One of the things that I would love doing, as an alter-ego in an online Universe, would be to be this super-being, having loads of cool powers, but no one actually knowing about them. MMO games seem to find it mandatory to disclose your level to other players. Why? Why not keep that information private to the player himself? Not only your level, but also your name. Imagine being in a party with 2 other players, and geting sudenly attacked by a Royal Red Dragon, a very high-level creature! As you kneel and say your prayers, the guy next to you, the silent one that hasnt said much since he joined with you two cities ago, has positioned himself against the rock wall, and seems to be in a meditative transe. As he meditates you see an aura starting to surround him. He has the palms of his hands joined in prayer, and he is mutering something. The beast above circles and the fire-sac in her throat is swelling, signaling that she is geting ready for an attack. You make the decision of not dying as a coward, so you switch to your trusty bow and arrow, and you pull up a worn shield. The Dragon pauses in mid air, and then turns neck pointed downward into a freefall flight, and the path is straight towards your party. The rogue is nowhere to be seen, he managed to escape, probably prefering to go back into the desert from where the party has just come, even though he has nowhere near enough water supplies... and you just realise he stole your water too... You try to decide if you're going to crouch down with your shield and try to survive the oncoming fire-blaze, or stand up and try to shoot an arrow into the beast's eye. You know the answer. You hate it, but you know it. The shield would never endure a dragon's fire. So you chose to go out, kamikaze-style. The dragon spreads its wings and opens its mouth. You pull on the arrow with all the strength you can muster. She unleashes her hellish blaze, and you let your arrow fly. A split-second before the fire falls upon you, you can see the arrow ricocheting on the dragon's head scales. But! Not all is lost! The dragon's blaze hasnt hit you. You're still alive, although a bit blind. You don't know what just happened, but the blindness is fading away. Your eyes start to focus and you can see the dragon coming around for a second time. Your skin is immersed in a bluish mana, you're confused. Suddenly, the rocks below seem to move, a great explosion is heard, and then a giant hand, made of rock no less, thrusts into the air and grasps the dragon with such strength that its chest colapses. There is greenish blood all over and the hand colapses into the ground, into nothing more than rocks, losing its magical life. The stranger colapses to the ground, and mutters "Any chance you still have any mana potions you could spare?" [wink]

That is a very VERY detailed description...

Which is why we need to play more table top RPGs and less MMORPGs
*Praise D&D*

Cmon! Where's the excitements when you role the die? MMORPGs just missing that random part! Everything in MMORPGs now is so predictable! It's always about running to point A to point B and do this quest and that quest. And when you reach the level cap, all you do is farming! Cmon! Leave the farming to the Mexicans(no offense, but that's what they do)

I just really want to see D&D be played online...and no...not that sh*tty cr*p made by Turbine.

I want to voice chat with REAL dungeon master, who can create their own world on the fly. Think of a SDK that the dungeon master can directly feed newer part of the dungeon to player.

Some how the more I talk about it, the more I'm getting close to Neverwinter Nights, even though I never played it but only heard things about it.

The thing is, I want to see creature's goal is NOT to kill players, but to entertain them.

/flashback/
I still remember the first time I played D&D and I wasn't even playing it with friends. I was playing D&D with 6 strangers. Since everybody at the table except the DM was new, everybody start at level 1. We entered a dungeon, and 8 skeleton soldiers start swinging axe and swords at us. 3 of us have fallen from battle, leaving only me(the rogue) and the half-orc cleric. Just at this time the DM said: "Suddenly, the 2 of the skeletons backed off, pulls out a bottle of life potions and shove it down its throat; it dies" And we all laughed and went on with the adventure.
/end flashback/

This kind of thing will never happen in MMORPGs. All we see is: "Nuker lfg!" or "1337 Tank looking for raid groups". IT IS A MEDIVAL FANTASY GAME, NOT A MODERN COMBAT! WHY DO WE HAVE TANKS AND NUKES? If you want tanks and nukes, why don't you go play StarCraft where there are tanks and nukes?


Sorry for getting too emotional, I just hate to see more and more of these so called MMORPGs become meirly just a chores everyday. Games suppose to be fun and make people laugh, but people who play MMORPGs become angry and calling each others noob, shouting f this, suck that....take a look at this video clip...

http://www.filecabi.net/t/hotlink7ncuntv6:)sj/pclunatic.wmv

This is what these MMORPGs have made us. Lunatics...

This would be quite a good idea, and provide a bit of surprises when people are PKing.
Although I suppose some people want to show off their level...

Actually, I dislike Conning as well. Don't start me on 'agro rings'.

Neither conning, nor [arbitrary] level disclosure have any part in ANY of the MMO designs I have. I believe that you should be able to get that sort of information by watching the other character carefully - do they make fancy moves when attacking with a sword? Did he really just kill a troll with a single magic missile? They're built like a brick outhouse, must be strong! That sort of thing.

I'm getting really sick of the 'subscription farm' MMO format. There are a lot of players who don't want to be wrapped in cotton wool from the scary mobs.

In Gemstone IV (a MUD that has been around a while) the levels were never shown until recently players were given the option to show the level. So for the most part you have no clue how old another player is unless they show their optional title (Lord - train 20, Great Lord - train 40, High Lord - train 80, Renown(?) Lord - train 100(cap)).

Critter levels also are not shown but instead you can assess a critter and get a rough estimate of is it more than 10 trains above you, above your train, below your train or more than 10 trains below you. Though as you are shown in text attack and defence strengths on the first attack, this point is usually fairly moot.

Dragon Realms on the other hand (produced by the same company as Gemstone, fairly similar game) does not show levels and also does not show attack or defence strength or even hit points on attacks, simply shows X hits Y WHERE. This makes combat far more complicated as you really don't know how much damage you are taking except for the apparent severity of your wounds.

I do plan on leaving out levels, names, and conning in my game.

I wanted the lack of levels so that people arent just trying to treadmill through levels to get to the top and focusing on skill combinations instead.

I wanted the lack of names so that people will have to actually talk to others and socialize to get names. Its also the reason Im getting rid of global chat. You want to chat and LOL it up with a few players? Head down to the local tavern, theres sure to be plenty of 'em there.

And though I wont have conning, I will have an Monster Lore skill that players can specialize in. The experts in Monster Lore can then write books about the monsters they know about so that newer players can learn about some of the monsters before they leave town.

Conning? From the context it doesn't particularly look like that means what I'm expecting...

I like the idea though, well presented Prozak.

Conning is an old EQ term. Its short for... um... con-something (consider?)... basically it means to get an idea of how powerful an enemy is compared to you by the color of its name, aura, etc.