Tim Buckley On The Perfect MMOG
Monday 30 April 2007 @ 10:36 pm | By Ivan 'Nahu' LozanoIf you're new here and you like what you see, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed, and browse around for more fun stuff. Thanks for visiting!
Tim Buckley, author of Ctrl+Alt+Del, is working on a list of features his ideal MMOG would have, being a man who’s played more MMOs than most of us would care to admit his opinions are quite interesting. Most I’ve seen implemented in a game already but never all. Two of my favorite bits:
Character Creation: Character creation is the first thing a gamer sees when he fires up an MMO, and the process defines their character for the entirety of the game. And not just what racial benefits and class they choose, but their appearance in-game. And I, for one, am sick and tired of developers acting like character customization is an afterthought. Something that takes a back seat. Three or four hairstyles and a couple of face options to choose from may be fine for a single player RPG, but when you’re going to be sharing a world with thousands of other people, you need more than that to differentiate yourself.
And,
Around level 20-ish, certain player classes would begin to learn teleports, similar to Wizards and Druids in the original Everquest. Available to port nearby members of their party to specific locations around the world, with more locations becoming available as they leveled up. In EQ, a lot of Wizards and Druids would run “taxi” services in their free time, and some would teleport travelers for free. Either way, it encouraged social interaction between players, something that automated travel in current games does not.
This last bit reminds me of Ragnarok Online where Acolytes and Priests were the primary source of transport, it made for great fun. What would your ideal MMO contain? Let us know in the comments!







I think the points he mentioned are true f’in true. Costumizing and adding something of personality to your character through distinctive accesories is the best that can pull me in to the MMORPG (failure to do that leaves me unimpressed with the game in question)
As for the job-thingy that is quite nicer, not to mention that it forces people to interact with other players, not just… … hehehehehehe… lurking around in the game doing everything anonymously xD… … …
Indeed, I’ve had the misfortune of playing MMOs where no one talks, ever.