I'm not particularly ambitious, but if I did get that kind of money for an MMO:

• I would try to make a relatively small MMO first, preferably using as little money as possible without cutting corners, and focus on getting the core aspects of the game down.

• Instead of dropping weapons and coins and random crap that frankly seem to be something you'd see from a lottery machine instead of a monster, they drop sections of their armor, or if you have certain professions, you can "acquire" their skins/gears/whatevers" from them. The only mobs who should drop weapons and coins are humanoid creatures with pockets, and/or monsters who can carry weapons/have a weapon stuck in their bodies, ie dragon getting a sword stuck in his back or something like that.
•  
• Instead of learning your spells automatically, the spells are more like loot drops; you can only learn the spell if you actually find it. The spells will be scattered all over the land in random locations using procedural generation (I checked up the definition, but I'm still kinda confused on it's meaning, although I do know it has something to do with algorithims), and will be located in appropriate areas, or in areas where the spell is useful. Example would be something like learning how to use a fire spell in an area covered in a massive AOE damaging blizzard. Speaking of blizzards...
•  
• Weather/Disaster Generator. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't ever recall seeing weather or natural disasters ever actually influencing the world. My idea behind this is that the weather would play a part in things such as the stability of the ground, as well as affecting things like visibility and stamina. Disasters, basically put, would be there to randomly show up and destroy the land or refresh the land, like an Earthquake tearing up the ground and destroying houses, or a Blizzard freezing the area and making it very difficult to see. I think this would be an interesting idea simply because it would add a feeling of liveliness to even the most static worlds, and it's not something you can stop with a sword and a shield. not to mention if any professions regarding housing was ever conceived, they could have the ability to design things that can provide some form of resistance to these disasters.
•  
• Boss Battles affected by the environment. I'm not just talking about the standard "don't stand in the crap" or "kill these adds" type of "environment." I'm talking the LITERAL environment, because seriously, nearly every boss I've ever seen either takes place in a room with nothing noteworthy in them, or the bossfight occurs on a flat plain with nothing to make things interesting. My idea would be to have the actual environment aid the boss to some degree, and hinder you if possible. Say for example there is a boss that is only fought on the sea, so you get a boat to go fight it. Now add in the factor of the boss being located in the middle of a fierce typhoon, where the winds can do subtle AOE damage, there are random bolts of lightning that can either horribly maim you, or destroy parts of your ship, AND you have to navigate around whirlpools to avoid insta-death/suction into the pool. It makes an otherwise plain old boss SIGNIFICANTLY more interesting, and adds a sense of liveliness to boot.

A large world MMO with;

1. World PvP tied to a strong consequences system

2. Strong world PvE - with dynamic events & reactive zones (based on 'GIS software'-style data layer interraction); open locations, instanced solo and group locations and raid locations plus scaling in open world encounters

3. NPC faction policed economy based on 'invisible' real world economic formula - not avoidable - but modifiable by personal and guild-based advancements and achievements

4. Extensive Guild functionality - keeps, resource extraction, tithed markets, Guild NPCs, guards, quests, alliances system + GvG and NPC faction vs Guild action. Automated tax settings and access to Guild facilities for non-members fully controlled by the GM.

5. Mixed mode progression - allowing solo (at three times the time investment), group (at twice the time investment), raid (normal time investment) and crafting (at twice the normal time investment) progression to top tier kit - with mix and match making sense in terms of stats and appearance

6. A non-levelled system with a progression envelope (verticle and horizontal) based on skills and ability unlocks - with 80% of character progression fast and linear the last 20% slow and as a reverse exponential curve. Very slow progression acheivable through using offline training system - by access in-game to the facilities which allow it (both NPC and Guild-based - specialised to related skills or abilities)

7. Reactive and dynamic combat - at least as active as GW2 with refinements on some issues such as AoC acheived

8. Dark and gritty fantasy genre - no techno magic or manga fluff

9. An 80%/20% character power development to gear power boost ratio

10. A complex and rewarding crafting system - with top end requiring specialisations only acheivable through high progression in an NPC faction or access to top tier Guild facilities (with no faction or guild able to offer more than a very few top end choices - meaning each get known for their mix of specialities)

11. Mounts and caravans over teleportation....

Oh yes - and classes balanced for PvP by exhaustive testing BEFORE the first PvE mob's stats and abilities and dungeons et al get programmed

i would buy the rights to Asherons Call and make a new one.

either that or i would just make some crapy wow clone and have the advertisement crew from EA hype up my game so i make a few hundred mill real easy off all the suckers who pre order just off hype.

Originally posted by Grunty
$550 million dollars over 30 years comes out closer to $170 million in a single payment before taxes. Which would net out to about $90 million.

actually single payout is over 300 million before taxes.. just saying..

As much as I think a good SWG 2.0 would rock..  I prefer fantasy..  Therefor I would take the child of EQ and SWG combine..  EQ's lore and world, SWG crafting and housing put together, leaving out the generally accepted flaws and you have a winner..  IMO..  

But since I'm a golfer, I'd rather spend my money on a golf course.. Less hassles, longer life and better ROI.. :)

Hire this ones and you will have the best game in history.

Ultima Online dev team ---> focus on sandbox 

Dark Age of Camelot dev team -> focus on PvP/RvR, siege fights, keep fights, objectives, etc.

Final Fantasy 11 dev team --> focus on PvE content. 

Well I would completely make a new IP instead of this copy/past trend we are stuck in.

The mmorpg I would create would be a massive sandbox world , freedom to go where you want and able to have a stake in any property in game , hold kingdoms that belong to player factions, and mix in the Sci fi with fantasy could be a very interesting match up, completely redesign the combat systems we have in place now with a more traditional system , could have a turnstyle system and also have a freeform combat system, so whatever how you want to fight , you choose kinda thing giving players more " Choice " in the matter.

I would also make it that the death penalty would be similar to EQ and that most of the quests would require a group and the dungeons would be group only and you would have to discover them, make it so that after each server maintenance that the game world would spawn these dungeons in random areas of the world, similar to how Minecraft works.

I also would add a complex but fun building part to the game , inspired by SWG and Minecraft with the latest graphics, but able to run on nearly any machine to have at least duel core and a decent video card. I think what we are missing in todays mmorpgs is the freedom of choice and also that we are not afraid to die in these games anymore. Anyone who's played EQ in the beta of 1998 onward POP Expac will tell you that dying was painful and you had to be social and careful not to walk into dangerious areas alone, this is what we are missing.

Well, considering that I'd like an actual return on my investment, I wouldn't make an MMO, or ANY video game for that matter. I'd entertain the possibility of funding an old school, Wizardry-style RPG but that's about it.

DAOC2

Maybe pre SI or right after SI for most of the features.

Updated , fully customizable UI.

Camera updated

Good maps with general level ranges (note this could be 30-50) But at least it gives new players an idea.

Yeah that be it I would add more raid content other than dragon But it wouldn't be tiered.

Utilize a quest / event loading system that would spawn random city, holes, caves, forts , etc to create some camps with area objectives (these would not be uncommon but easy to find plenty if you were hunting for them). If all you were doing is looking you could find them but in general it something you would randomly encounter when walking around. With a boss like mob in them or some similar objective that has a high drop % for tagging group. Maybe a few of them OTD.

Add a questing system that is more akin to theme-park, but in general decrease old exp  by 10% while increasing grouping exp by a total of 15% in a full group above the old rate of that time.  (would be ~35-50% or more faster exp in a full group). But the questing system wouldn't be as large as say wows or gw2 those game simply have too many quest it take too many resources.

This would allow people to progress single player but vastly incentivise group play

Old emain frontiers, alb frontier remade (it was not function) with the toa keeps (not the current ramp shit ones)

Improved object and mob respawning code for highly populated / farmed areas such as dungeons.

Rest areas where hp / mana regens more quickly (with some support class able to provide this function to group members only).

Short acting buff that are far stronger than previous (Maybe even a mechanic behind them, something mini-game-esque .. no more buff bots if you want the best buffs .. and they are strong enough that you want the best buffs).

I loved the position based and technical aspect of the games combat maybe add a few more class resources to light armor classes or something of that nature. Maybe instead or ON TOP OFF a position based system include a next attack lottery, use a pricing attack next, slashing element for like 50% more damage or something {maybe thrusting, forceful, wild, controlled attacking types that are more or less arbitrary but for the system of maybe combos or they could place buff , debuff etc depending on the combo type then use a finisher to execute them. So like thrusting + controlled + wild  (use combo) = high accurate medium damage attack that decreases enemies melee resist by 10% for 10 secs or w/e}.  I Think that could be fun. But make it work with the combo system so your punished for spamming you back stab over and over (other than back stab does a ton of damage so you get that, but the use combo for it is like a back stab from any position).

Holy crap the crafting products were perfect. But making them was lame. I would change that system to an interactive one slots, or mini-games like a tower defense game , or tetris or something simpler than those but still challenging and interactive (still random results but you get high chances of better stuff the better you do).  Also make high the level the item long / harder the game, the more unit crafting also addition difficulty (instead of one pair of pant u can make say 5 at a time or w/e 10, thus making the game harder and longer but still fast) Im think that one wii game type games wario party?.

.Maybe like 5 reasonless types that just drop a lot while leveling and unlimited separate bags so that you get stuff to level or supply friends with to make goods. Also i like having them have quality statistics (maybe that only matter for the quality of the item your making which only matters if your overcharging them. so for just leveling a skill it doesn't matter but provide a goal to save and use the high quality stuff into stuff to wear or sell).

Thats where i would start.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Jonoku
SWG 2.0

Dont you have any imagination? 

I don't have time for imagination. That's why I am going to spend some of my 550 million on someone that does.

Originally posted by biggarfoot
Retire, sit on a beach in the Med with half a dozen babes attending to my every needs.  Made my fantasy MMO real.

+1

Or if it's in the contract that I have to pour it back into gaming... I always was a proud member of the content consuming group and not the creators (maybe I'm the worst GM out there, hands down :) ).

So I would give 50mill to WB/Turbine with the obligation they HAVE to take us all the way down to Mt. Doom until 2017.

100 mill would go to Funcom to keep away EA from every major decisions, not going to f2p with TSW, and keep the pace with the updates in both TSW and AoC.

The rest 400 mill I'd give to Ragnar for an awesome Dreamfall Chapters, and two more epic (single player) games after that :D

That much money....
Someone should make a WoW killer.  But not just a killer, the grind their teeth on the curb kind of killer. It's had it's time, it's killed it's fair share of other games, social lives and marriages.  Time to let something progressive step into the limelight...

Realistically tho, a real winner should have:
- PvP in Realms, with some ladder match style arena stuff
- Progressive open world stuff:
    - Personal story, factional story, guild story
    - PvP realm building, draw in a reason to have healers, crafters and the like, let them have castles - if they build them
    - Group events, raid events, and everybody and their dog needed events
        - If an event is done to blow up cityhall, blow it up, let the players rebuild it, make it theirs.
- Housing; personal, guild and factional
    - Trophies & Deco from the above events, craftable, and buyable stuff
- Ground stuff, Sky/Water (Above and below)/Space stuff
- Mounts & vehicles (larger vehicles you can deco)
- Pets
- Mini games
- Crafting should mean something, best of the best raids are nice, but best of the best crafters should be able to build the uber stuff
- Customization for characters, pets, mounts, housing - and uniforms/banners customizable for guilds - let the players that want to spend 9hrs designing their character do so.
- Really make the various level perks count, Beta tester should mean something, lifetime subscriber, collectors edition etc - keep it progressive, not a 1 time thing.  Maybe things more than trinkets; lifetime sub, priority login, free to play there's a queue you cheap bastard
- Corpse runs, don't make it hurt so bad, but make them part of the game
- Accolades, achievements all over
- Ingame news available for those wanting cues, clues and woos.
- App interfaces for players and their guild
- Link ingame guild chat with an external app/IM program
- Sync it with all the popular social media
- Make the website informative, useful and progressive
- Have a game store, sell swag, don't let said swag impact playability in the game ie no godswords.  Do more than just ingame gear, sell out of game merchandise
- Annual convention with hot stuff, awards, what's coming, all that stuff that used to allow players to connect with the designers.
- Use pop culture, myths, rumors, unnuendos all over
- Double the versions; family play servers, adult servers
- Customer service that cares, use the phone, ingame tickets, live webchats and forums
- If a customer is banned for life, ban the address, the email and the billing account.
- Keep the numbers real


But above all, don't roll it early, don't roll it half done, don't roll it without listening to your audience, and do some marketing/advertising - don't rely on word of mouth and a few spam banners.

Then buy a royalty from Blizzard and put 10 million murloc heads on pikes for newbie target practice

Originally posted by Loktofeit
I'd make an old school CRPG style MMO, not bill it as an MMO but as an online RPG, and target RPGers, not MMO gamers.

Thus excluding better than 95% of existing MMO players?  And actually enforcing an RPG ruleset?

I like.  The first howl of "perma-banned for talking about football in the bank, wtf?" will be like beautiful, sweet music...if a little old-fashioned.

Originally posted by toddze

Originally posted by Sevenstar61

 

Why would you put money into MMO knowing that no matter what you do and how much love and hard work you will put into it, only to find out in the end that whatever you created was not what players were expected and you would get zero appreciation for your effort :)

Have fun and enjoy your money :)

I think if your honest with the player base from the get go players would get what they expected. For my example if i said this is a true FFXI sequal, why would anyone buy it if they hated XI?

...because you're not trying to please the people who didn't like your previous game?

like planetside 2

but....

you craft your own weapons

you gather resources

you build your own bases and vehicles