Best thing about WoW was wall-walking, hands down, no one can even argue it. It was literally a skill based form of exploration that was more rewarding than raiding.

I did like the progression system layout in SWG, I just hated to way you progressed as a combat class, which was hit up either dantooine or endor, and grind one spot till you drop. Rather crap when you think you about it.

I like costume slots in various games.

I love when there's smart AI, AI that knows how to fight just as well as the player, AI that can kite, trap, and focus weaker targets, can always make the combat that much more enjoyable.

I hate threat systems, where tanks hold aggro by generating more threat than other players.

First off, sorry if I'm not old school enough and reference the first game that had a particular feature.  I'm just listing stuff from what I've played.  I haven't played many MMOs, just WoW and RIFT so far.

#1 - WoW's Dungeon Finder

Say what you want about destroying a sense of community within a server but this is a godsend for people that don't have 5 or 6 free hours at a time to find people, travel to the dungeon, zone in, buff up, etc etc to get something going.  It's excellent convenience and because of cross-server queues you aren't stuck waiting for the healer/tank spot to fill because maybe on your particular server they're lacking or whatever.  For a game that's going to stick to the holy trinity of DPS, tanks and healers, I can't say enough good things about this feature.

#2 - WoW's Battlegrounds

There's something to be said for unstructured, open PvP.  It's something else entirely when you can work in game types that you don't normally see in an RPG.  When you think of Capture the Flag, you think of shooters like Unreal Tournament... but no, WoW actually had it.  I think Blizzard aren't doing enough to bring in more unique game types in through battlegrounds but I liked that PvP wasn't just killing for the sake of killing, there was a goal to work towards and there's strategy involved when you have a controlled number of people inside of a well-designed map. 

How cool was it the first time you saw a mage using Slow Fall from the highest capture point in Arathi Basin to the middle capture point instead of going around onto the roads on a horse?  How about when snowballs used to have the knockback effect and you could throw enemies off the bridge at the Alliance Base in Alterac Valley with them?

#3 - RIFT - Clothes Dying

I believe Dark Age of Camelot had this from vent chatter I heard years ago, but it really is such a simple little feature that goes a long way.  Unless you get a set of gear in WoW, you look like a clown with purple shoulders, blue pants, a yellow chestpiece and silver boots.  Simple equipment dying completely removes this issue and if you're willing to spend on the dyes, your clothes always matched in RIFT.

#4 - RIFT - Rewards Based On Participation

In RIFT, if you're taking part in any of the rift events, you're rewarded based on how you did during the events.  You want the rewards?  You gotta earn them.  I'm not aware of any exploits associated with this, if there are any, but there doesn't seem to be any way to shortcut or cheat the system and that's cool.

Player Starship Crews - StarQuest Online

Real Perma-Death - Dark-Wind War on Wheels

Actually, clothes dyeing goes back further than that, UO had a great system for that.

So many things were done right back then, it amazes me how developers fail to learn from history. Perhaps they don't do their homework.

In Lineage 1 (Think Lineage 2 had this too)

Enchantment system

- Most armor safe to +4 or +6

- Most weapons safe to +6

- Items can blow up if they are enchanted past safe.

They had normal cursed and blessed scrolls of enchant armor and weapon, normal would enchant +1, blessed could do +1 +2 or +3 randomly, and cursed would do =1.

Most common use for cursed was to enchant armor that is safe up to +3 using normal, than using a blessed enchant thereby possibly having it safely enchanted to +5 or 6 rather than just 4. If it went just +1 (to +4) than you use a cursed to make it +3 again and try another blessed.

It was like gambling with your armor and weapons so even generic weapons had some variance to them. Plus the gambling was extreemly addicting. 

1) RIFT - Invasions, simply put the best implementation of bringing players together in an MMO ever.

2) Guild Wars - First introduction of gear dyes in a game that I played.

3) SWTOR - Companion crafting system

4) Champions Online - Character creation, hands down the best customization in an MMO.

5) WoW - Trading Card system of mounts and pets.

1. SWG : Playercities, housing and crafting and gathering system(buildings are crafted and used to craft in, so I see it as one feature in this game).

2. Guild Wars : Guild vs Guild (PVP)

3. SWG : Spacecombat

4. Fallen Earth : Crafting

5. City of Heroes : Character creation

6 Ryzom : Gameworld with most realistic behaving wildlife Ive seen so far in a MMO.

7. Everquest 2 : Mentor/sidekick system

8. SWG/Vanguard/Fallen Earth : Mounts/vehicles early in game.

9 SWG, Anarchy Online : Skillsystem

Although some of the features could be used in other MMO's, not all would mix well obviously (spacecombat in fantasy MMO for example :p)

Originally posted by Gamer54321

A random selection of features will not make a good mmo.

It definitely does not make a good MMO with random selections of features, but if you read through all these features from other games. You will have a better understanding of what some gamers out there is experiencing and the features that sticks with them as they move on to other games.

There is no way for a particular gamer to experience all the MMO available, thats why having the community to list features they liked, we can have a better community and also let the developers know what really worked and the direction they should follow.

So please keep the list going!!

FFXI - Group Abilities ( chain attacks )

fwiw, Asheron's Call had the best dye system to date.  It was actually tied to the cooking and alchemy skills.  You could fail and an item could be damaged, turn Pink or Orange, which lead to people creating crafting chars that could purposely fail.  The way the armor of AC worked, it became very much a side game, trying to find that perfect match, cause if you dyed something white with red, it turned red, if it was blue before and you dyed it red, it could turn all shades of maroon.  It was epic.

just wish they would make a AC rehash and call it a day

Brotherhood from Vanguard: Saga of heroes.

You and your brotherhood shared all xp, from quests and mobs kills. Offline or online and you could see how much you had constributed to the Brotherhood. The bad thing with this was you had no Perks to increase xp gain, gold gain etc but there was one abillity which let you to call your Brotherhood to your side.

As a healer I really liked the notion of friendly and hostile targetting which WAR had. Really dissapointed that no other MMO after that used it.

Originally posted by WellzyC

RvR

 

not War's crapshoot wanna be rvr.

DAOC rvr.

I agree, that was my first thought. Meaningful RvR with at least three sides.

I also want meaningful crafting. DAoC had meaningful but mind numbingly boring crafting. SWG had meaningful but interesting crafting that was worthing dedicating your one and only character to playing.

FFXI's class system. One character, many classes. Loved it :)

AoC - fatalities. Nothing says "I win" like cutting off your opponents head.

Rift: the class talent system.

Lotro: cosmetic slots with outfit tabs.

WoW: Hunter pet taming (especially the aspect of finding and taming rares).

STO: Instant Travel for a price.

AoC: Mounted Combat.

Foresaken World: Pet to mount system, tame a pet, raise it, it eventually becomes a combat pet until it's old enough to become a mount (i think this was the game i did that in).

WoW - Mage portals back when groups had to walk back to town after a dungeon run.