I’m in the mood to conquer/create something meaningful

The trend with MMORPG’s lately is clearly PvE.  Darkfall is the exception and I consider the “PvP” games like Aion to be PvE.  Games coming out like SWTOR, TERA, and possibly Rift are also more PvE than they are PvP.   I’m in the mood for a more open and dynamic game that doesn’t railroad me into PvP or PvE yet feels like it’s designed to allow players to be each others’ antagonists. conquer

I’m in the mood for a game where there’s a big world with territory that can be claimed, defended, and attacked.  Don’t think of it like WAR’s territories because that’s not dynamic at all.  I’m talking about entering the enemy’s lands or neutral lands and exploring off the beaten path for 20 minutes and finding a nice area to claim, claim it, and begin building defenses/structures/castles.  Building your own castle could be a tradeskill thing that requires a lot of resources and constant supervision.  You would want to settle in an area near natural resources because they would be required to help you set up a foothold and sustain your forces.  At this point you would begin to accrue strength within the territory you’ve claimed and expand outward.  There would be a limit on what you could claim, of course, but eventually you would be discovered and there would be wars.  Players could roleplay kingdoms and hierarchy and it could be a blast.

Fighting NPC’s is fun but I’m interested in more of a challenge and more of an experience that will require a real competitive edge and thinking to overcome.  This type of experience in a MMO really hasn’t existed before entirely.  SWG partially had the sense of exploring way out into the middle of nowhere to find a location you like where you could build a house or city and the PvP mechanics did allow you to fight other factions.  Dark Age of Camelot definitely had the “realm pride” that had players wanting to claim a keep and defend it or work their way into the enemy lands to take theirs.  Even Dark Fall captured this feeling slightly, but imagine if you could choose where to put your city (and not have it suck).  UO also had the right idea with placing houses anywhere.

I’m just in the mood to conquer something and I’d like for it to be in a persistent (virtual) world.  I would really enjoy a game that takes DAOC’s 3 realm system and expands the frontiers (Pre-ToA) to be larger and include resources and more gameplay within them like I wrote about above.  Toss in the return of the social game with players creating entire cities complete with player-run Inn’s, shops, services, and maybe even some of my skill based leveling system ideas and you have a real foundation.

Anyone want to provide the funds?  I’ll get working on it right away.

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  • Sort of like Darkfall then, but with free placement of structures and better implemented game on the whole?

  • The idea behind that feels great, too bad no game has really hit that “sweet spot” yet.

    What I’m especially missing is the world itself, and within that world a prideful community. Recently everything has felt less like a world, and more like a game.

  • Well, GW2 will feature similar PvP system like in DaoC. GW2 devs call it the WvW (Worlds vs World). Its basically 3 servers fighting for keeps, mines and other POI in a huge persistant zone.

    Collin Johanson, GW2 content designer: ”If you like Dark Age of Camelot, this is, in our minds the next evolution of that.”

  • As I point out whenever this comes up – which is fairly frequently – that game already exists. It’s called EVE Online.

    Admittedly, I too would like to see a fantasy game with a similar structure. Darkfall had the potential to be that game, even after it launched, but Adventurine doesn’t really seem interested in taking it in that direction – and in any event, for the idea to work correctly, you’d need a thriving player base, which Darkfall lacks.

  • EVE seems like a decent game, I really don’t like the focus on economy though. Even WoW’s shallow economy is wee bit much for me 😛

  • Dawntide is great. But, unfortunateyl it is in beta. And it shows. That is no demo. If you want to help developers help make a very good immersive sandbox game with controlled PvP and guild vs guild and laws: Dawntide is your game.

  • Mortal online is sort of like that from what I understand. Also Age of Conan does that don’t they?

    ~Skryre

  • “Building your own castle could be a tradeskill thing that requires a lot of resources and constant supervision”

    And then some assholes swoop in at 4 AM and destroyed the thing.

  • Jumpgate evolution seems to be somewhat promising but it isn’t a fantasy setting…plus twitch combat. The question is…can someone with deep pockets put something like this together. That is the only hope! Whether dick, Tom, and Harry get together and form some company and struggle to put this concept together is kind of irrelevant. It will fail anyway for many reasons (poor execution, bad graphics, technical issues, mo manpower to do it in a reasonable amount of time).

  • Oh and the dick Tom and Harry comment wasn’t directed at keen. I thought of adventurine when I wrote it 🙂

  • Concur with Ardwolf. EVE is entirely open world, sandbox, light on PvE, heavy on PvP and group culture. I played it for a year or so, racked up 16 million SP or so and called it quits; I just don’t have the time to dedicate to something that involved.

  • This sounds exactly like Shadowbane or even Darkfall.. problem in a game where you can build things is that they are either trivial and mean nothing or you endup like Shadowbane where cities took a lot of effort and then required real life like military organization to defend (hope you are unemployed as well).

  • Lineage 2 was the game you are looking for.

    Group/buff based, open world pvp, karma system, full player driven market, castle sieges/territorial wars – all this without fractions, heavily clan based.

    You are late however. The game has been dead for a couple years already – at least in the western world. NCsoft West lost the war vs the farmers and ebayers.

    Tera however will deliver something similar. Bluehole Studios is what used to be Endeavour & Guts – the original creators of Lineage 2 who designed a great game before NC messed it up.

  • @November: Lineage 2 would be the game, if only the game world would be ten times bigger in each direction, and you could actually build your own castles, forts, houses, villages and towns. Alas, you can’t, the physical landscape is all static. Thankfully, the political landscape isn’t, which keeps me playing.

  • I want a sandbox mmorpg so bad I have refused to play any mmo until something like you wrote about comes out. Until then i will play RTS games!