Well, I'm sure most of us are looking forward to the release of Wrath of the Lich King (I will not be playing, but will still follow the game out of general interest and to help out some good friends with strats/etc), and a lot are excited about the amount of polish put into it, as well as the nifty bells and whistles that are coming with this latest expansion.

This thread isn't about that though.

I'm wondering, what things you guys here have always wanted in a video game, but have either never seen implemented, or never implemented correctly. It can be anything: cool story line, persistent memory of past deeds from game to game, ultra-violent graphics, or whatever you really wanted out of a game. Let's put theorycrafting, design capabilities, legalities, and technological restrictions aside here, and just put out what you really want to see a game do in your lifetime. If nothing else, it will be amusing to see what some of the minds here REALLY want out of their game (console, PC, MMO, single player, multi player, it doesn't matter here).

I'll start.

One of the things I really wanted to see in an MMO is real persistency. I've always wanted actual recognition from the game that me and my friends beat the big boss, and we made some sort of difference. It's just something that never felt right; like we are all living in an eternal moment in-game, and are pushed forward in spurts to new eternal moments. It never felt right that the dragon had to be killed and beheaded again every week by everyone. I want a game where if the dragon is beat enough times, he STAYS DEAD, and something new moves into their lair. Could you imagine how cool it would have been if, after 1000 or so kills of C'thun, AQ would have been filled with Nerubians instead? Or members of hte Black Dragonflight, trying to create a Qiraji/dragon hybrid? Or elementals? With new bosses, new challenges, and recognition that the players actually made a difference?

I've also always really wanted a game that carried data over from one to the next regarding my accomplishments. It became a real possibility with the advent of independent data storage for games (memory cards and the like), but I've never seen it done really; the one instance I recall is the Suikoden series, and those were kind of a let-down for me. If it's the same world, I always thought it would be cool if the data of my completion or actions in the previous game would carry over to the next; like there would be statues in my character's honor, or a city named after me or my party. Myabe even being able to play my old character, and having people remember my actions.

Anyway, whatss on your wishlists?

I'm going to wish this thread goodbye.

You never know; there might be a few feasible ideas floating around that could get some good discussion on how it could be integrated. There are very few bad ideas, and if somebody at Blizzard sees something good, it might be grabbed and used.

Of course, this could also be my first junk heap post, and I could be completely wrong.

You may want to move this to the "about design" thread.

Regardless, I was at GenCon '08 and sat in on some developers talk about MMOs and relations to PnP games. The big speakers were people from devs from CoH and Champions. They were talking quite a bit about their "Next Big Thing" (tm) game that would involve a lot more of the one off, or limited time content.

The biggest part of that concept to work is that it requires a hell of a lot of player generated content to stay fresh. For example, they mentioned that players would be able to build structures and tear structures down. While, great in theory, if anyone played "Shadowbane" the amount of effort to create something is far less than the effort to destroy something.

Additionally, destroying something is very pugable, fun, carries no responsibility. Meaning that people are going to break stuff just to break stuff, because they can.

They also made mention that some things like "Onyxia" would work differently than being locked in a cave waiting for a bunch of adventurers to kill her. The example used, was that you couldn't really "Kill" the dragon, but instead drive it off. Using Ony as an example, her lair would move between horde/alliance controlled areas and could be driven off to the other faction after 'x' number of kills.

Blizzard is already testing the waters with this concept with the way lake wintergrasp works, since control of the contested zone allows access to the raid areas and "spirit shards 2.0"

The biggest reason not to have content designed like you suggest, is that there is a finite amount of resources. Time spent redressing AQ40 to be AQ40+Dragons could just be spend making a Dragons dungeon and then you'd have two zones instead of one.

The reason I didn't put his in the About Design thread, Ralnar, is that the About Design thread seems to be more about working within the constraints of what is in place. The thread is pretty much dedicated to going over what Blizzard did right in the last two releases of WoW (old world and BC), and what it looks to be doing right in WotLK, as well as some things players felt were missing. Those things are still, however, encompasseed solely by WoW, and are limited in their scope.

I also made this thread to be outside of the constraints of viability. Your points about feasibility are valid for this point in time (who knows what advances in efficiency will bring to what is practicable in gaming development in the future?), and your point about the Champions MMO (which I have been following as closely as possible, despite a lack of information) are interesting, but I was only giving examples of what the thread is about.

Good ideas generally are the ones that work outside of normal conventions, and are usually ruinedby people that can't imagine anything outside of their current constraints (rather than figuring out how to reshape the box they are working in to fit the idea, a lot of people rather take a good idea and try to parse or force it into their current box, which usually ruins it, if that makes any sense. Well, just look at Spore: great idea, got ruined by short-sighted people trying to force it into their own little box).

Let's throw out boxes, for just a moment, and see what people have been hiding.

I've seen this exact thread roughly 50 times on FoH, and it somehow has not yet produced The Game to End All Games.