Hello.

I'm here today with an appeal. I've been playing Fallout, and other RPG's enthusiastically for many years now, and have also dabbled in MMORPG's. However, i have only truly enjoyed one single MMORPG, which shall not be named, but all other ones keep following the same boring pattern. Here's why:

A boring MMORPG is a clone of EQ/WoW. It's essentially a singleplayer online experience, wherein you roam from place to place collecting x amounts of y for the final goal of having gear with score z so that you can repeat the process ad infinutum. Players influence on the gameplay of each other is close to NONE.

A fun, immersive and engaging MMORPG has the following traits:

Death has a serious penalty, incurring significant XP and Item loss.
This penalty is the same, whether incurred by monsters or rival players.

Failure to provide sufficient penatly for defeat/death makes the game boring, and making players unable to kill each other, make the losing party lose xp, and nick their stuff makes players unable to form factions and enforce their own rules.

Yes, it's harsh, but it makes the experience come alive in a completely new way.

Instantiated areas are COMPLETELY absent, making sure players have to fight for resources, monsters and the right to areas.

Instantiating areas removes the need for conflict between players over them, again removing a whole chunk of the goodness of the multiplayer aspect.

Quests have depth and require exploration and thinking.

Fetch/Grind-quests are boring. No further explanation should be needed.

No arbitrary rules apply to which level you have to be to do something. Separate skills are available for guns, crafting etc and is COMPLETELY detached from player level.

If i want to create a character and spend all my time sharpshooting rodents and getting my gun-skill to 100, while remaining at level 5, there should be nothing stopping me. And if i have gun-skill 100 at level 5, i should be extremely proficient with the very hardest guns to handle, regardless of my level.

These are all just thoughts. I'm open to any suggestions, and i deeply hope that FOOL will turn out to be a game that dares to take these risks, to create something new and fun, instead of just creating another WoW clone with mutants that has to close down within a year because it brought nothing new to the table.