With so many MMORPGs that are in the market, most bringing their own new unique innovations ot the table, coming up with new ideas to make the game stand out in the market in the good way may seem challenging, but not impossible. Here are but some new things MMORPGs could introduce to make it stand out.
1) Change the world
Have actual day cycles and weather systems, not just aesthetics, but with actual effect on game play.
For example, stealth classes are more powerful in the night time, and weaker in day time. Some seemingly overpowered classes such as liches and vampires would work similarly as well, except they only function during night time, but with highly enhanced capabilities. Even elemental spell effects can be affected by the weather, such as fire spells fizzling during wet weathers, whereas ice spells get more powerful.
And to make it more interesting, the day cycles to not follow realtime 24 hour cicles, but change every half an hour, so players have to change the way they play accordingly. In addition, there would be random occurances of freak weathers, further bringing a more dynamic environment into play.
2) Have a strong political system within the game.
Guilds or any formed group of players are able to hold internal elections to make someone the leader. These "guild leaders", in addition, will compete against each other in a wider scale to become leaders in the land, with bonus abilities while they are in office. It sounds like a popularity contest, but behind it is the simple reason that players who are active in the game and help other players are more likely to get votes than players who grief others and give them a hard time in the game.
3) Make PVP more unique than just being able to kill others.
Instead of just dying, maybe a random equiped item gets transferred to the killer. However, when the killer has too many kills under his belt, a bounty gets placed on him. Now other players are led to try to kill the original killer are able to collect a bounty, maybe a set number of items, and if they are unable toi "pay up" someone else can pay in loot, or perhaps be forced to undertake special quests to wipe thei name of the list of troublemakers.
The punishments are greater, but so are the rewards.
This is a role playing game, so we are effectively telling the players: this is a game you can roleplay the way you like it; if you want to kill, do it! But there are consequences.
4) Most importantly, Make Players feel IMPORTANT!
Its easy to do this in a single player game when the plaeyer is usually the lone hero/heroine trying to save the world from some big evil, but how would you do it for a MMOG? Otehr than level ranking systems win/loss tracking boards, I've even 2 games do it so far.
Guild Wars have created a hybrid of a single player game and an MMOG, by having a big overarching storyline that the player moves along while exploring the world. This way, the player actualyl FEELS like he/she matters, even tough everyone shares the same experience. I will elaborate on this in a further blog entry.
Another game currently in development has an alchemy system that actually allows the first players to create a unique item that has never been created before, to name it. Anyone else who re-creates that formula/item will have that named item in his inventory. I.e. by using a weird combination of metals and minerals I created a sword which the systme tells me is the 1st one created and I can name it (which I call "Zhanzhao's Glory"). Anyone else who re-creates this sword using the combination I used will end up with a "Zhanzhao's Glory" in their inventory! So if a person creates an item that is so useful that it is used by many people, glory is his/hers! Of course this may turn the game into one big alchemists guild, but thats another story ;)
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