Jason

It's really funny because them going down to a single server actually has me interested again. One world games are my favorite.

For me, the quality of PUGs is directly proportional to how much players need each other. Back before WoW in EQ1, people needed other people to level, and they shared content, as such people, in general, tried to not be asshats because being an asshat meant you either got no groups or you had to group with other asshats (and usually guild with them too... all the asshats tended to be in one or two guilds which made spotting and avoiding them easier, but hell to deal with when you couldn't because, well, they were all asshats). In WoW, no players needs another player. You can level up and gear up (through drops and the auction house) entirely without other people, so there is no incentive to not bean asshat in groups.

If you want better PUGs, you need games that almost require other people to play. If you want to be able to play solo most of the time, PUGs are going to suck.

Personally, I prefer there to not be numbers, however, your system still needs to be representative of numbers. City of Heroes is the best example of that failure. If you list damage as just "low", "moderate" and "high", each needs to represent a range and be consistent. One power doing moderate damage needs to be the same as another power doing moderate damage, an absolute scale not a relative one.

Also, your system needs to be "noticeable" and by that I mean if you equip the Gauntlets of Speedy Awesomeness, it needs to be apparent to the player that "Speedy Awesomeness" leads to a visible increase in attack speed. And that the Gloves of Speedy Mediocreness is a smaller increase in attack speed, noticeably. If your players can't tell the difference between the Gloves and the Gauntlets, then your system sucks.

Because it is a single player lead in to the MMO they are also making.

Metal bikini for armor... I'll pass. Just so tired of the cliche.

You mean, if I put something on the Internet, it is automatically true?

You laugh, but that could actually work very well. In the WiiFit MMO you would pay a monthly fee to have someone else design your workout for you. Sign up for classes, compare with other people in the class. Global, regional, and local leaderboards for all the mini-games.

Global Agenda would be great on console. And CCP's forthcoming Dust 314 looks to be like GA on a console tied in to the EVE universe.

I'd love to see more console MMOs, if only because I don't like fiddling with drivers or finding out a game I just bought won't run on my PC. Yeah, I can upgrade my PC, but I like the fact that a game sold for a console is guaranteed to run on that console.

@datashade But it IS true. People just want it to be not true. If WoW isn't the game you want to play you need to stop paying for it because the companies funding games have only one metric that matters and that is profit. Want to know why there are so many WoW clones released and in development? It is because that is what people pay for. And despite the fact that most of those WoW clones will not be wildly successful, it's still where the money is being spent for development. Going 3rd party to fix or bypass the game you don't enjoy is rewarding "bad" design. You need to be out there rewarding the games that are games you want to play or else they are just going to keep making games that you'll have to pay someone to play for you.

The only way to affect change in developers is to vote with your feet. If the game is boring, don't pay. Instead, find a game that is designed the way you want to play and pay them. Yes, that means you might have to go looking at smaller independent titles and not play the AAA blockbuster games, but by getting people to pay is the only way those independents can become AAA.