The single least developed component of most MMORPGs is character customization. When I enter the character creation screen, I'm constantly disappointed with the options I'm presented with. Most games usually let me change my face or hair, but that's about the extent of customization in those games. I don't understand at all why developers haven't expanded on this feature. Is it too much to ask for to look unique in an MMORPG world? It's upsetting to see everyone running around looking EXACTLY like my character, as it takes away from the uniqueness of my character. Even games like World of Warcraft have extremely limited character customization, as players can only change their skin color, face, hair **** hair color and facial hair. The two games I'll analyze today are WYD Global and Perfect World.

The game I've found with the absolute least character customization is WYD Global. The game isn't bad for a free MMORPG, and is actually pretty enjoyable, but has absolutely NO character customization. Upon entering the character creation screen in WYD Global, you'll be presented with four different ****s, each standing on the screen. Upon selecting which ****you want to be, you'll be presented with a text box to enter your character's name. You can't change your character's gender. What in the world were the developers of this game thinking? Would it have been so much extra work to allow players to at least be able to change their gender? The only female characters in this game are mages, which are oddly called "foemas" in WYD Global. Don't think the game makes up for the lack of character customization with a wide variety of ****s, as there are only four. Games aren't like Gauntlet legends anymore, players like character customization!

The game with the best character customization of all time is definitely Perfect World. I bet you didn't expect me to name a free to play game, but surprisingly Perfect World is indeed free to play. The game is immensely popular in China, and has only been recently licensed to Cubinet, a Malaysian publisher. Luckily, English is a common language in Malaysia, so the game is open to US players. Upon making your character in this game, you'll be blown away with the options you'll be presented with. Players can everything about their character from nose length to the distance between your eye brows. Unlike most MMO games where each customizable component of your character has only a few different ****, Perfect World has so many options. For skin color and hair color, players can choose almost any color from a color grid. The game has nearly limitless options for customization, and if you spend some time customizing your character, odds are you'll never see someone that looks exactly like you. You can customize just about ANYTING you can think of in Perfect World, and yes, females can indeed make their breasts bigger. Just so you folks understand the extent of which you can customize your character in Perfect World, I'm going to show you a screenshot of my character. I guarantee you won't be able to show me another game that lets you do this. Keep in mind, I tried to make my character look as obscure as possible to demonstrate the extent of Perfect World's customization; there are plenty of options to make your character look normal.

My Perfect World Character

Source

http://mmohub.org/2008/have-mmorpgs-perfected-cloning-or-does-character-creation-suck

With the explosive growth of the MMORPG market, it's upsetting to realize that a lot of MMORPGs are lacking simple features that would greatly enhance the enjoyment of that particular game. New games are coming out almost every week and developers still exclude some obvious must have features. Developers please take note of these features and try and include them in future projects. The top five must have features in MMORPG games are as follows:

5. In game messenger.
This is one feature that has been becoming more and more popular in newer games today, but plenty of games still don't have it. Even World of Warcraft, one of the most popular MMORPGs on the market, lacks an in game messenger system. One can easily argue that using the game's regular chat system would be just as effective as implementing a messenger, but when chat becomes cluttered with messages and advertisements to sell equipment, it can become hard to track what someone just sent to you. Free games like Fly for Fun and Gunbound both include an extremely functional messenger.

4. Regularly updated Content
What better way to keep players hooked to a game? All MMO games need new content every so often; otherwise players will get bored after they do everything the game has to offer. The best example of a game that updates regularly with new content is Eve Online. CCP, the game's developers, try and release a free new expansion pack every year. World of Warcraft has also been on top of this, as they're expected to release Wrath of the Lich King soon, but it would have been much better for players if the new content was free, as players who don't buy the expansion would be at a disadvantage.

3. PvP
Too many games today, mostly free ones, don't have a PvP system. For a lot of players, the only real motivation to "grind" through the games content is to become the best player in the game, and the best way to prove you're the best is to be able to beat everyone else in a fight. Implementing a PvP system can also keep players from getting bored of a game. Once you hit the level cap in a game, and the game doesn't have PvP, there really isn't anything left to do.

2. A Player driven economy
The most important aspect of an MMORPG community for me is the game's economy. What's the point of being rich in a game if you can't buy anything with the game's currency? The best example of a good player driven economy is Goonzu: Rise of the Luminary. In Goonzu, in order to purchase new equipment, even low level equipment, you would have to buy it from another player. Almost everything from crafting materials to quest items would have to be purchased the game's auction house. If you wanted to sell your loot after a successful hunt, you wouldn't go to the local NPC, but would have to sell it to another player through the game's market place. The price of every item in the game is determined by actual market forces of supply and demand, as the game's few NPCs only sell very basic items and pay nearly nothing for all items sold to them, no matter how powerful the item, the NPC will only pay pennies.

1. An Auction House
Every MMORPG has some sort of in game trading system, so why not make the trading and commerce almost infinitely better by including an auction house system where players can put up their items for sale and go do something else, rather than standing around for hours at a time trying to sell their wares. The game most notorious for a sloppy trading environment is MapleStory. [See below]. It's nearly impossible to try and sell your rare items in MapleStory, as players won't even get a chance to see you! The trading area is packed. An auction house would also be an excellent way to eliminate trading fraud and scamming.

Look what happens when an MMORPG doesn't have an Auction House:

Source:

http://mmohub.org/2008/top-5-must-have-features-in-an-mmorpg

Most MMORPG games today offer an alternative way to gain experience other than grinding; questing. The problem with questing in MMORPGs is the lack of creativity and effort put forth by the developers. Almost every MMORPG has the standard "Go outside town and kill X amount of Y Monsters". Replace X with a quantity and Y with a type of monster. Another very common quest you'll find in most MMORPGs is the "Take this letter and hand it to the guy standing next to me". Why do quests have to be so dull? There are only two MMORPGs I know that actually have a well thought out questing system; World of Warcraft and Maplestory.

It's no surprise that World of Warcraft actually has a well designed and interesting quest system, as the game does has 10 million subscribers worldwide. The game's quest dialogue was always very well written and the quests weren't always go outside town and kill some monsters. Completing a chain quest also made you feel like you accomplished something and each step along the way, you were fed bits of information that kept you interested in the quest. When I first completed the Defias Brotherhood quest line In World of Warcraft It actually felt like I was in the game, as the quest actually kept me engaged with the game.

Maplestory also has a surprisingly good quest system. The quests in MapleStory aren't good because they're well written or tell an epic tale, but they're incredibly fun because they're so unique. Players can get together and participate in party quests where players get to work together to solve puzzles and defeat monsters. The puzzles are all actually very unique, as players get to actually do something other than grinding. MapleStory also has a series of incredible platforming quests where you'll have to try to get to the end of a stage by jumping on platforms while dodging electricity and other obstacles. MapleStory also has all the "Go out and kill X of Y monster" type quests, but the fact that the game actually did some unique was definitely a welcomed change.

I'm looking forward to seeing what developers come up with next as far as questing goes. I'm a bit disappointed that the latest MMO games haven't created anything new, as it seems like developers are too scared to try something new.

Source:

http://mmohub.org/2008/mmo-questing

Almost every Mmorpg today, free to play or pay to play, has the same system of advancement, and that's the leveling system. There are so many things wrong with the leveling system that I'm surprised it's still the standard today. Games like Eve Online and Ultima Online both have unique systems based on skill gain rather than simply "leveling up" to get stronger. Players instead focus on training specific skills and become more proficient at what they character does, rather than just *Ding* I'm stronger now.

The leveling system unbalances dueling and PvP. If you're a level 30 warrior, theres no way in hell you're going to beat a level 45 player, even if you have superior equipment, as you probably won't even hit them, as the level difference tilts the outcome of the fight on the higher level player almost all of the time. Under the standard Mmorpg leveling system, there is no motivation for lower level players to participate in PvP as they will always get destroyed by higher level players. In World of Warcraft, higher level players are free to slaughter lower level players anywhere in the game, which can get frustrating. There is nothing wrong with stronger players killing weaker players, but when that weaker play has absolutely no possible way to defend himself it can ruin the game.

The leveling system promotes grinding. Players will always want to reach the highest possible level and will grind for hundreds of hours to do so, and grinding isn't fun. Players have the mentality that once they become stronger and reach maximum level they'll start to have more fun. It's like working for hundreds of hours with the goal of having fun in the future. Games like MapleStory and Perfect World are notorious for this kind of game play, where players are disillusioned to believe that once they are higher level, they'll have more fun. The leveling system also allows developers to introduce cheap new additions to their games like "increased level cap" or "faster experience days" rather than actual new content.

Two games that totally reinvented player advancement in MMOs are Eve Online and Ultima Online. Both games have absolutely no leveling. In order to progress in Eve Online, players have to select a skill in order to train and training that particular skill will take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. This sort of progression system allows for players to be able to fully customize and control their character growth, as they're selecting what to become proficient with, rather than the game controlling their growth. Since players simply can't be good at everything in Eve Online, they usually choose to specialize in certain skills, but the fact that there are thousands of ways to build your character's skills makes Eve Online a unique gaming experience. There Is an obvious drawback to this system though, as players who started playing when the game was first released simply have more skills trained than people starting the game today.

Players in Ultima Online advanced by actually using the skills they wanted to become proficient in. Players that wanted to become swordsmen would have to physically equip a sword and start killing monsters with a sword weapon equipped. Players wouldn't advance based on how many monsters they killed, but rather how many times used their sword in combat. The game had over 30 different skills, all of which could be used by anyone in the game. The game did have a skill cap of "700" which meant that players could only have a total of 700 skill points and Each skill could be improved up to a maximum of 100. This system allowed players to be 100% in control of their characters development. If you wanted to have 50 of skill X and 70 of skill y and 25 of skill z you had the freedom to do so. There were almost infinite different ways to grow your character. Another positive aspect about Ultima Online's skill system was that players could at any time decide to forget a particular skill and work on another one, which allowed players to reshape their characters from a warrior to a blacksmith at anytime. This sort of character development led to the birth of hybrid ****s like "Tank Mage" where players would advance a mixture of both warrior skills and magician skills.

Unfortunately, developers today have all almost abandoned the idea of non level based progression. Since the wild success of World of Warcraft, developers will most likely try and copy the success that World of Warcraft. Developers simply don't want to risk trying to reinvent a system that has been working for years.

Source:

http://mmohub.org/2008/mmorpgs-the-leveling-system

Mmorpg games today require way too much grinding. This isn't a new trend, as the leveling system has been with us since the dawn of the online games, but I'm surprised that developers haven't found a new way to allow players to advance. The most enjoyable aspects of MMORPG games aren't killing rabbits and snakes, but rather raiding with friends and participating in PvP. When was the last time you heard your friend tell you the time he killed orcs for six hours straight and had a blast? Not often I hope. Some games actually deal with the grind a lot better than other, as World of Warcraft actually had interesting quests which were also a great source of experience, but games like MapleStory were all out grind fest with nothing else to do but grind.

When I quested and grinded my way to level 60 in World of Warcraft [Pre Burning Crusade] it really didn't feel like a chore, as I was constantly questing or instancing with friends. World of Warcraft actually handled the leveling system very well, as there were alternatives to grinding. I did however at times find myself grinding for hours at a time after I finished all the quests I could find. These weren't fun times, but I kept telling myself that once I hit level 60, I'd be have more fun, and I did. The problem was getting to 60.

MapleStory, a free Korean Mmorpg, is the epitome of grind. The only way to level up is to grind, and unlike World of Warcraft where you can reach maximum level in a month or so of casual play, it'll take well over six months of hard core playing to reach level 100, which is only half way to the game's level cap. Another problem in MapleStory was that combat wasn't at all interesting, but rather an absolute chore. It wasn't time efficient to kill monsters in MapleStory that didn't die in single hit, as you could get significantly more experience one hitting lower level monsters than two hitting higher level monsters. In order to level up once at level 60 or so, you'd have to slaughter 7,000 monsters, which can be extremely time consuming and definitely not fun, as it wouldn't be at all challenging.

Games like Fly for Fun and Hero Online also have similar experience models where killing higher level monsters isn't as efficient as slaughtering lower level monsters en masse. Another problem with these games are that the experience needed to level up increases exponentially as you level up, which makes the grinding even more of a chore. I'm hoping that one day developers find a new way for players to advance and spend more time actually playing the game, rather than grinding to a high enough level to be able to enjoy the game.

source

http://mmohub.org/2008/mmo-game-or-mmo-grind

Player versus player (PvP) competition has been an essential part of almost every western MMORPG released. Although PvP isn't as popular in Asian MMORPG games it does exist in games like 9Dragons and Perfect World. Fighting another player is always more interesting than fighting monsters or even fighting a boss, as there is a distinct sense of challenge; a sense of competition, as the victor would determine who the better player is.

Ultima Online, the first popular MMORPG had an open PvP environment where anyone can participate in PvP no matter where they were. No need to request a duel or teleport off into a special "zone" designated for fighting. You were able to fight almost anywhere you wanted to. The game's PvP was also unique, as the game's PvP combat relied entirely on skill rather than whoever had the best items. The difference between the best weapon in the game and the worst was almost negligible, which created an even playing field for everyone. The drawback to Ultima Online's balanced PvP system is the game's boring PvE experience, where monsters were plagued with stupid artificial intelligence and posed no threat even to the weakest players.

Everquest was the second popular MMORPG released. Unlike Ultima Online, in order to fight someone you had to request a fight with them which was a big step backward for fans of player verses player combat. In order to attract new players who preferred PvP, Everquest created a special server designated as a "PvP" server where players could attack each other almost anywhere in the game world. PvP duels and combat never became quite as popular in Everquest as it did in Ultima Online as the game wasn't designed for balanced PvP combat, as Everquest didn't impose level restrictions on items, which led to the player with the best equipment to usually win the fight.

Dark Age of Camelot, a game which was rumored to be the "Everquest killer" introduced a unique PvP system called "Realm vs Realm (RvR)" combat. Players would select a faction upon creating their character and fight to control strategic outposts in a designated "PvP zone". Each realm, or faction, fought to gain control of the game's relics. Each relic provided an in game stat bonus for the entire realm's population if they managed to gain control of that particular relic. Dark Age of Camelot was also the first that successfully fused siege weaponry with PvP combat. Realms would have to use catapults and rams to knock down the walls of enemy outposts in order to steal that particular faction's relics.

Today's MMORPG games offer a very limited PvP experience as newer games aren't being designed with PvP in mind, but are rather being tossed into the mix to simply add another feature. Even World of Warcraft, the most popular MMORPG on the market has a very limited PvP system. In order to participate in PvP combat on regular servers, players have to wait in line to be teleported to a special combat zone called a "battleground" where skill means nothing, as there are simply too many players in a single "battleground" at once for any single player to have a strong impact on the fight's result. Even on "PvP servers" World of Warcraft is lacking. Duels and fights are almost always determined by whoever has the best gear. I'm still waiting for a game that has both a balanced PvP system and an equally fun PvE system.

Source:

http://mmohub.org/2008/the-evolution-of-pvp

There can be no denying that the MMORPG genre has made great strides over the past decade. Games like Rohan: Blood Feud and Perfect World have graphics that blow Ultima Online and Asheron's Call out of the water. But both those older games had something that few games released today days do: Player Housing.

Some of my best memories during the dawn of the MMORPG genre were spent alone inside my own dwelling. Hours could be spent decorating and designing a large house. These houses not only served as a distraction but often doubled as live event locations. For example, the head quarters of a powerful guild in Ultima Online would serve as a PvP hot-spot. Newer games like World of Warcraft have had to bypass these player generated action zones with artificial PvP zones like the Battlegrounds and the Arena. Now don't get me wrong, both of those are great features in WoW but they do have a structured feel to them. I prefer my virtual worlds to be player driven.

Some games have implemented player housing in a lousy manner. For a good example of this look no further than Dark Age of Camelot. Rather than making houses a geographic feature of the main land, entire new zones were created to act as house parks. Expensive monthly rents were attached to house ownership which made them impractical to anyone outside a major guild.

With the success that World of Warcraft has enjoyed, there doesn't seem to be much demand for playing housing. But with the MMO market growing so fast, there must be a few developers willingly to experiment with this long neglected feature. I would like to point out that a recently released 2D free to play game called Wonderland Online has a very basic housing system. Each player can pitch a tent which can then be decorated. The tent will appear in the game world and other players may enter if the owner permits.

Hopefully we'll see more in depth housing features in the MMORPGs of the future. How soon and to what extent housing is implemented in tomorrows games depends on how much value we put on it. Please share your thoughts on player housing in MMORPGs!

source:
http://mmohub.org/2008/player-housing-where-is-it

Classic MMORPG games like Ultima Online and Everquest had something that new MMORPGs today simply don't have. When you were killed playing Ultima Online there was a strong sense of defeat and loss. You actually lost something when you died. You could lose all your possessions that you were carrying. This sort of game play made it so players didn't always carry their best sword of their best set of armor with them, as there was always a chance that they could lose it. If a group of people saw you carrying a shiny sword of vanquishing, they would be inclined to kill you and take your gear. With an open PvP environment, where anyone can attack you anywhere in the game, except while you're in town, it's best to make allies quickly, or you'll quickly lose your hard earned equipment.

In Everquest death was extremely annoying. If you died in Everquest, you would spawn back in town without any of your possessions, and in order to reclaim them, you would need to return to your corpse. If you didn't return to your corpse within a week, your corpse would disappear, and your items lost forever. Don't mistake this with a silly corpse run in World of Warcraft, as in order to reclaim your equipment in Everquest, you would need to physically run back to your body, and without any of your equipment, that can be incredibly difficult, and if you fell into a lava pit, good luck trying to get your corpse back, as you may need to spend an entire day trying to recover your body.

In the new age of MMORPGs and MMO games it just doesn't feel rewarding to kill another player and there is simply no sense of loss when you get killed. In World of Warcraft, if you happen to die, you basically get a slap on the wrist, as the only thing you lose is a bit of durability on your equipment. You'll need to die 10 times for your equipment to get damaged enough to hurt your coin pouch, and you won't even lose any experience for dying. At least some anime inspired games like Maple Story and Fly For Fun incorporate a real penalty for death. In MapleStory when you get killed, you lose a good chunk of experience. It'll take you at least an hour to regain the lost experience.

A good penalty on death Is good for MMORPGs. In World of Warcraft, there really is no reason to be cautious while grinding as if you happen to die, it's nothing more than a slight annoyance. In MapleStory, players constantly carry hundreds of healing potions with them, as they'll do everything they can to avoid death. This sort of game play prevents players from acting irrationally and stupid, which can result in group wipes while raiding or just hunting as a group.

source:
http://mmohub.org/2008/evolution-of-death-in-mmorpgs

There's no denying that the MMO market is growing by leaps and bounds. Analysts have shown that the MMORPG market is growing at over 30% a year. It seems that almost every week several new games are either announced or enter public beta. With formerly poor Asian countries becoming wealthier, there are literally millions of Chinese, Filipino, and Vietnamese players entering the potential customer base every year. Even in America, broadband access is only now starting to spread rapidly.

But even with the growing demand, are the number of games being announced grounded in market realities or simply on hype? "Bubble" is an unofficial term commonly used in the financial world to indicate any asset or industry who's price rapidly inflates beyond fundamental justifications. Take for example the recent housing bubble that popped in America. For years it was too easy to borrow money which led to lots of people borrowing to buy homes, home prices went up and lending standards went down. It came to a point where someone could get a mortgage with no money down and no visible form of income. By the time the banks figured this out, things had begun to collapse. People who could not pay their mortgages walked away from their homes, leaving the banks with a glut of bad loans and empty houses who's prices began to plummet. To sum it up, too many people were offering products too cheap to people who couldn't pay.

You may be asking yourself what any of this has to do with MMMORPGs. I get the feeling that while there is strong demand for online games, the current number of products being developed is far more than the market can handle. Every major success breeds imitators and since World of Warcraft's huge success worldwide, there have been many new MMORPGs announced. Currently there are at least 100 free to play MMORPGs and more are announced every week. All these games are chasing the same general audience, and all their strategies are based on the assumption that enough players will purchase items from "cash shops" to cover all their expenses. No one expects all these games to succeed but I'm predicting a very hard landing. Most of the current batch of games will never make a profit, though they may take a long time to die off. They'll be sold from one publisher to the next at ever decreasing value. Take for example Deco Online which just entered public beta by JoyMax, the folks behind Silkroad Online. Deco is not a new game. It failed and was shut down in Asia. That's when JoyMax bought the license and decided to bring it to North America. In order to protect themselves from lemons, investors like those at JoyMax are starting to offer multiple games at once, so that the successful games can counterbalance the flops. Expect to see more of this. Sites like IJJI, Aeria, IGG, gPotatoe, Game&Game and Nexon that currently offer multiple games will soon offer dozens. New sites with the same business plan will soon follow.

So what do you think? Are there too many MMORPGs being released for the current audience? Is the market really growing fast enough to accommodate all of these games? Share your thoughts below.

Most Asian single player RPGs are story driven while almost all Asian MMORPGs are completely void of any semblance of plot. I've never been able to fully understand this contradiction. Unlike Western MMORPGs, Asian ones are usually free to play and instead supported through cash item shops. This certainly goes some way in explaining this phenomena. "Lore" is regarded as a luxury that developers can do without. We gamers are expected to accept this compromise -- free game play but no lore.

To get into this matter a bit deeper, lets take a look at two very successful games with vastly different approaches to story. World of Warcraft has mountains of in game text. Each of the thousands of quests is attached to lengthy dialogue and players can go out of their way to read books placed throughout the world. Entire novels have been written set in the Warcraft universe. On the other end of the spectrum we have Maple Story. With something like 50 million users worldwide, there is no doubting Maple Story's success. Yet Maple Story doesn't even give players the pretense of a story.

Obviously there are many factors that go into making a good game, but I would really like to see a game like Fly For Fun or Dream of Mirror Online that has the same dynamic back story that we see in single player Asian RPGs. Story might not be a top concern, but why not develop it as time goes by? For example, for the first year or so Maple Story had very few quests but as time went by more and more were added. Couldn't story elements be added the same way? Start with basic stuff then add more as the game develops.

What are your thoughts on back stories in MMORPGs? Are they needless or do they help enrich the experience and immerse the player in the game world? Share your views through the comments below.