I was playing an MMO last night that I’m not allowed to speak of and while running through quests I came to a realization as to what’s missing for me in MMO’s. Something console games are becoming increasingly great at; the wow effect. No, I don’t mean World of Warcraft. I’m talking about something that truly drops your jaw when you participate in it. We need something big to happen in MMO’s, something epic, something so grandiose that when we encounter it we throw our arms up in the air and shout, “hell yeah!” like we just saw our favorite band play our favorite song, live, ten feet in front of us on our birthday. Can you dig it?

While I prefer the open world “do almost anything you want” nature of MMO’s, I want something that I can go do that will blow my hair back like I’m in a Maxell commercial. I think big boss encounters are part of the solution, but they need to be more dynamic. Not just get as many people as necessary and pew pew the big baddie until he falls. I want more instances. On top of that, I want more instances that change based on the group you’re with, more group abilities that can make or break a hard fight, change to the instances and even the open world based on the time of day or changes brought on by other things happening in the game. Maybe have a small instanced dungeon that is somehow connected to a much larger one, and if someone runs the instance in the larger one and kills a high commander, some of his underlings will retreat to the smaller dungeon. They wouldn’t have to be harder mobs, but make the way they fight you change. Make the fighting meaningful.

But the biggest thing is breaking up the monotony. I’m honestly getting bored with running through a set number of keystrokes repeatedly to get to the end result. I want visual cues that make or break the outcome of the combat. You think I’m referring to God of War like flashy buttons to tell me what key to hit? Well you are wrong. I’m talking like Mike Tyson’s Punch Out! If that fucker blinks, you better move your ass sort of reactions. And I’m not just talking about for boss battles, I want visual reactive cues for almost any challenging mob, and then for the bosses to be something even more dynamic and awesome that repetitively going after it will not become boring.

No more cakewalks people! Give me some action and blow my mind!