So, if you could name three things...

[Mark Jacobs]

Oh, BTW, on another thread that I've been posting on, I shared one of the foundational principles of this new project because of the feedback I was getting there. These principles are what I believe should be at the heart of the game's design and development and followed by the team no matter which part of it they are working on. Since things are going so well here, I'll share that same principle here. It should come as no surprise to you folks here based on what I've said so far but it's worth repeating.


Principle #1 - Be willing to take risks, even if fortune doesn’t always favor the bold.

Being safe is for tourists and for our casual games. This is the wrong game, wrong genre, wrong developer and wrong time to be safe.


FYI, I told the guys/gals on that thread that if they could get City State Entertainment's likes up to 500, I'd pull another one of the principles out of the vision document to share with them (we were at 383 at the time). At 400 of course we get to promote our page and since some of the posters there said that our game should not be afraid to challenge gamers, I went ahead and said 500, instead of 400.   If you want to help in the effort, have at it. As of now we are at 401.

Does "risk" refer to the design process as in "Let's make something unsusual and exciting but "risky" from a design standpoint or is it a guideline on how gameplay should feel as in "base the game around risk v. reward etc."...or both?

Who do you believe is your core market? Former DAOC fans? How do you keep track of who your core market is these days? Since DAOC people have gone in all kinds of directions with tastes and expectations in MMOs - how can you keep track of that today?

As to risk, both.

As to the core market, it really will be as simple as those who like the kind of game we are hoping to create. I'm not looking solely at former DAoC players or former WoW players, etc. We will design a certain type of game and we will see what the response is from them. When we announce the game, the reaction will tell us whether we are heading in the right direction.

[Lokked]

Here are some concepts from various games that kept me interested (from all Genres):

Failing Before Succeeding - While defeating every encounter on the first try is invigorating at first, more utility from the experience can be drawn after experiencing failure.

Powering Up Items - "You found an item on a monster, and here's how you can make it stronger." It's another form of "quest", but it intrigued me far more than traditional quests

Combos/Combo-Breakers - Killer Instinct? Comboing up attacks to achieve various effects. EQ2's Combat Wheel (or whatever) was close, but something was missing, not sure what.

More Realistic Fragility - Hitting someone until a counter reaches zero and then the player falling over is not innovative. Limbs should be rendered useless during combat and Combat Pace should slow as fighters tire. The pace at which a player is placed back into battle might have to be increased, but players should be more fragile.

Equipment Variety & Purpose & Availability - The main reason I played Diablo 2 was the HUGE variety of equipment and twinking options. If you look at current MMOs, High-ranked gear is only available to high-ranked and organized groups. In Diablo 2, once you reached a certain point, you have access to nearly all drops, at a very low % chance (the chance increasing as you went to harder areas or defeated special encounters). The best gear was crafted from a combination of multiple rare drops, meaning players had to trade unwanted rare drops for what they needed. Playstyle could be affected by gear alone.

**This is just something to think about - Everyone learns differently
Demand of Conscious Decision - Simplified, the Brain uses 2 layers to perform an action - Conscious and Unconscious. When something's been performed consciously enough times, the Action becomes unconscious. When factors resulting in the decision to perform that action have occurred enough times, the decision becomes unconscious. This is learning.

If the Action is too complicated (or perceived to be) to be moved into the Unconscious in a reasonable amount of time, a person will give up/not attempt. Intrigue/excitement/interest/etc is generated when a decision is made consciously, something that was learned must be modified slightly or combined with something else learned, and a "new challenge" is overcome (or failed) and something new is learned.

As a comparison, walking is an action moved into the unconscious at a young age. People at older ages still "go for walks" but is it actually walking that entertains them? No - It's their thoughts (internal), their environment (visual), their music (audio), etc. It's anything but actually walking.

Will your game be like going for a walk?

[Blargh]

Apologies in advance for the ranting, a summary-style post just did not work out. No apologies for failing to "me 3" in places.


Deal Makers:

- Dedicated Crafting Progression, whether it takes form of a dedicated crafting class, or preferably "crafting levels". I do like crafting (and I dont charge friends/guildies for it), and I would like to see my efforts and time spent on it allow me through the same gates that other people's time spent AoE farming mobs allow them through. Yes, please, force me to spend an evening doing nothing but crafting, but get me to the same place that the other guy has gotten to by spending an evening AoE farming. In terms of gear, money, you name it. While I'm here, make harvesting a group effort - and not in the sense that you need to kill a red-named-elite-champion-ten-star-insane-boss to get at the node. No, you want more/better RESOURCES? You go and GROUP HARVEST resources. NOT boss mobs. (people who know me can easily guess where all that is coming from)

- Lore. More Lore. Lore That Makes Sense. I don't give a damn about the 99.99% of the MMO population whose valuation of an NPC dialogue is "only 2 clicks, woo!", and I cringe every time I see a "there is a dragon in my kitchen sink, kill it". Interactive lore. Mini-game lore. Lore for the sake of lore.

- Brutal Class/Skill Imbalance, it is time to turn back the wheels of homogenisation. I'll throw in enforced grouping and brutal death penalties into this.



Deal Breakers:

- Any kind of "meaningful", "Full Loot", "FFA" PvP. When I log onto an MMO, there is probably a long (or short) list of things that I am looking forward to. Running into Sir Lolzalot who is rampaging through the lowbie areas with his merrymen is not what I log on for. Seeing that the overnight/australasian population has taken control, again, over "your buzzword here", is not what I log on for, not even if they happen to be in the same faction/camp that I am in. (Especially if they are in my cam/faction) Making ME pay to be HIS game content is an indication that YOUR game lacks content. There are probably a million e-sports games out there already.

- Grandfathering effects of any kind. For those unfamiliar with the term... You could never beat your grandfather at chess, no matter how much you improved - because so did he. EvE-O manages to mostly avoid them, but that is an exception rather than the rule when it comes to open-skill systems.

- Bots. Enough said. Yes, I am aware both of the technological difficulties and of "if you cant beat them, join them".

[Argorius]

Deal Makers:

- Brutal Class/Skill Imbalance, it is time to turn back the wheels of homogenisation. I'll throw in enforced grouping and brutal death penalties into this.

I guess I don't see eye to eye with your PVP Deal Breaker but I totally agree in the above mentioned point. The homogenization of characters is so incredibly boring - class balance achieved by not giving characters any significant powers is such a short cut and super lame. In my time playing MMOs (and especially boardgames) I have found that there is a set of people that absolutely cannot stand any type of imbalance - to them it is best if every side is equal and everyone has the same initial chances to win. It doesnt even have to be balanced but merely being different is enough to enrage this type of gamer. There is another type (maybe it is the same) that absolutely hates luck and randomness...anyway - I am the opposite "chaos gamer" type...I love different classes, different skills, I think some randomeness is fun, I think imbalances are fun even if I am on the receiving end. I liked the fact that Midgard used to be Stungard because it was just so characteristic and unique...or that Albion always had numbers...it adds so much spice to the game and makes it interesting...to me...imbalances are fun (even on the receiving side)...I have a feeling though that I am a minority with this and that the majority of players cannot stand imbalances or randomness.

[Mark Jacobs]

Deal Makers:

- Brutal Class/Skill Imbalance, it is time to turn back the wheels of homogenisation. I'll throw in enforced grouping and brutal death penalties into this.

I guess I don't see eye to eye with your PVP Deal Breaker but I totally agree in the above mentioned point. The homogenization of characters is so incredibly boring - class balance achieved by not giving characters any significant powers is such a short cut and super lame. In my time playing MMOs (and especially boardgames) I have found that there is a set of people that absolutely cannot stand any type of imbalance - to them it is best if every side is equal and everyone has the same initial chances to win. It doesnt even have to be balanced but merely being different is enough to enrage this type of gamer. There is another type (maybe it is the same) that absolutely hates luck and randomness...anyway - I am the opposite "chaos gamer" type...I love different classes, different skills, I think some randomeness is fun, I think imbalances are fun even if I am on the receiving end. I liked the fact that Midgard used to be Stungard because it was just so characteristic and unique...or that Albion always had numbers...it adds so much spice to the game and makes it interesting...to me...imbalances are fun (even on the receiving side)...I have a feeling though that I am a minority with this and that the majority of players cannot stand imbalances or randomness.

You are correct, there are a lot of people who think that they need to get the same result every time they swing a sword. As we all know from real life, that's not how it works. Now, the debate we had at Mythic was whether randomness is more fun than static and how does that effect player enjoyment from both the PvE and RvR perspectives. There's not a right/wrong answer here, because it really does boil down to individual preferences. Some people like to know that they can always defeat an NPC because their sword does 5pts of DD and that the NPC's club does only 4pts and that the NPC will run out of HPs before they will. Other players like the idea that they can attack something a little too hard for them but if they get lucky and the NPC doesn't, they can defeat them. You can trace this debate all the way back to the first RPGs and the MUDs.

Me, I like a little chaos/randomness thrown into the world, especially when it comes to RvR. Being able to brag about the spectacular hit you got or that special item that was dropped seems, at least to me, to be worth a little extra pain at times when the RNG doesn't roll in your favor. But as always, your mileage may vary.

[Mark Jacobs]

Apologies in advance for the ranting, a summary-style post just did not work out. No apologies for failing to "me 3" in places.


Deal Makers:

- Dedicated Crafting Progression, whether it takes form of a dedicated crafting class, or preferably "crafting levels". I do like crafting (and I dont charge friends/guildies for it), and I would like to see my efforts and time spent on it allow me through the same gates that other people's time spent AoE farming mobs allow them through. Yes, please, force me to spend an evening doing nothing but crafting, but get me to the same place that the other guy has gotten to by spending an evening AoE farming. In terms of gear, money, you name it. While I'm here, make harvesting a group effort - and not in the sense that you need to kill a red-named-elite-champion-ten-star-insane-boss to get at the node. No, you want more/better RESOURCES? You go and GROUP HARVEST resources. NOT boss mobs. (people who know me can easily guess where all that is coming from)

- Lore. More Lore. Lore That Makes Sense. I don't give a damn about the 99.99% of the MMO population whose valuation of an NPC dialogue is "only 2 clicks, woo!", and I cringe every time I see a "there is a dragon in my kitchen sink, kill it". Interactive lore. Mini-game lore. Lore for the sake of lore.

- Brutal Class/Skill Imbalance, it is time to turn back the wheels of homogenisation. I'll throw in enforced grouping and brutal death penalties into this.



Deal Breakers:

- Any kind of "meaningful", "Full Loot", "FFA" PvP. When I log onto an MMO, there is probably a long (or short) list of things that I am looking forward to. Running into Sir Lolzalot who is rampaging through the lowbie areas with his merrymen is not what I log on for. Seeing that the overnight/australasian population has taken control, again, over "your buzzword here", is not what I log on for, not even if they happen to be in the same faction/camp that I am in. (Especially if they are in my cam/faction) Making ME pay to be HIS game content is an indication that YOUR game lacks content. There are probably a million e-sports games out there already.

- Grandfathering effects of any kind. For those unfamiliar with the term... You could never beat your grandfather at chess, no matter how much you improved - because so did he. EvE-O manages to mostly avoid them, but that is an exception rather than the rule when it comes to open-skill systems.

- Bots. Enough said. Yes, I am aware both of the technological difficulties and of "if you cant beat them, join them".

LOL, As someone who is used to ranting and at times, being ranted at, I don't think you were ranting at all.

Quick question though. Are you saying with Deal Breaker #1 (Any kind of "meaningful", "Full Loot", "FFA" PvP) that you also wouldn't play an RvR game?

[Argorius]

As a side note - MMO companies generally do not really like to put out different server sets (for obvious reasons) but if they do we may see, at the most, a PvP or PvE ruleset - mixed up with a usually meaningless RP ruleset. What would be interesting though is if one could do the following: (1) identify gamer personality types by a quasi psychological profile (e.g. the randomness crowd v. the chaos crowd) and (2) provide different rule sets with each catering to the individual types.

At first glance, it may seem impossible because there apparently are so many different "tastes" - some based on personality profile - other may be influenced by previous gaming experience. However, what if one could find some structure in it and narrow it down to a manageable size. For example, people that like randomness or chaos may be more likely to also enjoy x, y, and z...open world PVP. People that like more balance may be more likely to enjoy instanced PVP battleground. I realize this may be impossible and the work for a research team of psychologists but it would be interesting to attempt a separation of gamer types and providing rule sets that cater to each type.

The idea of providing many different rule sets is of course daunting but I could see that a company that actually does the work to do this could benefit quite a bit from such a system. There are certain decisions that game designers are faced with, where they may lose a large portion of players regardless of what decision they actually make. It would make financial sense to try and capture as many players as you can by going with both options and providing different versions of the same game. This presupposes that you are able to identify which ones are the decisions that are important v. which ones are not important. Well, the operational headache that would cause might be enormous and in the end you cant catch them all...but still I wonder if it is possible?

[Blargh]

LOL, As someone who is used to ranting and at times, being ranted at, I don't think you were ranting at all.

Quick question though. Are you saying with Deal Breaker #1 (Any kind of "meaningful", "Full Loot", "FFA" PvP) that you also wouldn't play an RvR game?

I wasn't too clear there, (which proves it was a proper rant ), my bad. How's this:

1a. "As long as I can keep my precioussssssssssssssssnesssssssness I'm happy to participate in any kind of PvP context". (thats the full loot part) ("context" is not a typo)

1b. I prefer my PvP to happen when I want it to, be it an WWWWWWWWWW zone, RvR lake, whatever. I can play (and I have played) in an FFA environment, but PvP finding me when I'm doing something else irritates me. I just happen to get irritated easier than many. (thats the ffa part)

1c. Calls for "meaningful" rvr/pvp from players, and claims of such from game designers irritate the living daylights out of me - I happen to agree with the POV that any kind of genuinely meaningful value to win/loss in PvP is an automatic death sentence to an MMO and is fundamentally incompatible with a persistent game world. Yes, I am aware of EvE-O. I am also aware (unlike apparently most people that like to mention it) that 95%? 99%? of its population lives in highsec - something that CCP, despite all their efforts, has not been able to affect. I don't think I need to delve deeper here, this particular horse has seen a million deaths across the gaming parts of the internetZ. Mind you, in the context of a chaotically-reset world (can't recall where that was mentioned, in this thread or in the blog comments), it can probably work, but would that still be an MMO and where is the difference between that and, say, GW2's model of new WWW partners every fortnight with a map reset?

1d. IM(ns)LE* outcomes of PvP activities in MMOs tend to be far, far more predictable than PvE ones -- sometimes with a hefty dose of 20-20 hindsight -- and thus, to me, more boring than PvE. Then again, I'm weirder than most, ask anyone on this forum -- and probably not good statistical material.



Anyway, to answer your question, "full loot" is an absolute "NO" for me. Anything else I can usually live with and even occasionally enjoy, depending on the bunch I'm running with at the time -- which is not a variable under your control.




---
* in my not so limited experience

[icedern]

First of all, thank you Mark for really taking the time to discuss this in a forums such as this.  As a gamer that has really enjoyed things you have done in the past, its really great to see this.  Also, I've been reading K&G for a long time and decided it was a good opportunity to post some feedback in this thread.

I would first like to go over what your initial post was requesting and then go over some general things that pop in my mind. 

Deal Makers

- Large/Living/Immersive World -
Really this is a lot more than one thing but together I believe it should be 1 thing.  MMOs today have such a hard time with this because everything is so linear.  The further out from your city you go the more difficult it is.  That just doesn't make sense.  There are also things such as being a seasoned adventurer and you come across a bug, that if it were to come to your home town where you started would destroy everything, but because you're 5 zones away it is normal.  This also makes no sense and destroys immersion. 

Another thing that destroys immersion to me is just how the internet has changed us in the last 15 years.  My first MMO was EQ.  When I first logged into that game, I had NO idea what was out there.  What is over that hill over there?  Why don't I just go find out.  Nowadays, people just pull up the in game map or a map on their second monitor.  There is so much information that floods out to the internet, it's so easy to just look things up.  There really isn't a way to stop people from posting maps and such, but I think that in game maps and such really take away from that sense of being in a large world and really not knowing what's around the corner. 

As far as a living world, I think GW2 has done the best job of doing something close to that with their events.  The game would need to make actions of the players have real consequences to the world.  If a band of npc bandits go and attack a small village where players go and sell some loot to a merchant and kill said merchant, the players won't be able to sell there until they take back the village and another merchant travels there.  Things like that make the game living and actions of the players have consequence. 

- RvR with Purpose -
Sadly, no game has done this since DAoC.  Even then, I think there is a ton of opportunity to expand tenfold to what that was.  I have had daydreams of how I would make an RvR system that I would love.  Imagine a game where the contested land is across an ocean.  Crafters would make ships that would be used to sail there (more on that later).  There would be naval battles to control the seas but once you made it to the contested lands, you would battle over key areas.  If you controlled that area, you'd have access to dungeons or materials for crafting only found in that area.   If a realm wanted access to those, they would need to control that.  After a set time, if it;s been in control by the same realm, it would reset to neutral and powerful NPCs would take it over.  The realm would no longer have access to the riches of that area.  These resources would also need to make it back to the main land for the crafters to use.  Realms would need to keep trade routes open.  If they are broken, anything that is split off and doesn't have access to the main land wouldn't be able to make it back so the realm would need to take that back.  Players would also want individual rewards for participating in the RvR combat.  There you get into trying to keep it balanced so new players coming in don't get discouraged by someone so decked out that he could kill a whole group by himself.  I don't have any suggestions for that one yet

- Crafting that isn't just a money sink -
Crafting in modern MMOs just seems like a money sink IMO.  Sure, there might be a few useful things that people can make once they are maxed out, but not enough to make people just want their primary profession to be a crafter.  As I mentioned above with the ships, I think crafters should be highly important to the success of a realm.  Crafters would have to be the ones to create the ships to sail to the contested areas, build up the player cities, build the fortifications of the keeps in the contested lands, make the highest grade armor/weapons.  Why does that dragon need to drop a breastplate?  Sure, I know people get excited for rare drops but why can't players harvest for his scales and teeth etc that are used by the crafters to make the awesome equipment?  I would be just as excited if I killed a dragon and was able to harvest a pristine dragon tooth off of him and know that a weaponsmith could turn that into an amazing weapon.

Deal Breakers

- Modern MMO Questing -
GW2 was a nice breath of fresh air away from the linear questing model.  Nothing destroys my immersion more.  I'm sure there is very very few people that would even read them.  They just look at their quest tracker and the mini map and go.  I would love to see quests be very long drawn out journeys like they had in EQ.  If its just go to quest hub and talk to everyone with an icon and move on, no thank you. 

- No housing -
Again, this is part of the immersion thing that I'm looking for.  I like a place to come back at the end of playing and to put my loot in a chest and hang my trophies up on the wall.  SWG was the king of housing and sadly, I don't think I'll ever see something like that again.  Prove me wrong Mark!

- Themepark -
We all know what this means and we all dislike it so I'm not going to go on and on about it. 

Some random thoughts

Well, I didn't think I'd be typing this long so I'm going to keep this short.  I saw a lot of people talk about instancing.  Instancing can get over used really easy, but in todays market, it's really hard to not have it.  There are so many players now compared to the early age of mmos.  It's just not realistic to have an open dungeon with 100s of players in it.  Having smaller open dungeons spread out over the world would be good, but I think main ones would have to be instanced.  This also helps by being able to tell a story better for that dungeon.  SWTOR did a good job at that.  You knew why you were doing something in a dungeon because there was a story for it. 

I also think it's time to move away from character levels and more to skill based.  Imagine a game that has no levels, but "age".  Your character ages every real life week.  The way you advance is by using your skills (EQ style, the more you use it the better it is).  As you advance your skills, you unlock abilities based on that skill.  Each skill has several paths that basically determine your "class"  For example, when you reached your skill milestone you unlocked 3 abilities.  One of those abilities is a taunt attack another is an increased damage attack.  So if you were wanting to be a tank, you'd obviously take the taunt attack. 

Once your character reaches a certain "age", you may create an offspring(alt).  This offspring would gain certain benefits based on his or her parent.  Eventually over time, that offspring would then be able to do the same.  Over time, a person could create a really unique character. 

If a person chooses to for-go that option, they could have their character become a "Paragon".  This would be a quest the character has to complete for their gods which unlocks a whole new set of skills. This would allow someone to stick with their Main and not be affected by age.  Speaking of age, after a certain time, your characters skills will start to degrade as would yours in real life.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text.  Looking forward to further discussions!

TLDR: blah blah blah, I miss old school MMOs and want that feeling again, with a twist. 

[Fresnel]

deal makers

• reasons to slow down and socialize, no idea how to do this but may include no or extremely limited fast instant travel, reasons to be in a town, running a shop, etc.
• PvE must be fun and compelling and challenging to encourage (but not always require) grouping in a world with PvP where kill first isn't always the correct choice, 3 factions a plus, no faction being "evil" also a plus
• battle to control resources - there should be regions where high end reasorces spawn, no one region has everything so you have to either go out of your way a long journy to get resources, steal them from someone else, or actually trade for them, this requiresno global auction house or it trivializes this whole process.
  

deal breakers

• camping 1 spot all day everyday - instances may be immersion breaking for some, for me sitting in one spot killing the mobs as the respawn for hours is more so. I like that it leads to staying with a group and chatting for a while, what I don't like is if everyone needs the "belt of uber awsomesauce" you have to kill king uber awsomesauce. However when you try to get it you find a group is already camping it so you have to get on the waiting list and 5 hours later maybe it is your turn to join the camp. then as you run to join your group you run though an incredible complex dungeon filled with 0 mobs because everything is killed by some group as soon as it is spawn.  Solutions may include only instance bosses? no item is dropped in only 1 place?
• day 1 i go out into the world still trying to learn the controls and 4zz$tabb3r runs up naked with a knife and kills me in 2 hits
• forced to look like everyone else. I hate that. to be a competitive warrior I need the same sword as everyone else with the exact same armor as everyone else that is only made in 1 color and shape. I really like the orange items of SWTOR and think an entire game should be structured around that type of thing. If I love the look of the color blind hobo that most character end up wearing at about lvl 4 i should be able to look like that at max.

[Thelg]

Hi Mark,

Played both DAOC as a Mid(loved the game till you know what), was in beta of WAR for a long time, bought it and wanted so bad for it to work, but there was just no way it could. My last attempt at playing RvR game was Aion. It hurts to say but Aion was close to what RvR game should be then WAR.. even so it had tons of problems and was far worse then DAOC in its heyday.

So deal makers.

1. 3 SIDED RVR, I would love to hear what happened with WAR design because I am not sure how that was supposed to work. Aion same thing, same problem. Different sides.. promote hate between realms. DAOC hit that so well, Aion had that as well since leveling in Abyss you learned to despise the opposition (think Yggdra gate only you lost a lot more on dieing). Rip off DAOC it was not broken do not fix it.
2. Realm PvP based skill system. Not gear, not titles but skills. Curve has to be exponential, RAs were good just do that.
3. Solid server and client performance for large battles, as a software engineer I think you have to start with that. Client fine optimize later but server has to be designed and built with that in mind. Same with skills no limit on targets of CC, AOE dd, drp off from epicenter all of those things.

Deal breakers

1. Instances. Anything past starting tutorial an instance? any way to get RvR points in an instance? any way to level in an instance? I am not buying the game that is a promise (I have not bought an MMO since Aion)
2. Real hardcore PvP, I done it before I loved it then and maybe if I was a teen I would again but I can not play games like Shadowbane again no time to commit
3. No hardcore enough dieing need to matter, alteast in 30-1h loss of time sense, not in 2-3month worth of loss as point 2

Those are the questions you asked. Her are some ideas in general
1. RvR.. tie in through web, Herald on steroids. Manage guards on guild keep, upgrade/downgrade etc. push notification for certain things. So many things you can do with this. Get people involved more. Guard patrol routing, guard POV snapshotting to see what is going on in the world. Some aspects of crafting perhaps. It is relatively easy to implement but I think it would really help to keep people involved and build community
2. Colonization style world. Noob land is old world, then you set sail to the new continent
3. Copy this from Aion.. time to time for a limited time portals open up that lead to the enemy pve zones. Absolute hilarity ensues.. have quests with big rewards that require you to take those portals.

Looking forward to see what ideas you have. Cheers

[Lokked]

Those are the questions you asked. Her are some ideas in general
1. RvR.. tie in through web, Herald on steroids. Manage guards on guild keep, upgrade/downgrade etc. push notification for certain things. So many things you can do with this. Get people involved more. Guard patrol routing, guard POV snapshotting to see what is going on in the world. Some aspects of crafting perhaps. It is relatively easy to implement but I think it would really help to keep people involved and build community
2. Colonization style world. Noob land is old world, then you set sail to the new continent
3. Copy this from Aion.. time to time for a limited time portals open up that lead to the enemy pve zones. Absolute hilarity ensues.. have quests with big rewards that require you to take those portals.

I LOVE the idea of tieing in to the web/mobile devices (via App) and sending push notifications. Ok, the husband part of me thinks this will get me castrated by the wife, but the gamer part of me thinks it's awesome! Maybe you could hire scout NPC/Beacons that would submit a notification if some criteria is met. Download App, it gives you a registered unique ID (Device ID Hash?) that you then register in-game! So exciting!

[Keen]

That's quite possibly the greatest way to implement mobile devices into a mmorpg ever.  I'm away from a computer right now (on phone) but when I get back I'm going to write a blog post on the subject.  The possibilities!

[AFKIsh]

That's quite possibly the greatest way to implement mobile devices into a mmorpg ever.  I'm away from a computer right now (on phone) but when I get back I'm going to write a blog post on the subject.  The possibilities!

It will certainly allow us to game more too, as our spouses/partners would most certainly leave us :p

I see it now, at that romantic dinner you get an alert that the keep you spent so long seiging to take with your guild - well the guards are being massacred and an enemy realm attack is inevitable..... "errrr, love I left something at home.....!

[Bartlebe]

1. RvR.. tie in through web, Herald on steroids. Manage guards on guild keep, upgrade/downgrade etc. push notification for certain things. So many things you can do with this. Get people involved more. Guard patrol routing, guard POV snapshotting to see what is going on in the world. Some aspects of crafting perhaps. It is relatively easy to implement but I think it would really help to keep people involved and build community
2. Colonization style world. Noob land is old world, then you set sail to the new continent
3. Copy this from Aion.. time to time for a limited time portals open up that lead to the enemy pve zones. Absolute hilarity ensues.. have quests with big rewards that require you to take those portals.

I like these ideas too. Very creative.