Developers Corner

In the Everquest clones you create an avatar of unspecified age, start a level 1, rise to the level cap, wait for an expansion to raise the lvl cap, rise to the level cap and wait for the next expansion.

Your avatar remains unchanged apart from the level, never aging, never maturing. The world itself barely changes. If you roll an alt they will experience the exact same world, the same quests, the world unaware of your previous progress through the world.

This is the way most MMO's work, a notable exception to this was Star Wars Galaxies. It only allowed ONE character per server (no alts) and its proffesion system allowed you to respec your character any time you wanted to. The game, pre-nge, had no levels, just skills. You could learn a max amount of skills but how you did that was up to you. Tired of being a swords-man? Roll a pistoleer, with some scout mixed in. This allowed you to start over BUT with the full resources your avatar had accumulated before.

The problem

What happens in these games is that the developers constantly have to come up with new HIGH level content to challenge players. This is expensive and it is clear by looking at western MMORPG's that NO development house so far is capable of keeping up with players speed at levelling up or playing through content. Even Lord of the Rings Online that has been releasing new content every couple of months can't keep up, new content lasts players maybe two weeks and then it is back to waiting.

Part of the problem is that it is hard to come up with new things to challenge a near god-like end level player.  This problem is extreme in the Dungeon&Dragons universe, a level 20 is as close to a god as possible so how can a never winter nights expansion be fun by asking a near god to kill some bandits?

The other problem is coming up with new skills for the new levels. Everquest and World of Warcraft cop out on this by just giving you improvement of existing skills but even they can only do this so often. Just how many spells/skills can a class have anyway? Imagine what a lvl 120 rogue in WoW would have to be like? Imagine what a lvl 120 raid instance would have to be like to challenge this lvl 12 rogue?

The solution

Now for the fix. Your avatar gets a new attribute, age.

At creation, your avatar gets a random and hidden number, representing her life force. Time spend in game, dying, fighting decrease this life force, certain actions slightly increase the life force or slow the degredation but on the whole as you game, the life force decreases.

Getting older, your avatar gets more powerful, just as in a regular game BUT death is coming ever closer, eventually the life force just runs out and your avatar dies. An epic quest could be created where you tie up the various threads of your life or attempt a do-or-die instance.

On your death, you start a new avatar, only this is not a new alt but rather a relative of your previous avatar, son/daughter (adopted or natural), apprentice etc etc. This new avatar inherits from her ancestor, money, status, skills. Not everything, but enough to make this new character a bit more powerful then a completely new avatar.

This way, the first time you play the game, you start at lvl 1. Lvl 1 to 10 are the tutorial levels, where you learn the game. From say lvl 10 to lvl 50 you age, growing from a young person starting out to a wise warrior until you die. Along the route, you create a child, or hire an apprentice. Then you undertake your final quest, die and your succesor takes over from lvl 10 to forge her own path. And so on, for generation after generation.

What is fixes

So what does this change? Simple, extra content now doesn't need to bolted on top of the game, new content can be added anywhere the developers want. A new lvl 10-20 zone, to be experienced by everyone. It is a LOT easier to come up with challenging quests if a player is NOT yet super powerful.

The top lvl of the game can remain the top lvl and so it can be a true top lvl. Yes, this game would allow a persom at the lvl cap to be truly god like because they won't be there for long. You could be a general commanding an army because it would only be for a couple of quests before you are back as your son, the soldier.

Why it might not work

Part of the appeal of MMO's is to show of your avatar top lvl gear. With my idea this would be far less, after all, you are constantly starting over. A certain amount of status could pass over and people would know you by your families last name but this game would need a different focus then endless grinding for items. Granted, the hope is that by allowing new content to created for a lower lvl's you would have more content and less need to grind but still, could people get used to this different mindset?

The question

So, what do you think? Would you play a game where rather then the current method of rising to the top, grinding the same instances for items, while waiting for the next expansion is the only way to go OR would you be willing to play a game where you know that your avatar is going to die near the top lvl and you would have to start over from near the beginning, experiencing the same world from a different angle?

The way I see it, my system would allow for content to more easily created, but there are other side effects that would also be intresting for a long term MMORPG.

There would be NO dead zones, since veterans would constantly be starting over, all the zones would be filled with people questing. Same for crafting, all tiers would have customers and suppliers. No longer would you start an alt and not see a single soul until you are near the top.

Let me know what you think, remember that this is NOT suggestion to change WoW or the like, they are the games they are. Rather this is just a brain storm for a game that would be far closer to SWG although with more questing and a more epic storyline. 

I wouldn't play it.  MMO's have a life span to me not the characters in them.  I play it till I'm bored.  If I get bored with an MMO I don't start a new character.  I start a new MMO.  Just my take.

I'd play it. It gives your actions meaning by providing what most mmoers want, a legacy, if even to just the npcs who would know the predecessor, and it also allows you to start a new char w/o starting from scratch. Most end game content for mmos is either limited or useless, might as well give my max lvl char a respectable end. Most of my max lvl chars are dead to me anyway. At least this way it completes the story on them as opposed to just leaving them on the shelf like dusty old trophies. Not to mention it gives their "lives" meaning because your "heir's" game experience is forever altered because your max toon spawned him/her.

say goodbye to pvp and high end raids then, noone would want to sacrifice their character and restart over all the content they just did from level 10+ (unless i am misreading what you are saying)

Where.

Were.

We're.

Wear

In this case, "Would you play an MMO 'WHERE'  your character could truly die?"

would've been more appropriate.

-Spread the word... English that is.

Maybe it could work, but I think things like this tend to turn people off, even before trying.

But if this was something I should put in a game, I would make it possible for a rerolled character to inherit your former characters goodies, giving him a better start and making your hard work worth something. To avoid a too big difference between a veteran character and a new one, could make it easier to accept that you have to start over again from scratch. If you know you have to work hard for 2 months over again, just to not be one hit killed by a mob you could pwn an hour ago, would not be a motivation factor imo. But if things like damage from your attacks and your hit points would be unaffected by your level, and if items had no level restriction, your rerolled character could use all the inherited items from level 1, making your new character almost as strong as your old one, leaving it to him to regain/increase skills/attacks only. That way, nothing who could not one hit kill your old character can do it to your new one, but you can still be unable to defeat something with your new character due to lack of the skills your former character had.

It should also be much faster to level up a character to high level, than what is the case in most games, or people will give up when they have to re-roll a character. Let say that you can level up to 80% of the max capacity in a few days, and from 81-90% it could take weeks or months, and the last 10% could be extremely hard (but not really necessary) to get. This is pretty much how it works in Diablo 2 - once you know how to do and where to go, you can reach level 70-80 very fast, and after level 90 it is very slow leveling, but you are already good enough to have fun. The last 10% gives you an edge, but is not required, not even for pvp.

But after all this, maybe there is no point with perma-death anymore lol.

id play it but with a twist:

let me play a lineage
my 1st char would be for example craylon of the house of crows
he would adventure and fight and eventually grow old but some of his legend and wealth would be passed onto his son grold of the house of crows

i think player would feel it a bit harsh when everything they played would be wiped away with the death of their char but there can be a system in place where ´his next char would inherit something.
the heritage shouldnt neccessarily be a lot of power, more in the line of a family trait and a bit of money and fame handed down each generation so that players that play the game from the word go would be the "elder families" who are more famous (or feared)

some more from me on that theme can be found at my blog post:

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/craynlon/022008/1279_RIFNG-3-Down-with-Charakter-Immortality

Funny, I was thinking about this exact same thing the other day. I really like the idea - it would completely do away with the mad rush to max level. If such a feature was implemented I would like to see the following included:

- Families: All your alts will be from the same family. You could create a husband and wife, and any children they have would then become playable.

- Monuments: To your deceased characters. You could have graveyards that display all your characters major achievements throughour their lifetime.

- Life quests: Your main questline would be to discover your heritage. Any future family alts would have quests that relate back to the family history you carved out using your initial characters.

The only problem I can see with this game is the time dilation issue. Either everyone ages at the same rate, or you age based on experience. The problem with uniformed aging is that if you don't play for a long period, you might log back in only to find your character has died from old age! Experienced-based ageing would cause all sorts of time paradoxes as everyone would be ageing at different rates.

An interesting concept but the logistics would need some serious thought.