by David "Xerin" Piner

What makes a good MMORPG? This is a question that is heavily debated on every video game message board out there. Everything is listed from removing RPG elements to free ice cream. However, is this really the question that should be asked? Truly is there even an answer to this mystical magical question? Why yes, there is. The answer is another question: What makes a bad MMORPG?

Through my experience in online gaming, especially MMORPGs, I feel confident to call myself a specialist in the field of BADMMORPGs. What allows me to claim such a boisterous title? Well, the fact that anytime I mention one of my good game ideas someone instantly responds with “That is such a bad idea!” I think by “bad” they mean “rad”, so I will show you my plans for my rad MMORPG!


World of WoodCraft

(Parody Begin) The first thing any new game needs is a development company. For this example I shall create a fictional company called Zaft Games with a near infinite budget. The first order of business would be hiring the staff. I’d hire 50 video game programmers (25 experienced, 25 who went to summer video game camp), 50 designers (25 experienced, 25 house decorators), 50 customer service representatives (to post about how awesome the game is on message boards) (25 random people I find in bars, 25 people that sent in resume with “HTML” listed as a programming language), and 10 carpenters. City management games have shown that you need 50 of each type of workers (25 professional, 25 unprofessional) while only needing 10 carpenters. Why do I need carpenters? Well I’ll get into that later.

The first step would be to organize the company. All employees would have free reign on what they do with their time and control over their own work. There would be no one to oversee their work; however their work must reflect my original plan. There would be no management positions other then guys in suits who stand around for show. Since my idea is so good I don’t need anyone to get in the way of my idea. Budget concerns aren’t needed since my game will make a ton of money.

The employees would work in 3 shifts (eight hours a shift). Fifteen people from each team would work each shift giving five people a free day off. Carpenters are separate; they are always on call due to their living arrangements. Sure the development team can’t communicate, but why should they? This game is my game and they only need to follow what I say.

I will need a video game plan of course since I’ve already outlined the company. Luckily, I have a plan. It’s called WORLD OF WOODCRAFT, a video game sci-fi MMORPGFPSRTSSIMADVENTUREMEGAADVENTURE. What exactly is WORLD OF WOODCRAFT you ask? Well it’s WOWC for short, that’s what it is. Oh, the game idea yes sorry got off track thinking about how awesome it is. I’ll share with you since I’ve already gotten forty-five patents on my super awesome idea. The more patents the better right?

The game would have three layers with the actual MMORPG inside of the third layer. You must beat one layer to advance to the next one. This makes players peel away at the content to rich the depth of the gameplay. See, we even have buzzwords already!

The first part would be the VIDEO GAMER VIDEO GAME SIMULATOR. You would play as a video gamer that is currently playing a MMORPG. This would be multiplayer, allowing for a full social network to spawn. You can trade items, chat, or even arrange for your character to group up with another characters inside the game.

The game would only have three stats: Eliteness, Hygiene, and Hunter. The goal would be to max out the Eliteness stat as fast as possible to advance to the next layer. This would of course take out all of the “casual” gamers off the bat so that I can focus on content directed purely at the hardcore, although the casual players can get through this portion through shear luck or numbers.

The basic idea is that you must play the video game while managing work (HAHAHA this truly was insanely hard to simulate, but luckily you don’t have to watch your character go to work) and food. The less time you spend on the game then the more income you make, which allows you to have better hygiene and food. However, the less time you spend in the game the slower your eliteness goes up. If at any time your hygiene or hunger goes too low, you will be fired and forced to sell your character for cash and find a new job (effectively starting over).

The entire process of this game would take roughly two weeks to complete, however if you can get into the raiding scene (hook up with 200 other players to raid) then you can quickly advance through this phase in three days. The only problem is that if you miss one raid you have to start over again (you are not elite enough, obviously). So it’s a risk vs. reward, a super awesome unique gameplay mechanic that I’ve created. During raids your hygiene and hunger also quickly decrease and you have to manage it. However, too many breaks and you’ll get kicked from the raid and have to start this section over again.

You can of course use the in-game currency (from working and whatnot) to buy soda and other stat boosters that can propel your character to be more elite! You can even make a market out of buying sode for low and selling high. This truly is the ultimate massively multiplayer online simulator role-playing game.

Ever played pinball? Yes? Good! This section has the “tilt” feature that allows you to attempt to “hackz0r” the “Gibson”. The only problem though is that like a pinball machine if you go too far you are caught. Don’t worry though, once you’ve bypassed the first part you will be banned anyway. Hooray, both ways you truly win as you get to redo this encounter.

If you are hardcore enough to get past the first layer then we’d present you with our second layer. This would be called HELP THE FROG GET ACROSS THE ROAD. Man, this part is hard. I’ve actually ran this idea through a small stage development process and I could barely get past it. If you can get past it then really I admire you. This is a test of your response time ensuring that during the FPS element of our games you can quickly “pwn” the noobs with your +5 gun of awesomeness.

Assuming you’ve gotten past the first two layers then you would open the third layer. This is the actual MMORPG. It would have a two hour tutorial level that is so awesome that I’m not even going to tell you about it. Well, technically it has a two week tutorial level since you’ll spend two weeks on the first layer and quit the second (oh man I just spoiled how to beat the second layer FORGET THAT PART RIGHT NOW). The game is so advanced we’ve had to work 24 hours to even get this idea down.

You start out as an Elf in an Elven village called Legomolassesville. You will fight rats and other enemies that plague the land for hours on end to obtain level two where you will leave the Elven village for the mountains where the dwarfs are. There you will mine copper for awhile. We all need to work hard. THEN PLOT TWIST.

As you are mining copper a spaceship flys down and picks you up. You hop aboard the spaceship and are like “WOAH I JUST SPENT TWO WEEKS BEATING MY HEAD AGAINST THE WALL THIS IS AWESOME OUT OF NOWHERE EXTREME” when all of a sudden MINI-GAME MANIA starts and you start mining copper AND killing rats while on the spaceship.

When the spaceship lands you find yourself in an Elven village. See really they just wanted to test you and see if you could mine copper. So once more you set out to the Dwarfs but when you get there you see a cartoony land. That’s right, the forest animals need your help! Guess what they need help with? Farming!

So you’ll need to successfully create a farm, if you fail then you are forced to start over again. When you finish the farm then a spaceship picks you up and take you a fantasy futuristic city.

In this city you mix every known genre (FPS, RTS, RPG, Action, Adventure, etc.) into one big pile. From here on out it’s just a regular game with nothing neat except leveling up to the point you can go on raids and then you raid and play in our AWESOME PvP arena.

There is one more feature of our game. To ensure the safety of our intellectual property (we will sell game currency of course) our patcher will decompress each and every file and recompress it to ensure its 100% authentic. Then it’ll try to connect to the game servers. If it fails then you have to relaunch it. Oh, the carpenters? Those work on the ship (pirate ship!) that is at sea where the servers are. Yep, servers at sea. The carpenters also double as technical maintenance, ensuring the servers are up at least over half the time.(Pardoy End)


By now you are either shaking your head going “yay” at my super idea or laughing insanely. Either way, hooray! The entire point of this editorial was to outline the worst MMORPG ever then compare it to World of Warcraft. The problem is, that well, the worst MMORPG ever shares very few things with WoW. The only thing it truly can share with WoW is how much time it wastes. That’s the entire point of games though, so really they share nothing bad in common.

In closing I hope you enjoyed this wacky editorial and I really hope you don’t steal my idea. Its way too good and only someone of my BADMMORPG experience could pull it off. Haha!


Disagree with this editorial and want to add your opinion? Email the author ([email protected]) or post in the WoW @ TenTonHammer forums!


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.

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