The wheel of Time MMORPG

[Theleos]

I have also been keeping up with the latest news on SWTOR and it looks like it will be a groundbreaking game, as far as MMO's go. I hope that Red Eagle looks at what BioWare is doing with SWTOR and can use some of their ideas.

I am not saying I want the games to be the same, or even that similar. I dont want classes in WOTMMO, I want professions and skills. Other than that it would cool to make a fully voiced storyline with player driven choices/outcomes. The problem is that Red Eagle doesnt have the creative license that BioWare does with SWTOR. They cant just create new races and worlds/areas in order to tell an immersive story.

So unless Red Eagle is willing to devote a lot of resources to creating a story in the WOT world that players can interact with, I think they should stick to creating an immersive world over an immersive story.

[Taishar Kansas]

Obsidian and Bioware have an interesting relationship. I wouldn't be surprised if Obsidian borrowed some things from SWTOR for their MMO. I agree with you on the classless system, but I think WoTMMORPG can be successful with an immersive story as well. It just can't really work with the main plot very much. Immersive worlds are fun to an extent, but get boring quick. To me, it's like playing in a sandbox. The fun you have depends on the quality of the players and is limited by their imaginations. While that can be a good thing... it pales in comparison to having hosted events by game administrators or a more directed game. It just feels more real and less like RP.

A good MMORPG is one that feels like a sandbox yet guides you along story/ profession paths without you really being aware of it.

[Durinax]

well like I said before I hope they dont go with classes, set factions (like horde or alliance, rather just have allignment to a nation and the relations to other countries can change depending on politics), and with MMORPGs one problem I have is that everyone grinds to the highest level and then just farms stuff for better gear, or to sell for more money ruining the ingame economy for low levels. That and whatever you do has no lasting effect, I would like to see a faction be able to conquer another one until a server reset that is way later, I think that would be cool

[Thrasymachus]

I have to agree with Theleos' last sentiment, that I would much prefer an immersive world where players can create their own story for their characters rather than one where there are coded quest-chains that everyone does or has to do to advance, and where the "story" behind every character is basically the same.  I'd much rather the majority of quests one can do are not only completely optional, but come from the players themselves.  Such that if you're a blacksmith, you can accept a quest from another player who needs 100 swords to equip his soldiers with, then you'll need the iron ore and various other materials to complete them, so you can set a quest for other players to gather those materials for you.  Rewards for doing such quests will of course be payment, but also experience add-ons and modifiers, so that it's more profitable to farm, or craft or soldier for a quest than to do it just to increase your stockpile or in the hope that you can trade it in future, or just because you're bored and want to kill stuff (Not that I think we should discourage or prohibit such motivations to do stuff).  In this way, higher-leveled, established characters, such as our field-marshall above, can work together with mid-leveled characters like our blacksmith, who again can make use of lower-leveled characters to do the farming and gathering, creating relationships between characters at all levels, and making characters of each level necessary to the well-functioning of a nation or faction.  Make new players feel welcome, needed and important, and they'll be more likely to stick around.  And I also think such a mutually player-supported environment will help alleviate some of the pressure to power-level, and encourage players to find roles and niches they are happy with and have fun doing, and let them stick with it until they're good and ready to move on, if they ever want to.

That said, I am not at all opposed to story elements and quests introduced from above.  Admin and mod led events will help break up the monotony that is sure to develop in a basically steady-state world, and their intervention can also help ensure that absurd situations, like Mayene taking over the whole of the Wetlands, don't happen.  And ultimately, much of the player-set quests are going to be determined by what the admin-set quests require, such as through the Queen of Andor stationing troops along the road to Lugard because of increased bandit raids, or the mayor of a Borderlands town asking for help to rescue kidnapped children or the like.  Players who accept such quests will likely require the help of other players to complete them, and the ability to recruit that help through issuing their own quests will also help the situation where you need a group of 5 to 15 friends who also play and who you have to coordinate with offline just to be able to advance.  Basically, I just want to make sure that participation in such quests is largely voluntary, and that the overall narrative for any player-character is almost entirely in the hands of the player, and not the admins, mods, programmers or developers.

[Chriswot]

Hey guys this thread was way too long to read in full but I read a bit.   So if its been mentioned before please forgive me.  I just wanted to throw this out there in case a dev at REE sees it.  If you intend on making an mmo please please please make it pvp optional.  If you want, go pvp servers and pve servers,  but please give us a choice.

My logic in this is simple.  I want to enjoy this experience as I enjoyed the books.  The last thing I want is to be camped by a 16 year old kid who's got nothing to do on a Saturday morning while I want to spend a couple of hours exploring this game with my friends and family. 

And i just gotta give some praise to some of the ideas here.  Been an mmo fan for a while, I've played wow, aion and ffxi.  To be honest they are all stale and old and the one idea i saw on the first page of this thread was awesome and fresh.  Portal  stone worlds or servers.  Fantastic idea!  I intend to read this thread in full when I have time to see some of the other ideas floating around out there. 

I'm amped to play this though  so long as it's done right!  ^_^

[Theleos]

The issue of PvP or PvE was brought up earlier in the thread. The solution I liked was as follows:

In order to keep with lore as much as possible I think it would be best to make one type of server with areas for both PvP and PvE. Not instances like in WoW or other MMO's, but areas that you can travel to or stumble into. As a rule of thumb I would say that Cities and higher populated zones would be safer, do to more guards and other players, similarly the wilderness would be a more dangerous place where players can ambush or attack each other. There would be exceptions, like really rough and unsafe areas (like the Rahad in Ebou Dar),or really safe wilderness, like parts of Andor patrolled the Queen's Guards.

Another important factor that was discussed was a Justice system. This would be how you can keep players in check and stop them from pointlessly killing other players. It would work by giving players that attack other players a "flag" that would make guards attack/arrest them and allow other players to attack them without penalty. It would be a lot more complicated than that, but I dont think its necessary to elaborate.

There is a lot that would need to be worked out in this system, and I think there should also be battlegrounds for larger scale PvP. but I think it would be more fun to make a world thats more realistic and can allow players that want to participate in PvP activities to do so, without dividing the player base into those that want to do one or the other.

[Beany]

I haven't read all the thread and i apologize if my suggestions have already been mentioned.

I would like to see the game have an important reputations system. By this I mean each country could have a reputation if reference to each neighboring country which is affected by the actions of the players. Reputation could increase if players complete quests which help other countries, and decreased if players complete quests to harm other countries. If two countries reputations reach a certain low point the a state of war could occur between them and an area on the border could become a designated battlefield where PVP is available. The players could be set the objectives to fight against other players and attempt to capture portions of opponent's land for their own country. Obviously this would have to be limited to a certain area to prevent some countries from overtaking others and getting rid of them altogether. This state of war could last for a certain time period or end when the reputation between countries is increased.

This would mean a constant changing in the game world would keep it exciting, provide endless hours of fun and reduce monotony.

[Beany]

I have read more of this thread and have come up with some ideas for characters. Again they may have been mentioned as i have not read all of this discussion.

Each character could start out with the chance to level up a number of different weapon skills, i.e.: sword, bow, dagger, axe, staff etc. All of these starting weapon skills go to a certain level and each character is able to level up all of them, giving players a chance to experience different playing styles. Once characters reach a certain level they have the option of choosing from a number of different specialized fighting styles which each have their own skills to unlock. These could be arranged into three groups and a number of different subgroups: Warrior (specializing in longsword, shortsword, dual swords, axe, spear or staff), Ranger (specializing in bow, crossbow, throwing knife and daggers), or Caster (male or female specializing in one or two of the elements and having a lower ability to use the others). With each class group and subgroup a number of different abilities would become available to you; for warriors these would be mainly melee based and tanking abilities, Rangers would gain ranged weapon skills and stealth or hunting skills, and Casters would learn weaves associated with their chosen element's. This allows for realistic characters in the game, as many of the characters in WoT have the ability to use several weapons but specialize in one, and channelers, especially the Asha'man, us swords or other weapons as well as their channeling abilities.

Apart from the main classes i would like to see the availability of some of the special abilities that some characters have, for example you could become a wolf-brother and lead around a wolf as a pet which helps you fight.

[Theleos]

How Players advance their abilities and skills is very imporatant to an MMORGP. It has been discussed and people have some great ideas on how they think it should be done. I personally would favor a classless system that is based more on skills/professions. It wouls start off like you (Beany) said: with different types of weapons or fighting styles to use.

 As you use each you gain XP particular to that skill, and can adance that particular skill up to a certain point. Some professions would use more than one skill, like Ranger may have bow as a main weapon and tracking or survival skills as a secondary skill set. You would have to advance survival and bow skills past a certain level to progress up to the next teir of the ranger skillset.

The difference between that system and a class system is that you dont just choose ranger when you make your character, you make decisions about how you play that leads you there. And you can unlearn any skill and change professions if you desire. This system would allow players to be what they want, and have much greater customization. You can have main professions but also use some skill points to gain proficiency in other catagories.

[Dagon Thyne]

Red Eagle have hired Chris Morgan as one of the head writers for their gaming development department.  I'm not sure if he will be a writer for the MMO, or not.