If anyone has ever gotten to end game in an mmo, you know it's an entirely different animal.  You don't really have any direction on what to do.  You need to gear yourself, work on factions, get keyed for whatever, find a raiding guild... tons of things like this.  Mostly you need gear, but sometimes you also need to farm aa points or skills or something else.  Now picture you have a game like wow or eq1 or eq2 or whatever else you play... and everything in the game is now max level. 

So say you have a new night elf or undead or whatever in this new game world... how would progression work?  Mostly, it would be about going after things that you need.  Say there's spell scrolls, weapons, armor, faction rewards... things like that.  But it could be taken a step further.  Maybe Shattrah is a major hub again(a past major city in wow).  To be able to get there, you would need to travel a long distance through dangerous areas.  There could be a long list of requirements such as a mount, maybe faction with certain npcs, quests... things like that.  The point is, you would be able to technically do anything you wanted in this world, but the time and effort required to do everything you wanted to do could still be huge.   There could be certain things like resistance to elements that you could only get through completing quest chains or grinding a certain type of mob.  To gain ice resistance you would need to go to an ice area and do various things there to build it up.  The point would be that you could choose to do anything you wanted to do, but there would still be lots of requirements and it would be difficult. 

If you've played majora's mask or ocarina of time, it could be similar to that in concept.  You have a lot of different places you can go to and things you can do.  You get rewards for completing things and you don't have a strict path.  At the same time, you can't literally just do anything you want.  You have prerequisites of things you have to do first.  I think an mmo like this would feel so much different than anything out there right now.

A lot of MMO's have no levels (like The Secret World or Eve) or systems where reaching max level is Trivial (Like Guild Wars 1)

Levels are an integral part of MMORPGs.  They are present in one form in almost every MMO.  Even if they aren't represented by experience points, some form of progression limiters are in place.

If you want a game with almost no limits to progression, sandbox action games are what you should be looking for.  Games like Grand Theft Auto and Prototype are good examples.

Originally posted by syntax42

Levels are an integral part of MMORPGs.  They are present in one form in almost every MMO.  Even if they aren't represented by experience points, some form of progression limiters are in place.

If you want a game with almost no limits to progression, sandbox action games are what you should be looking for.  Games like Grand Theft Auto and Prototype are good examples.

You are confusing levels and progression. There are multiple ways to have progression in an MMO, levels being one of them.

"At the same time, you can't literally just do anything you want.  You have prerequisites of things you have to do first."

This is what is wrong with a lot of MMORPG's I don't want to have to do anything to get the change to do something more fun. I want to be rewarded with more fun while having fun.

I think Planetside did it right; you're happily playing the game having fun and not grinding at all and after a while you get a reward which let's you have even more fun. Something to LOOK forward to and not necessarily WORK forwarded to.

Don't get me wrong; I like working towards a goal in mmorp's like catching that one rare fish or finding that one good shop or whatever. But thhey should be goals I set MYSELF, not the game.

OP you basically keep making the same threads on this site. Log off of mmorpg and load up some www.mortalonline.com www.darkfall.com or www.eveonline.com and call it done.

Originally posted by syntax42

Levels are an integral part of MMORPGs.  They are present in one form in almost every MMO.  Even if they aren't represented by experience points, some form of progression limiters are in place.

If you want a game with almost no limits to progression, sandbox action games are what you should be looking for.  Games like Grand Theft Auto and Prototype are good examples.

 you are so so wrong, levels have nothing to do with mmorpgs, its a system that was adapted by wow and done to death by developers copying wow but it is not a prequesite of creating a good mmorpg. EQ was the first to include levels, but both uo and meridian59 predate eq and both do not have levels.

Originally posted by deathshroud

Originally posted by syntax42

Levels are an integral part of MMORPGs.  They are present in one form in almost every MMO.  Even if they aren't represented by experience points, some form of progression limiters are in place.

If you want a game with almost no limits to progression, sandbox action games are what you should be looking for.  Games like Grand Theft Auto and Prototype are good examples.

 you are so so wrong, levels have nothing to do with mmorpgs, its a system that was adapted by wow and done to death by developers copying wow but it is not a prequesite of creating a good mmorpg. EQ was the first to include levels, but both uo and meridian59 predate eq and both do not have levels.

Maaaan, talk about not knowing your history! Everquest had levels because it took almost all of its mechanics directly from DikuMUD, which in turn was heavily influenced by Dungeons & Dragons. To say that MMORPGs as a whole have nothing to do with levels is pretty far out there, as is the claim that developers who created MMOs for the past several years were "copying" level-based progression from WoW. Even if you can name two early MMOs that were not level-based, that does not mean that levels are not an integral part of the genre.

Without progression, you hardly have an MMORPG at all. Levels provide a very convenient way to measure progression. Not every game or even every MMORPG needs levels, but you should understand what you're taking away before you demand that they be cut out. Your character's level is a rough measure of their overall capabilities. This tells you two important things: which other characters are roughly as strong as you (for the purposes of forming a party) and which mobs are roughly as strong as you (so that you can experience an appropriate challenge and receive an appropriate reward).

If you want players to participate in content without having any knowledge of whether it is beyond their capabilities, that would be a good reason to not have levels. I think this would be most appropriate for a game where you can technically beat any of the content on a brand new character if you play with absolute perfection, because this means that players who fail don't immediately know whether their character needs some much better skills and equipment or if they just need to practice playing the game. This would be quite a bit different than a level 30 WoW character stumbling into some content for level 60s and melting away within seconds with no hope of success.

That would be a semi-reasonable for avoiding level-based progression. But if the reason it's left out of a game is simply "we want to be different" or "levels are bad", count me out.

Originally posted by brentapps

The point is, you would be able to technically do anything you wanted in this world, but the time and effort required to do everything you wanted to do could still be huge.  

The point would be that you could choose to do anything you wanted to do, but there would still be lots of requirements and it would be difficult. 

 You have a lot of different places you can go to and things you can do.  You get rewards for completing things and you don't have a strict path.  At the same time, you can't literally just do anything you want.  You have prerequisites of things you have to do first.  I think an mmo like this would feel so much different than anything out there right now.

So... EVE Online?

ok

lol fuck eve... That spaceshit is for nerds... The game you are looking for is called Darkfall, though the game is more or less dead, people are waiting for Darkfall 2.0 - Got all the features you look for. No levels, only skill gain and gear orientated. Full loot, no safe zones, awesome PvP = Epic game!

Originally posted by EclipZe.dk

lol fuck eve... That spaceshit is for nerds... The game you are looking for is called Darkfall, though the game is more or less dead, people are waiting for Darkfall 2.0 - Got all the features you look for. No levels, only skill gain and gear orientated. Full loot, no safe zones, awesome PvP = Epic game!

So it's an "epic game" but you also say "the game is more or less dead"

One of the features I look for in an MMO is an active playerbase.

EVE has grown in subscribers year over year every year since launch.

Originally posted by EclipZe.dk

lol fuck eve... That spaceshit is for nerds... The game you are looking for is called Darkfall, though the game is more or less dead, people are waiting for Darkfall 2.0 - Got all the features you look for. No levels, only skill gain and gear orientated. Full loot, no safe zones, awesome PvP = Epic game!

The problem I have with Darkfall is that you're just grinding skills up. Personally, I love the way EVE does it. There's no rush to play the game. Oh I'm busy for 2 weeks? No worries, just set my training queue and I come back to a more advanced character. As someone with a real life and responsibilities, you can't beat that.

I agree.  I love games that are Skill based and allow for casual play and/or action based.  

I see no reason why an RPG cant combine the offline progression of Eve and the skill progression of Everquest.

Im equally tired of 'rush to the end' Level based progression.

Just need to create lots of skill progression opportunity, adding new new speciflc skills monthy.  

ex. Sword Parry  - Higher skill provides increased chance of free parry when using a sword

Well, thats what Im going to 'attempt' to do with my next morpg.

-Blitz

Originally posted by EclipZe.dk

lol fuck eve... That spaceshit is for nerds... The game you are looking for is called Darkfall, though the game is more or less dead, people are waiting for Darkfall 2.0 - Got all the features you look for. No levels, only skill gain and gear orientated. Full loot, no safe zones, awesome PvP = Epic game!

 TSW is like darfell 2.0, very good

TSW is nothing like Darkfall 2.0, since it hasnt been released yet so you cant compare those two.

Yes the playerbase is small because people are waiting for 2.0, a total revamp of the original game. Have a look at their blog. I loved the original game, never experienced an adrenaline kick when playing a game. But this game does it to you. You have to be constant aware of your surroundings because u can loose all your gear, but u can also take everything from your foe..