Some people are quoting P99 as some sort of useful point against the old design (open, non-instanced, etc). What they're forgetting is that it's not at all the same, since every nook and cranny, mechanic, anything and everything about the game was 100% known at that point, by anyone and everyone. And if you didn't know, you could hop onto any one of many websites and immediately know it.
Which leads me to something I'd like to see in my ideal MMO (could be this one?). Lack of information. I'd like to see a game that doesn't allow DPS meters, exact damage/DPS of skills, attacks etc is not simply spelled out for you in a tooltip, and where the online "community" is nothing like what Blizzard does with WoW, for instance. What this means is, the designers will not simply lay their entire game bare for you to see the inner workings.
-DPS meters: I like floating combat text, and if that's able to be used while still disallowing any kind of DPS meter utility (at least in-game), then great. I don't think, though, that damage should read out into a chat log, allowing for easy parsing. I'm sure the hardest-of-the-core will find a way (possibly via third party programs) to parse their damage, and fully optimize shit. But this should NOT be so easy as simply installing a small UI mod, thus making it the norm (like WoW). Fuck spreadsheets, I want to be able to play a game and notfeellike I can't occasionally cast Fire Blossom because it's fun and looks sweet, even though spamming Ice Spike is optimal dps.
-Skill tooltips: This idea is a bit less fleshed out, but basically I liked how EQ's method of basically telling you dick shit about your spells resulted in buying, scribing, memorizing, and then just fucking trying it and seeing what happened. My first class was a Mage, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on with the bolt spells for awhile. Sometimes they'd just not hit shit (got intercepted by geometry or something). There's nothing wrong with that. When I learn "Flying Tiger Pouncekick" on my Monk, it shouldn't tell me that it does exactly 631-710 damage. I should end up using what I like because it feels fun, looks cool, and hey some big(ger?) numbers popped up. Giving complete information divorces you (good term) from being invested in your skills as a player. You just learn the skill, read that hey, this skill will be better than my previous skill, and never use the previous skill again. This is all done by reading numbers, and completely circumvents what I was talking about. Bad. Also, it allows for usage of inefficient skills/spells without any immediate mental ramifications, and that's fucking good. Also, I don't mind not knowing the EXACT effects of stats or whatever comes off my gear. The moment you do, you are reduced to only ever wanting what your spreadsheet says is your best gear, and fuck that. I want to actually enjoy the items I find, even if they're sub-optimal.
-Online community: Blizzard's method of responding to the unwashed masses constantly is absurd. They have absolutely no handle on what is actually NECESSARY for them to do. They seem to think that by engaging the average idiots at all times, and (entirely too often) bowing to their wants and whines, that they'll retain more subs. Nope. By listening to a bunch of idiots who have no fucking clue how to design a game that's actually fun, you end up just throwing a bunch of shit into (or out of) your game with no real thought as to the ramifications on your overall cohesive design. People will whine, it doesn't matter how good or bad your game is. That's people, it's what they do. Stop fucking listening to it, and just design your game like you (hopefully) know how to do. This ties in to the lack of information angle by removing a ton of the extra crap that Blizzard throws out there for their players to know. They really don't need to know all that shit. Exploration is a key feature of games like this, and it's not limited to just physical exploration of landscape. It also has to do with exploring the mechanics and other stuff that Blizzard just spells out for their playerbase every day via their "blue posts" and other such nonsense.
Oh, and one last random thought that popped into my mind as I was ranting about Blizzard's methods of communication. For the love of god, do not constantly rebalance your game every goddamn fucking patch. I swear, at this point WoW is version 117. It's nothing like it was originally, in ANY aspect, and it's not like it's just WoW 2.0. It has gone through WAY too many iterations, and classes/etc (classes being the worst offender) have changed so fucking much, it's pathetic. Pick something and stick to it, with only minor changes. It's totally ok if not many people play your Necromancer class, or if your Ranger class doesn't do much damage compared to others and sucks at tanking, or whatever. SOME people will still play those classes, and they'll likely love it even more because of that. I know the rangers in my guild loved their class, despite them being a community joke. Minor tweaks here and there are fine, but I swear to god, I'm done with games that constantly rebalance everything every fucking patch. FUCK!
/post
