Having everyone design majority of the stuff in the game, the story and internal game mechanics better be sweet. Only main complaint so far is cross class ability swapping is lame. Also if I have to level up alts to play my main can suck it.
I think we would all like to look at it as if designing towns, and characters, was going to make some big impact upon the development cycle of the game. I just highly doubt that the little bit of shit that players have designed has really made a dent in the over all work load of the team. Its more complicated than that, Im sure.
Wut? EQ and WoW were pretty similar, with mobs at 6+ levels above you becoming nearly untouchable outside of a few specific abilities simply because of resists.
I believe hes referring more to leveling content in Classic, rather than raiding. You could join groups and be productive when you had a pretty big gap in levels. Ex: Killing Beetles in Sol B at level 37, doing frenzy in Lguk at level 40, Helping to kill Vox or Naggy at lvl 38. (trying to remember specific levels for complete heal, when spells wouldnt be resisted by Imps, yak procs etc. haha!) You werent as optimum for the position as a level 50 of course, but it still worked and everyone was happy. As more expansions hit, that level span dramatically decreased - but in classic it was a pretty open system. Since it was relatively hard to find people that remotely fit the class you're looking for, the level span was highly appreciated.
My idea with items is that the world is full of unique items. Players earn experience (but not for levels). They use experience as currency to put into items. You can then level those items up into different forms. That item leveling up can be as simple or as complicated as you want.
There are single player games that have the upgrade system like this and I think Ive played an MMO that was similar. The issue thats fucking annoying is that each time you get a new piece of gear that has a "final form" thats more powerful than your current one, you have to go through that whole upgrade process again with a piece of gear thats shittier than your current piece until your new piece is almost, or fully, upgraded. I guess if you made gear drop far less often and have a higher power level starting off than what you have now, then this wouldnt be a problem. Though, now, since you dont have a leveling system and gear upgrades are sparse... its starting to sound grindy and niche in my mind.
Land ownership, animal raising, farm reaping, castle building, ship building, social participation. These are the qualities that can keep people coming back after they are bored of combat/raiding. A sandbox of fun and different stuff. When logging on players should have a choice from a bevy of different options on how to spend their time - not just killing stuff 24/7.
All that shit is in quite a few MMO's already - dating all the way back to Ultima Online or The Realm. Some MMO's even have dailies attached to those specific aspects that you brought up as well. Land Ownership is going to keep you logging in? How much land are you buying/selling/upkeep? Castle Building? Ship Building? Are you specifically talking about PVP? If you want to PVP, just play a game with Land Ownership, Ship Building and Castle Building, for example.. something as old as Lineage, and go PVP. Animal Raising? Its the same thing as Pet Battles in WoW. If you're referring to Husbandry, Oh god, I cant wait to milk my Cow every fucking day. Social participation? How do you not do that now? Like... in ANY mmo? All this shit is a grind in order to achieve something and to be honest, it almost all boils down to getting better gear so you can kill harder stuff. -- It just honestly sounds like you want to play Sims Online in Medieval Times.
