What Makes the Perfect MMORPG

What Makes the Perfect MMORPG By Yuliya Geikhman Yuliya Geikhman has a degree in teaching, but would rather teach others about the wonders of MMOs. She (yes, she is really a female gamer and not a guy pretending) has a life and a husband, but spends much of it glued to Atlantica Online (and other ftp MMOs).

There are so many MMOs out there right now, that players can afford to be picky. And people are picky by nature: just think back to Goldilocks. "This one's too cold. This one's too hot. Too hard. Too soft. Too this! Too that!!!" This, of course, is the case for MMORPG players too. A game can be great in some aspects, but it will be criticized for others. So what would happen if someone took every complaint that is made about MMORPGs and made a game keeping them in mind?

"This one's too cold. This one's too hot. Too hard. Too soft. Too this! Too that!!!"

You would get a game that's "Ahh - just right." You would get the Perfect MMORPG. And here are the things that it would have:

1. Current, up-to-date graphics:

Atlantica Online recently updated some of the more outdated monsters images in a patch.

Many games are criticized for having old or outdated graphics. While this adds to some games' charm, it's mostly seen as a negative aspect. The problem lies in the fact that graphics are only "current" for about a year (if you're lucky). Ideally, an MMORPG strives to be around for longer than that.

he solution? The Perfect MMORPG would have frequent patches to update graphics in an ever-changing and evolving virtual world. This can be done subtly, little by little and without much attention drawn to it, or it can be incorporated into the storyline (as an example, an area can be "purified," causing the environment/monsters/whatever to change). All this might be difficult to achieve, but hey, we're talking about the perfect MMORPG, not the most practical.

2. An involving central storyline:

Quests in games like World of Warcraft usually come with descriptions and reasons for why you're doing them...
... but who actually reads them?

A good book has an interesting and captivating plot. And what is a video game? It's pretty much an interactive book. Remember those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books? Yeah, kind of like that. The paths are already pre-written for you, but it's up to you to choose how to act. For this reason, an MMORPG should have an interesting and well-developed storyline, preferably with different paths to follow. Sadly, in many MMORPGs the storty is not that important to the players. If you have no interest in the storyline of an MMORPG, it becomes a grind-fest. Games like WoW and Perfect World have involved and detailed background stories and folklore, while Atlantica Online has an important and interesting central plot.