i have a few different posts here so this is to tie them all together into my opinion on how an mmorpg should play.

i havent played alot of rpg games, only Oblivian and Skyrim. i have also played Mideival,Rome,andEmpire Total War games.

then there is the mmofps game i played more almost 10 years that has what they term a megaserver.


the first and most important thing i look for in a game is how the AI works. every single player game ive played has trigger based AI. the one thing i hate most about games.ive noticed in Oblivion and Skyrim, the townsfolk all follow a routine, but the creatures in lairs all work off triggers.

in my idea of a game, every living thing would operate off of a real-time-strategy engine.small time RTS games use peasantry to gather and process resouces and large scale RTS ( like Total War) cover things like politics,intrigue,agression as well as economy, trade,and policing/protection of area resouces.
creatures that inhabit a lair wouldnt just stand there waiting for a switch to go off, they would have a behavioral pattern and daily routine to follow and always be moving around. they would be able to level up just like any player if they survive long enough.these same persistant creatures would have their own booty,eliminating the need for auto-generated booty.creatures killed by players would respawn from wherever Tamriel lore says they come from. the parameters for population would be governed by the RTS engine.


persistant characters / players.

instead of spawning/despawning from a gameworld, i think player characters should be turned over to AI controll when you log off.it would be easy enough to have behavior settings/orders for characters.one side effect associated with this would be the ability to be possessed,even when logged on. death would be final. to go with that, raise the dead is already a spell, it would be simple enough to have a powerful player spell of permanent resurrection, or as a temple function.there could even be a talisman you keep at you dwelling to bring you back with your experience if you die ( sorry,your belongings go to the victor)

the bottomless inventory screen.

the next thing that is a buzzkill for me in rpg games, is the bottomless inventory screen. i feel inventory should work not just by weight, but also volume. you carry what fits in a backpack/bag/box,on your belt or in your hands, whatever you find/buy to carry stuff with.

economy.

to drive adventure i would make money hard to get and supplies/weapons expensive.no auto-generation of loot within a lair. any loot found is brought there by whatever was inhabiting the lair, meaning some creatures wont have loot with them, while other more nasty creatures that kill alot of adventurers will have more booty than you can carry.this would make the main focus of the game,for everyone, to be to make/find money. this would drive everything from survival instincts to making friends,joining a faction or running a buisness. even making Jarl of a town is a means of making money.
to this could be made a source of income for the devs in the form of DLC purchase of ingame money. there are plenty of people that would spend cash to have stuff ingame without working for it.

Oblivion and Skyrim already have everything in place to make it work, it just needs an RTS driven AI engine and there wouldnt be a need for any kind of restrictions.the storyline would be a set of time-based behavior instructions for the AI characters that matter to the storyline/lore continuity. the game itself would provide something new to do every day as it would always be changing and dynamic.

the megaserver.

11 years ago a company made an mmofps simulation of world war II. its core technology is a server system they called a megaserver.it ties multiple servers together to create a seamless world 30,000 square kilometers in size.a half scale map of northern europe. this server also holds 10,000 people with a viewable limit of 196 players. there could 5000 players in one small town and the player visibilty discriminator decides who needs to see who. a system like that here and you might find yourself in a cave with 200 other people based on how the discriminator is programmed.when travelling through the countryside you would stay connected dynamically to whoever/whatever the server thinks you need to see.


one of the more long term goals i would like to see in an mmorpg is the ability to deform the landscape.to have the ability to use money gained to build new houses/castles/fortesses/towns and cities (another variation from an RTS engine),dig new mines/caves, build ships to sail the seas. things to spend money on.

these are the things that would make up my ultimate mmorpg.

So that players can die due to no fault of their own? No thank you. And what would happen when a player disconnects because, say their internet went out and couldn't set their offline behaivour. What then?

i agree lag death would be an issue. but thats just details. behavior settings, you would need to make shure they are set incase something happens and you have to log off suddenly.