This is a continuation of the post below. Please read it first, or this won't make sense and you will think I am crazy (you may anyway.)


The point thus far: In your average RPG or MMORPG, there is seldom a) a point, b) a story/system which allows you to actually roleplay, c) a feeling of reality in the world, and d) a lasting change effected by the actions of the players.

I will spend a little more time on point D. Even in a single player game, most often after you have won the game, saving the world from it's inevitable doom, the game ends. You are told in an epilogue how happy everyone is, but you don't actually reap rewards and benefits of your actions yourself.

I've thought on this a good deal more than I should, but enough complaining. What would I do if I were the game maker?

To transcribe the problems above into positives, a good MMORPG should : have a point, have a story and system that allows players to roleplay, have a feeling of reality, and utilize a system that allows players to have a real and lasting impact on the game world.

Think back to fantasy novels you have read in your life. Where does all the good stuff happen? Where do you see character interaction? Where do the characters meet party members, gain quests, and acquire information? What is the heart of any good fantasy town? The tavern. I have seldom seen a tavern actually implemented in a game, but yet it figures prominently in all my favorite books. The game model I have in mind would center around this strategic point.
I also would like to toss around this idea. What decides, in a real world, whether a man is a king or a beggar? Birth. He has little choice in the matter. I would like to see if a game which used a system where your societal position was randomly selected would fly. Think of this. You enter the game world, and select "Create new Character." The game then randomly selected a class level. Your character comes out being the son of some earl of some fiefdom. It would be real - the starting point for your character would be in tavern near the earl's land, and you could go visit him, stay in the keep, direct the activities of the serfs and so on. You would have more money than someone who was generated as the son of a merchant, but less physical strength, charisma, etc.
Now, you aren't stuck being an earl. The game randomly generates your situation, but you are free to choose your destiny. You may become a knight, and seek glory on the battlefield. It won't be as easy for you as for someone who was born and raised a fighter, but it is possible. Do you see where I am going with this? The situation each character is "born" to will provide them certain benefits and drawbacks, but they will start off fairly advanced in that area. No more killing rats in a cellar. Everyone is "born" with some skill and importance.
For this to work, the game world would have to be quite large, or else we would have some extremely prolific earls. I think it should be so vast that folks generated in one corner of the world would be hard-pressed to visit the other corner even if they traveled for weeks. It would be divided into a number of countries that start with a certain relationship to the other countries. Each would have an equal number of resources and deficiencies that would complement each other. For ex. Kingdom A would have abundant fishing, but little iron ore. Kindom B would have farming in spades, but little fish available.
Kingdom C would be rich in iron ore, but have no farmable land.

So, what classes could be randomly generated? Everyone has to have a job and a purpose, and they need to be able to work in some sort of hierarchy.
Nobility- Rulers and councilmen who decide the trade agreements of a country, and it's relations to other countries. These would have quarters in the keep of whatever land they rule.
Merchant Classes- Traders who roam the land, buying here and selling there. These would start with a caravan to sell from, or a store in town.
Artisans and Farmers- People who create the saleable goods of the world, they would have a massive impact on economic relations. These classes would have their own homes.
Fighting classes - Mercenaries, Soldiers, vagabonds and thieves. Probably the most common, just because that's what people like to play for some reason. Depending on the situation, they would live in barracks, or in the guilds of their organizations. A mercenary might have a small home in a village of such men.
Clergy- This would be special. No one would be "born" a clergyman, but any character of any class could choose to join orders. He would live in whatever religious institution he joined.

These are situations of birth, not stuck roles. A man born and raised a soldier could through a number of means come to be a ruler. They would all work together to make a working society. Each class would need the other at some point, either directly or indirectly. Merchants or nobles might require fighting men to escort them to some diplomatic or economic meeting. Any man might require an assassin. A fighting man may need a merchant to find equipment for him. An artisan needs to sell his goods to a merchant. A noble may need an artisan to craft a specific item for him. All these and more are quests of neccessity spawned from the act of a player going about his business. And, where would you be able to enlist other players for these quests? The tavern, of course.

I'm sure the game would never work; it has to many rules that players always seem to want to break and bend their own way, but I would love to see at least some of my ideas in a game, someday.

I never write in this thing, but...   I've been in the mood to play a good RPG lately.  This isn't unusual; as soon as the wind gets nippy I yearn for adventure, every year.  The thing is, I can't find a good game to play.  Right now I've got Baldur's Gate, which I never finished, running, but the interface is driving me mad.  I can't stand the fixed camera.  What I really want to play is a mmorpg.  But I can't stand them.  

Here's the deal - when I play an RPG, what makes me interested in the first place is the story.  I want a good story to wrap me up to the point I am motivated to roleplay in my mind.  It is a roleplaying game, after all.  Some mmorpg stories can do this.  I beta-ed Lineage II.  It had a really great story.  I thought about it, and said the myself, "Okay, so my character will be a Dark Elf, righteous in his belief that they are the higher race.  He will look upon members of other races with scorn, and cut down those he sees near the walls of his city."  Great.  Except when I get in game, despite all the story about Dark Elves hating the lighter races blahblahblah, the city is crawling with non-Dark Elf players.  I couldn't kill them because that would turn me red and I'd get smacked down by a mass of eager pkers, and what was the point of hurling racial slurs at Lusciousbooty2401? 

So my point is, massively multiplayer roleplaying games make it difficult for you to actually roleplay. I'm not an avid rper - I don't set up shop at the local ren faire, and talk in thees and thous.  But when I am playing a roleplaying game, goshdarnit, what's the point?

I have this ideal of a roleplaying game.  The Elder Scrolls philosophy is "Live another life in another world."  I like that as a starting point.  (I'm sure Morrowind was fun to play, but it was ugly.  I'm stuck in a fungus infected swamp.  Who wants to play there? )   I want a game world that actually works like a real place.  In most mmorpg I've played, everybody is a fighter, unless you are an artisan making stuff to sell to fighters.  Also, everyone is working on the same quest bank. 
"Hey, what quest you workin' on SirRidesALot?"
"The Gather-50-Nondescript-Items-and-Bring-Them-Back-For-No-Good-Reason
quest."
"Oh, I had that yesterday. They are over there"

The entire game is doing boring errands for no reason.  That's really what is lacking in these games - a reason to play.  The developers think you can't ever win anything big, because winning=game end.  But I don't think that is true.  I'll use a totally different game as an example - Disney's Toontown Online.  This game is very innovative.  First off, you can't not roleplay, because you can only talk to other players through a text bank.  It's quite extensive, and quite useful.  I actually enjoy the limitation. (please feel free to check my age at this point) The idea of the game is that you are a Toon, and these corporate style robots, COGS, are trying to take over the Toonworld, to stamp out it's rampant silliness. To defeat them, you pull practical jokes like thowing pies in their faces because (PUN ALERT) Cogs can't take a joke.  Ahh.   But really, it is a neatly set up game, with lots of non-fighting activities to enjoy.  Really it's novelty lasts far longer than any game I've ever played.  But, back to the story problem.  No matter how strong you get, no matter how long you play, you never beat the Cogs.  It's pointless.  You can't win.

Hello! I'm Kirtai! I've been visiting this site since I was eleven! How old am I now? Old enough to be a school teacher, I'll tell you that much! Don't worry, I'm not conservative or teachery at all, I'm a crazy flaming liberal, and my main job at school is keeping it secret from my students! The only site I think I have been visiting longer is IMDB.com, which is an awesome site if you like movies! Ow, Boo is eating my toe! Boo is my crazy feline, he is crazier than me. He likes to have input every now and then, so if you see "sdhgsbgw ghgg" just know that Boo is talking to you! Is yellow better, no....how about baby blue.......lilacy green? Yeah I like this one.

Aughem, about games. I tell you what I don't like. I don't like first person shooters. I don't see the point (I hear crowds screaming "But you play the sims?!?!") of first person shooters. It's like, we've thought up a story to support why you are running around, jumping to defy gravity, and shooting everything in sight. I'm not biased, I do like the first person James Bond games, cause you can use those nifty gadgets and sneak up on people and snap their necks, no big guns necessary. It's not that I don't like violence. I just a) don't usually like the story, and b) they make give me motion sickness, from all that whirling around, and floating and the like.
I also don't like really indepth strategy games where you have to tell every soldier in a 2 million man army whether to use a saber or a musket and whether he should aim high or low. Easy strategy games I like, like the good ol' Lord of the Realm where you could "auto calc" battle.

What I do like: I like games with a good story. I used to like most RPG's for this reason, now I like hardly any of them because how many times can you "search this mystical realm for the seven scattered pieces of *mystical item name* to realize your true destiny, even though you don't know where you came from or why you were brought up in *person of powers name* home for as long as you can remember...." Yeah. I've played that game at least ten different times.
I have played and liked Baldurs Gate II, Neverwinter Nights, Elder Scrolls Arena and Daggerfall (didn't like Morrowind), and probably a couple from way back when that I'm forgetting. I also don't like roleplaying games where I can't customize my avatar. I don't want to play Sven the orphan muscle man with mystical powers, I want to play my bad*** self! Oh, right this is the positve side, that is another rant sorry..........

Don't laugh me out of the place, I like the Final Fantasy games. I think the gameplay sucks. You have absolutely no choice in the matter, you just run from battle to battle, but the I love the stories. I'm an anime fan( aha! the crowd cries), and I like those kind of stories. I also like that it is more like playing a movie than a video game in someways, because I really just want to know what happens, and truth be told I suck at video games,, so letting me play just delays my finding out what happens!

Kingdom Hearts rules, and I am looking forward to Pirates!, because that was my favorite game when I was little. And i am about to go into spasmastic fits waiting for the sims 2 to be released (drool), that game looks awesome! I'll tell you about it later.

Well, If anyone read this, let me know what you think!