Achievements and Collections from the Start Across Accounts
Many MMORPG developers seem to think it is clever for players to have to earn all achievements with all their characters. This supposedly ensures high replay value, ideally having all content played multiple times, and prolongs the time before a large part of the community runs out of things to do.
The opposite is true: Many players appreciate having their precious time valued by a game. This includes earning certain achievements and collectible rewards like mounts, titles, skins, or pets for all characters on an account.
Fortunately, more and more positive examples illustrate this:
- just recently: the new Warband from The War Within – WoW took quite a long time to make this decision.
- the Legacy system from Star Wars: The Old Republic, where you can build an entire family dynasty and unlock countless upgrades for all family members.
- the Codex of Knowledge from Warhammer Online, which documents earned achievements, keeps statistics on all heroic deeds, and provides background information on all areas of the MMORPG.
A combination of these three features could be the holy grail of account-wide collection.
Play with Friends Anytime and Anywhere
In an MMORPG, where the main goal is to experience adventures together with friends or allies, there are often far too many barriers that undermine a shared gaming experience. Server boundaries or the limitation of content to specific level ranges, for example.
Dynamic scaling of character or enemy levels in online role-playing games like Guild Wars 2 or The Elder Scrolls Online is much more modern. Over the years, leveling has also become more flexible in WoW. Moreover, you can now form cross-realm communities and organize yourself without server and faction boundaries.
The idea is not new. City of Heroes already had a clever mentoring and sidekick system that allowed a high-level hero to assist a rookie without trivializing the tasks and losing meaningful rewards. The more flexible and open this system is, the better for cooperation in MMORPGs.
