hard to do, though.

---

Exactly! ^^

Wrong

Keeping players coming back for their next "prize" is what makes themeparks work. They give ya a bunch of content, and as you progress thru it, your character grows in power.

 This "lets let the crafter make it" is NEVER....I repeat NEVER going to draw folks in like the current method. Just like FFA PVP, your average gamer isnt looking to spend 15 a month to be someone elses content. For traders to be a viable class, they not only need content coming thru them, but a mechanic in place that insures they get repeat business.

It would be ignorant to give crafters such a major role in the loot department when they are but a tiny segment of the population.

The quote under your avatar tells us everything we need to know about you and your type of game play.  and just fyi, your tyoe is the reason the industry is in the state its in now. your the type that jumps from game to game just like you did on your console. beat a game in 7 hours, take it back and get another game to beat in 4 hours rince and repeat.

you have taking that mentality to the mmo world and destroied it. fast leveling, fast instance, fast gear progression. fast fast fast. now now now. i dont understand why you would want to be told where to go next. be told how your gear should look. be told how to get gear. be told how long instances should be. be told how to play the game.

everything about the way you think about MMOs is wrong. dont care if i get flamed for saying it or not. but im sick and tired of people like you influencing the way these game Cos are making there games. suits sitting up in there ivroy towers telling game cos that were not goin to invest in your game because it doesent follow a ceritn type of model. you know the one i speek of.

we dont need more clones. we need a great sandbox game to come along and change the industry again. bring back the MASSIVE and the MULTIPLAYER of MMO.

Excuse me?

Project much do we?

"We" dont need a good damn sandbox. Maybe you do, but I will stick with EQ-esque games thank ye very much. The good thing about that is I am among the crowd getting new games made. You? Not so much.

Minecraft has the MMO sandbox building aspect covered. PVP can be found in numerous games, and if you are an Uncle Owen fan there is always A Tale in the Desert. Or you can get a second job. What ya cant do is force that shit on folks in themeparks.

Themepark progression works. EQ has kicked out like 18 expansions now. Just cause you dont appreciate it doesnt change the fact. Maybe someday sandboxers will support their titles enough to get more made, and not try to force their gaming style in a sub-genre where it doesnt belong.

Originally posted by Moaky07

Originally posted by kantseeme

The quote under your avatar tells us everything we need to know about you and your type of game play.  and just fyi, your tyoe is the reason the industry is in the state its in now. your the type that jumps from game to game just like you did on your console. beat a game in 7 hours, take it back and get another game to beat in 4 hours rince and repeat.

you have taking that mentality to the mmo world and destroied it. fast leveling, fast instance, fast gear progression. fast fast fast. now now now. i dont understand why you would want to be told where to go next. be told how your gear should look. be told how to get gear. be told how long instances should be. be told how to play the game.

everything about the way you think about MMOs is wrong. dont care if i get flamed for saying it or not. but im sick and tired of people like you influencing the way these game Cos are making there games. suits sitting up in there ivroy towers telling game cos that were not goin to invest in your game because it doesent follow a ceritn type of model. you know the one i speek of.

we dont need more clones. we need a great sandbox game to come along and change the industry again. bring back the MASSIVE and the MULTIPLAYER of MMO.

Excuse me?

Project much do we?

"We" dont need a good damn sandbox. Maybe you do, but I will stick with EQ-esque games thank ye very much. The good thing about that is I am among the crowd getting new games made. You? Not so much.

and ho0w are those games working out for you? hows all that great content that your blasting through. racing to the end like theres a huge prize waiting there for you when you get there. your right though. your getting your games made. hundreds of them in fact. to many to count. the more games that are made for you the thinner the heard becomes. now theres so much mundaine games out there its hard to sift through it all.

so now you buy and play game a for a few weeks, maybe a month. you get to max lvl and your borde. move on to the next game. 1 or 2 months spent in that game and your borde again. and this repeats itself till you dont know your ass from your elbow.

you wouldent know a good game if it fell out of the sky and landed on your ps3. and not for nothing but i dont belive your the type of person who would have ever played EQ. sorry im not buying it. maybe WOW after BC or war/rom those types but not eq.

so pat yourself on the back for fucking up the industry. you and all your MW3/Gears/mariocart buddys that wanted to role you asses over into the MMO world. it will take a miracle to bring this genre back from the state its in now. hope your proud.

Originally posted by kantseeme

Originally posted by Moaky07

Originally posted by kantseeme

The quote under your avatar tells us everything we need to know about you and your type of game play.  and just fyi, your tyoe is the reason the industry is in the state its in now. your the type that jumps from game to game just like you did on your console. beat a game in 7 hours, take it back and get another game to beat in 4 hours rince and repeat.

you have taking that mentality to the mmo world and destroied it. fast leveling, fast instance, fast gear progression. fast fast fast. now now now. i dont understand why you would want to be told where to go next. be told how your gear should look. be told how to get gear. be told how long instances should be. be told how to play the game.

everything about the way you think about MMOs is wrong. dont care if i get flamed for saying it or not. but im sick and tired of people like you influencing the way these game Cos are making there games. suits sitting up in there ivroy towers telling game cos that were not goin to invest in your game because it doesent follow a ceritn type of model. you know the one i speek of.

we dont need more clones. we need a great sandbox game to come along and change the industry again. bring back the MASSIVE and the MULTIPLAYER of MMO.

Excuse me?

Project much do we?

"We" dont need a good damn sandbox. Maybe you do, but I will stick with EQ-esque games thank ye very much. The good thing about that is I am among the crowd getting new games made. You? Not so much.

and ho0w are those games working out for you? hows all that great content that your blasting through. racing to the end like theres a huge prize waiting there for you when you get there. your right though. your getting your games made. hundreds of them in fact. to many to count. the more games that are made for you the thinner the heard becomes. now theres so much mundaine games out there its hard to sift through it all.

so now you buy and play game a for a few weeks, maybe a month. you get to max lvl and your borde. move on to the next game. 1 or 2 months spent in that game and your borde again. and this repeats itself till you dont know your ass from your elbow.

you wouldent know a good game if it fell out of the sky and landed on your ps3. and not for nothing but i dont belive your the type of person who would have ever played EQ. sorry im not buying it. maybe WOW after BC or war/rom those types but not eq.

so pat yourself on the back for fucking up the industry. you and all your MW3/Gears/mariocart buddys that wanted to role you asses over into the MMO world. it will take a miracle to bring this genre back from the state its in now. hope your proud.

This.

Originally posted by TGSOL

Originally posted by AdamTM

Originally posted by TGSOL

Dynamics. Raiding shouldn't be a choreagraphed dance where victory is the result of merely performing the proper moves in the proper order. Players should need to adapt, in real time, to unpredictable and ever-changing circumstances in order to succeed.

Thats actually the holy grail of mmorpgs in the first place, problem is its technically not feasible unless you involve a second player-driven faction.

Making something 100% dynamic would indeed be impossible, but making it a heck of a lot more dynamic than it currently is in most MMO's is perfectly feasable.

This. MMO's have the shittiest AI among all the game genres out there. Once upon a time, there may have been hardware/server-side restriction that didn't allow for anything more than a couple patterns of basic movement, but at this point there could be so much more variety taking place.

The problem is that  a huge contingent of players aren't actually interested in that. Just look at how a raid group freaks out if a tank so much as losing aggro for ten seconds. Name-calling and blame-game all around. The vast contigient of MMO players out there aren't actually interested in unpredictability, I don't think. To borrow a quote from elsewhere "People say they crave News, but what they really want is Olds".

That said, there are a few games out there that do a better job than most, but they're far and few between.

Originally posted by fenistil

As for PvE - like I said if your game offer nothing apart of running instanced dungeons over and over, like most current themeparks do - then you have to have shiny carrot at the end.

Then maybe the game should offer something other than running instanced dungeons over and over?  Or at least not require players to do so?

Basically, what you're saying is, if your game is terrible, then this is what you have to do to play it anyway.  I can understand why game designers worry about that.  But from a player's perspective, if the game is terrible, why play it in the first place?  Isn't the real fix to make a game that is actually fun?  What good is it to get gear that doesn't exist outside of a game that you hate?

Originally posted by Moaky07

Themepark progression works. EQ has kicked out like 18 expansions now. Just cause you dont appreciate it doesnt change the fact. Maybe someday sandboxers will support their titles enough to get more made, and not try to force their gaming style in a sub-genre where it doesnt belong.

Are you basically claiming that the way raiding is customarily done now is great, and that you've got plenty of AAA games that you like and are happy with?  If so, then good for you.  But it would be a difference of opinion between us.

Actually in an ideal world your typical player will reach the level cap right around when the next expansion comes out.  I do not like the idea of fast to endgame play the same dungeons over and over style. 

What you need is enough new content that people are not doing the same dungeon and raid over and over again.

This can be done with regular events with new content, or by having enough content to begin with that people do not bump up against such a wall.

I tend to favor sandboxes, but I like this thought exercise: How to develop a themepark style game where gear grinds aren't the primary reason for engaging in a dungeon/raid.

In a sandbox game, this is a bit easier to think about, or design (atleast for me). For example, an iron mine might be overrun with undead. Turn this into a raid such that, when you succeed you gain control of the mine for your guild, until such time as you lose it, the mine depletes, or what have you. That guild will then go find another mine to raid and gain control of. Ultimately, the mine (raids) represents wealth.

What if we tried to use this in a themepark game. You make the money sinks substantial enough that people really think twice about using that fast travel service or repair their gear to max. And now, make dungeons and raids reward coin.  You make the pimary influx of money come from dungeons and raids, with very little outside. It would give people a reason to do dungeons, without constantly waiting for that one item, it could stifle gold selling as well.

The idea is not without drawbacks and solo people would be at a loss for income as opposed to the group oriented people. The question if the game can still be considered a themepark is raised as well. I am also unsure if this would be an engaging way to create content, and if the acqusition of wealth is enough of a driving force for progression beyond adding an extra +1 to your weapons and armor. At least, its something worth thinking about.

The way I see it, the CoaS model isn't so much the problem in endgame style MMO's, it's the way it's implemented.  Currently, the common model is to start raiding needing 10 carrots to prep for the next tier, but to go from the hypothetical base raid ilevel (for the sake of example we'll call it 100) to the next tier you need 120 ilevel.  Thing is though, every boss drops gear of ilevel 120, but not lots of it and not every kill thereby creating the "grind" that people dislike so much.

I'd like to see a model where every kill gave EVERY player in the raid something for their efforts.  For example, the base endgame raid has a entrance requirement of 100 ilevel average.  The 2nd tier has a base of 120 ilevel.  You still need 10 carrots for progression if you want to do the next tier of raiding.  In my model every kill would grant a commendation that could be traded for gear or enhancements to said gear.  The first time you kill a boss you'd take your commendation and trade it for the appropriate carrot at ilevel 105, you'd get your new shiny to show off to the world and your boss kill achievement and a slight equipment upgrade.  For tourists and casuals they would get a sense of accomplishment for  their efforts.  Serious raiders would all be getting a slight upgrade to assist in furthering their progression on subsequent bosses. Kill all 10 bosses, you've got all 10 carrots in your bunch and you can spend further commendations for boss kills on upgrading equipment until it's maxed out at ilevel 120.  

Boss kill commendations could even be scaled so that progression would be the fastes means of getting your full ilevel 120 set, but that even a casual or tourist could EVENTUALLY have a full set of tier 1 should they choose to go that route.  By having the commendations linked to specific bosses and specific equipment slots, you would still be encouraging progression through the raids as the fastest way to advance and prepare for the 2nd tier, though by no means not the only way.

A system like this doesn't get rid of CoaS, but it adds more value to an individuals involement in encounters and doesn't just shift the CoaS to generic raid currency as some current reward models do.

If dungeons look great are real adventures on its own have puzzles and intresting encounters with enemy mobs, diversity and from time to time nice items to gather also won't take to long maybe 1.5 instead of 6 hours, i think dungeon would not be boring.

One of best implementations in Skyrim are DUNGEONS there awesome and dont even sometimes give uber items but they fun to do. Maybe also to do that i dont have to deal with other players who many times annoy me, man i love solo games:P

Hmm, "the carrot" was always a part of games. Almost by definition agame needs to have some kind of a goal, aka the carrot, whether it's winning over the other guy (Pong) or beating the computer (Space Invaders score).

However, this carrot does not have to be Skinnerianlingly (I invented this word!) exploitative. There are many very popular classical games which did not use these pack rat mechanics to motivate players. Here are my suggestions for making dungeons and raids (coorpg content in mmo) attractive even without the power creep (gear grind)

1) Cosmetic rewards - titles and distinctive gear to show off without your accomplishments being marred by accusations of no-lifing.

2) Increasing difficulty for dungeons, and not in just two levels. Personally I found Diablo 2 a pretty simple and mediocre game, but where it truly got me were the additional two difficulty modes. When you beat the game on Hell difficulty you really knew you accomplished somehting.

3) Random events in dungeons. When I played D&D I loved random encounter tables, where the DM would roll the dice and who knows what would happen! As a total lowbie you could even encounter Tarrasque, the most powerful monster in the game and you would have to deal with it! That was great, you always had to think on your feet and you could never be truly sure what would happen next.

4) Scoring System in Dungeons. Some games with huge replayability enable you to tweak the difficulty of content and get rewarded accordingly. It can be really fun to ramp up the difficulty and see just how far you can go. Of course, public bragging with those high scores is absolutely vital component to this system.

Originally posted by kantseeme

Originally posted by Moaky07

Originally posted by kantseeme

The quote under your avatar tells us everything we need to know about you and your type of game play.  and just fyi, your tyoe is the reason the industry is in the state its in now. your the type that jumps from game to game just like you did on your console. beat a game in 7 hours, take it back and get another game to beat in 4 hours rince and repeat.

you have taking that mentality to the mmo world and destroied it. fast leveling, fast instance, fast gear progression. fast fast fast. now now now. i dont understand why you would want to be told where to go next. be told how your gear should look. be told how to get gear. be told how long instances should be. be told how to play the game.

everything about the way you think about MMOs is wrong. dont care if i get flamed for saying it or not. but im sick and tired of people like you influencing the way these game Cos are making there games. suits sitting up in there ivroy towers telling game cos that were not goin to invest in your game because it doesent follow a ceritn type of model. you know the one i speek of.

we dont need more clones. we need a great sandbox game to come along and change the industry again. bring back the MASSIVE and the MULTIPLAYER of MMO.

Excuse me?

Project much do we?

"We" dont need a good damn sandbox. Maybe you do, but I will stick with EQ-esque games thank ye very much. The good thing about that is I am among the crowd getting new games made. You? Not so much.

and ho0w are those games working out for you? hows all that great content that your blasting through. racing to the end like theres a huge prize waiting there for you when you get there. your right though. your getting your games made. hundreds of them in fact. to many to count. the more games that are made for you the thinner the heard becomes. now theres so much mundaine games out there its hard to sift through it all.

so now you buy and play game a for a few weeks, maybe a month. you get to max lvl and your borde. move on to the next game. 1 or 2 months spent in that game and your borde again. and this repeats itself till you dont know your ass from your elbow.

you wouldent know a good game if it fell out of the sky and landed on your ps3. and not for nothing but i dont belive your the type of person who would have ever played EQ. sorry im not buying it. maybe WOW after BC or war/rom those types but not eq.

so pat yourself on the back for fucking up the industry. you and all your MW3/Gears/mariocart buddys that wanted to role you asses over into the MMO world. it will take a miracle to bring this genre back from the state its in now. hope your proud.

I played EQ from Feb01 to mid 06 on the Mithaniel Marr server. Moaky is like a 63 lvl Iskar shammy. My main was a 72ish DE Nec, a 52ish halfling druid, and I had a 62ish human Pali as well. Hell my 20 yr old, and 16 yr old daughters even had their own account at one point.

Dont project your fantasies on me pal.  That stereotype of dumb kids wanting to play themeparks isnt applicable. This isnt some new account on MMORPG, and I have been here for yrs with the same stance towards gaming.

Sandboxes are great for those that like PnP games. I dont. Thus EQ served me just fine. I havent been into an MMO since 06, but now TOR fits the ticket. Not many folks are looking for virtual reality, and rather than trying to tear them down/impose yourself, I would suggest figuring out something that will work.

Either way....I got a game...do you?

Actually "You MUST use this specific gear" is the worst in my opinion.,...

When the game thinks one chest armor is better than another chest armor in some kind of gearscore formula and you have to wear the former or you can't participate in the next tier of raids, it removes all choice from the player.

I might not want to play that way -- what if I want to have more DPS on my tank character because I am the third tank and I want to hybridize some but the items I came into tier 2 with which had a lot of strength on them have to be replaced with all endurance stuff to pidgeonhole me into where the game wants someone of my class to be and if I do not want to wear it, I cant do tier 3.

This was glaring in rift where you might have had enough block to eat up 80% of the damage coming in by block alone, but that stuff did not have toughness on it -- by the time you replaced it with a toughness set your block would drop down to like 40%.  The developers do not cater to the idea the player might have had and go for a vanilla tank approach with the earlier tiers being all "sacrifice for toughness" gear.  And a lot of later pieces also did not have what you wanted.  Kind of like -- if every piece had what you want you wouldnt be at the exact power level we want to balance raid X.

IE boss Y does water damage -- so you cant use a tier 1 helm with water resistance -- instead you have to use the tier 3 with fire resistance...  So you cant stack against it. 

The other option that some games go with is that all gear once you get to a certain point are clones +.

So a tier 1 item might be 400 ac, 15 str, 20 end, 5 cold resist.

A tier 2 item might be 430 ac, 17 str, 22 end, 7 cold resist.

Ad nauseum where each tier is the exact copy of the one before plus something.

If you are going to do that you might as well just let the player keep the old gear and progressively enchant it.

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by Adamantine

 

Most important feature of boss fights in single player games: you only fight them ONCE. Thus you cant make them interesting per se. If you kill the same boss over and over again, you'll know the exact strategy and it will get boring. Only way to avoid this is having more bosses that need, again and again, different strategies.

I disagree that more bosses is the only way.  A boss could be engineered to be like a minigame all in itself.  Like a nice game of chess, you might know all the moves and resources but still find each new fight brings you into new and challenging situations.

You can also build dungeons around different moods, buffs, companions, daily taboos/sub-objectives or  handicaps to raise the difficult after each success.

I dont think so. What you describe will make the bosses more interesting. Still in the end the player will inevitably grow bored, no matter how interesting you make the boss.

if people don't want to play the content over and over then the content is not very interesting in the first place. This is where themeparks fail because they become too repetitive and all players are funnelled down the same direction, there is no lateral content, devs create content that lasts a few months. what they should be doing is creating content that lasts for the lifetime of the game. dungeons are redundant and a waste of resources because players burn through them and then have nothing to do. character creation should not end at the character creation screen, your character should keep evolving  visually through your actions.

One option, to prevent this question, should be:

• Not to make Dungeons and Raids one of the most important points of the concept.

Originally posted by Adamantine

Well ... I think MMOs should be mostly about cooperation and competition with other players. A thing asian games like Lineage 2 actually do better than typical western ones.

Raids are just more elaborate boss fights, as they are known even from singleplayer games. Most important feature of boss fights in single player games: you only fight them ONCE. Thus you cant make them interesting per se. If you kill the same boss over and over again, you'll know the exact strategy and it will get boring. Only way to avoid this is having more bosses that need, again and again, different strategies.

Dungeons dont even need much of an explanation. Again you need more and more over time, doing the same dungeon over and over will always get boring.

And the main way to make lowlevel content "interesting", or rather accessible at all, is IMHO making the game not about getting to maxlevel ASAP, as WoW has introduced it. For example, you could add a tiered progression: even a highlevel player has still a motive to play lowlevel content, because progressing a low tier will make the whole character stronger. Say your game is split into 9 tiers and someone is already tier 9, and you add a new tier 1 dungeon. Solving that dungeon might, for example, still increase the stats of the tier 9 character. The tiers themselves are by the way mostly there for balancing: the tier 9 character will only be able to use tier 1 skills and gear in the tier 1 dungeon, thus making things like "mentoring" naturally possible - the tier 9 can join forces with a tier 1, a tier 3, and a tier 6 to explore that dungeon.

 Ooh I like this tier system alot. I would also say that the tier 9 could have a Tier 9 skill that you have never seen in mmorpgs, which is mapmaking. Now take the random dungeons design mentioned by someone else in this thread. Add in having skills like mapmaking- which is basically being able to have a map of said random dungeon. Now, mapmaking at a teir 9 is great for teir ones, why? Because the mapmaker is always recording new map designs for dungeons. The tier 9 mapmaker now has a reason to keep going into tier 1 dungeons- because he/she needs the new dungeon designs. They can only get the new designs due to completing this dungeon-thus having to keep the tier one players alive long enough to finish it.

Add in things like reputation as a factor, what does reputation do-why when that tier 9 is in the dungeon he may run into a tier 9 enemy (perhaps a rival npc mapmaker) who is also there trying to get the newest map design before you do thus making a bigger possibility of failure, the higher the lvl of the mapmaker, the higher the level of your rival.

This would be great in a skill based mmo ala UO, TSW and if there ever was a Elder Scrolls mmorpg. It would also bring back something that mmos don't have which is skills not related to hitting or killing something, something that is definitely a crafting skill, but also adds to just the rpg flavor of the game its self. (Imagine mapmaker guilds who are always going into random dungeons just to get the newest dungeon designs to sell to other players?)