Can one imagine a more exciting and dramatic server event? Cataclysm makes the opening of the Black Gate and Ahn’Qiraj look rather minor in comparison.

I would not mind if Thunderstorms/Blizzards could kill players in flight. Basically, time to buckle up and ride. Or they should place German 8.8 guns manned by undead Nazis on Mountain Ridges and let some flying monsters mob up the skies! :>

As Pete S mentioned, A Tale in the Desert has “a global foregame, midgame, and endgame”, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_in_the_Desert

The formula you describe applies to TV sitcoms, but soap operas and their ilk date to much earlier than 1993 and don’t maintain the status quo, although the story progression can be glacial to allow one to miss an episode or two. Though I gather most are ongoing in the sense that they don’t have a beginning or ending.

This pretty much sounds like the Prophecy of Loken that you mentioned. WoW restart with a new world and new engine?

One of the common things I hear about mmos is that a building remains in a certain state over the lifetime of the game.

There’s examples all over MMOs of bridges which have been under construction for 4 years or houses that have been burning for 2 years and so on and so forth.

What if some constructions could be flagged as ‘morphing’ or something indicating that they are intended to have a lifecycle? What I mean to say, instead of static houses. Some houses we know are going to catch fire and burn to the ground, or we want players to see them constructed over the months/years. SO when this content is created, does it make sense to go ahead and build in various ’states’ which allow the designers to advance their look and functionality over time?

Its usually cheaper to build it in upfront than change it later right?

UO had seasons, most mmos have expansions, and WoW lately is actually reworking a small amount of content overtime to help tell the ongoing story.

*WOW SPOILER AHEAD*

In fact, the current plot in WoW foretells of the destruction of Azeroth with Loken’s demise. Loken warns the players that this is the beginning of the end and a ‘failsafe’ computer system comes on saying that it will destroy the world and rebuild it from its constituent parts.

*SPOILER END* =)

So one of the things I’m getting tired of is the fact that we keep getting higher level caps and the bar just keeps getting raised. So far its entertaining for me in WoW, but will it be in 3 more years? I grew weary of upping limits and gear in DAoC after the first 2 years.

So can you ‘end’ an MMO cleanly, intentionally without it ‘dying’ on its own and then transition cleanly to a new fresh story? Giving the opportunity to upgrade the technology while at the same time presenting fresh content for players?

It seems like you’d need to have ‘transitional’ features and some solid marketing into what you expect your players to jump to when you sink the ship.

Also, as some have mentioned, if players have a huge impact in the storyline, it might prove challenging to manage/tweak as a storyteller/designer for a system running multiple world servers. Most likely there would be all kinds of variants of outcomes on different servers which could make it hard to make future content additions which were appropriate to those servers.

Sounds fun and intriguing!

The Legend of the Five Rings CCG did some of that years ago by letting player tournament results direct the storyline for future expansions. It was a great way to build brand loyalty and give players reason to play.

That said… when I want a game with a strong story and a real ending, I’ll play an offline game (with optional multiplayer, if the mood strikes, say, Secret of Mana). There is no way that I can be convinced to pay a box price and recurring sub fees for a game that I won’t be able to wring every last drop of content out of. I can’t even be convinced to pay that for WoW, where I could theoretically explore everything.

Interestingly, many MMO players think about ways to “reboot” the game and/or the player character. Neverending progression is really a problem, you grow stronger and stronger, and soon 99% of the world except the near-max level areas are useless for you.

1.) Have natural disasters, weather and player actions change the world and environment. Have seasons and day/night cycles that influence the world. E.g. some quests require night time activities, and certain mobs like ghosts only show up during the night. I would like Tsunamis and other catastrophes.

2.) Let player chars age and die. They die when a story arc period is over. Items should get used up and damaged, this prevents uberitem inflation and makes crafting actually useful. Think of Ultima Online, almost all gear people used was player crafted. You could even read who crafted the weapon or armor.
2.1) Let players have children with other players or NPCs! The future chars for the next chapter/expansion!

3.) Let players duke it out with the “evil opposing NPC faction” in the final phase of char advancement (levels 50-60, for example). Depending on the results, the world will change. Mordor from now on spawns an area the size of Russia e.g. xD

4.) This could be simple transfer of cities to other factions, some more serious changes like burnt forests, new small encampments, new quests and new storyline.

The game would REBOOT at this point and jump in time ahead, NEXT chapter and payment period. Players can chose to pay and play for one month or the full 3-6 month period planned for the chapter/book/story arc.

7.) Players start again at level 1. Possibly take over a few heirloom items and maybe have some kind of “Hall of Monuments” like in Guild Wars to display account and char achievements. Though I would not like to go as far as LOTRO and WoW with achievements and titles for every crazy little shit.

I think world reboot and player death/char reboot are important to get out of the vicious cycle of permanent progression. It would also retain the strengths of the “levelling up” model, where levelling and growing stronger is part of the fun. Endgame raiding is diminished return in contrast, lots of effort for little progression. These encounters should be epic, not a therapy for bored gamers crying for an endgame.

The “reboot the game” idea also has the potential to create compelling stories and worlds with a real history that is made by the players. SWTOR goes a rather cinematic and predetermined linear route at the moment, which gives the players less impact on the world as a whole.

As people have already said to keep the ball rolling you could have servers rolling out restarting the arch every few months, then those who missed that part of the story could jump back if they so desire

also the rolling on to the next phase i would go even further than just an automated tickover from stage to stage.

Your concept is to make it more real world then you should also consider that the stage progression is lead by the playerbase as a whole (obviously with autoprogression as a backup)

that could be as simple as a war effort that all the players have to chip into (only in your game you would actually see the war force being built) to interesting alternatives such as basing it on the games economy

use the analogy of the game revolving around a city, as players grow in level come back to the city to repair, buy, sell auction – all the money taken out of the game in those standard practices rather than just vanishing could fill a hidden progress bar for the city and the stage of the game

there really is quite a lot you could do with this