Originally posted by aRtFuLThinG YOU are not concerned, but the developers are though.Unless YOU are making the game... you can't really ask developer to "make this make that".They kinda have the creative freedom to make whatever they like since it is THEIR project, THEIR effort, and THEY get the funding, not YOU.And I'm sure THEY care about getting a return on THEIR investments.Lol.Loooooool.
LOLOL, why didn't I realize that? Your totally right, how could I have failed to realize what you certainly know and confirm developers are willing to do? Thank you for representing the developers for us so we know what is and isn't permissible preference. We shan't have to worry about what the community or developers will accept so long as you aid us. Thanks again.</p>
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, if they get angry, they'll be a mile away... and barefoot.
Originally posted by pmw4friend If you would ask the person who's founding the project for $10 mill just for art work, I would see the conversation going a little like this :
Hey sir I would like $10 mil, to create extra armor to fit the different types of races. Sponsor "would it have a tremendous affect on the game?" No "Would it get us more players? " Maybe "Well sir, I'm sorry but there is no way in hell ill spend $10 mil on bulls***, so get the f*** out of my office. "
No one will waste money on something that isn't going to make them more money.
I don't see the conversation going anything like this, because when you go to you sponsor for money you don't just go in their with out anything to support why your asking for the money.
If the conversation is as simple as this it would go something along the lines of:
Hello Sir, we would like an extra $10 million for our game to create artwork that is specific to each individual race.
Sponsor "would it have a tremendous affect on the game?"
Your answer would have to be yes and try to convince him as to why it is a necessity, so you answer would be something like this:
Yes Sir, I do believe that it would affect the game tremendously, because of the terrible visual affects it would affect the over all user experience.
"Would it get more players?"
Yes it would get us more players, because... what ever reason you come up with.
Now That's simple way to have a conversation and this never happens as you usually have a business team that deals with all this. You would go to them with the problem and they will go to the sponsor with very well illustrated graphs and other such things as to "help" convince him to pay for this.
One way to have powerful dragons is to limit the number of players who can be dragons. You'd likely have to make it random and/or rare circumstances that you could become a dragon or in the F2P world sold.
I do like the idea of players being able to become typical npc roles like dragon, liches, etc. Give them the ability to then go around collect minions and set up dungeons for players with their character as the boss. If they're online they can take over and play the role. Nice player created raids.
I, too, would love to see a game with some really interesting non-human races (like Dragons and Sphinxes, etc) included. It's a shame that Istaria has had to be the torch-bearer for about the best implemented version of playable dragons for over a decade. Having seen the popularity of Dragon's Prophet, despite its many, many flaws, even a lower-budget indie implementation of unusual races would probably find enough of a niche audience to make some waves among the current crop of MMOs. Hell, we're getting a Pride and Prejudice MMO, why not one for the would be Smaugs among us?
I want a game where you can breed dragons with genetic codes like in sims 2 (best genetics ever made). I wish the ultimate reward of Skyrim would have been the dragonborn having an option to become one of the dragons. Yeah, I'm down with being a dragon. I'm thinking it would be nice in an mmo but graphics in mmo's these days suck to compensate for lag.
Is that Istaria game f2p?
- - - - - - - - - - -
Actually it is not f2p if you want to be a dragon: it's f2p with high restrictions -
I just don't get why developers aren't creating more races to play that are unique.
The answer is simpler than you would expect. It is very easy to relate to a humanoid race, while it would be incredibly hard to get into a role of something completely different. Our minds work that way. In other words, you would need to try much harder in terms of plot and immersion to keep people playing as something completely alien to them, and it could still fail miserably, so no one will take the risk. And that is totaly justified.
Originally posted by Dibdabs I had a quick look at Istaria, having seen it mentioned, but it seems rather primitive and unpolished. Has anyone here played it lately?
It's a great game. I don't know what you mean by "primitive and unpolished." It's 10 years old so yeah, the graphics aren't great, but it has a ton of features and is a crafter's paradise.
I wouldn't mind a game with an expanded monster play style gameplay from LOTRO, just not limited to one zone. So you get to play as the monsters.
Generally though I agree with the other posters, dragons are rare and mythical creatures who possess great power. If you dumb them down to being as powerful as a single humanoid then they lose a lot of their appeal and awe.
Originally posted by Dibdabs I had a quick look at Istaria, having seen it mentioned, but it seems rather primitive and unpolished. Has anyone here played it lately?
It's a great game. I don't know what you mean by "primitive and unpolished." It's 10 years old so yeah, the graphics aren't great, but it has a ton of features and is a crafter's paradise.
Is this the game formerly known as Horizons?
If so...they had better have done ...a metric crap ton of stuff to the dragons. Let me relate just the dragon part of this since I beta tested that game and know a bunch of political stuff as well...but for this post, we'll just talk about the dragon.
You start as a baby...and you have to grind gem mining to level up your "horde" (read as treadmill barrier to levling) and play the game normally to level up your class level. There were 3 dragon level, babe, adult and ancient. As any level dragon...any level, babe, adult, or ancient...you were subpar any crafter/gather in the game because you had limited armor slots and all other races could put on crafting armor and carry more. This game had no fast travel ..period. You could load up a crafter disc and cart it back to your crafting station moving at like 85% of normal speed. But dragons carried less than the pixie class crafters...talk about disconnect. Then there is over the shoulder view which mean no upclose and personal combat. They were the weakest DPS/Tank classes in the game. BUT THEY COULD FLY!!!!!!!!!!
So, let's review.
purposeful grind to slow leveling.
gimped crafter
gimped in combat
for the advantage of flying (no combat while flying).
That being said, this game was awesome when it came to crafting, we called it craftzons. I'd like to see a similiar system get some updated treatment. Also another cool thing was that all the mobs used the same set of abliities and stats as players. could have been a great game if literally not for the Suit that fired the original developer of the game and then rushed release and filed for bankruptcy within 6 months of launching to be bought up by a newly formed company owned by the Suit's brother-in-law.........
Originally posted by Dibdabs I had a quick look at Istaria, having seen it mentioned, but it seems rather primitive and unpolished. Has anyone here played it lately?
It's a great game. I don't know what you mean by "primitive and unpolished." It's 10 years old so yeah, the graphics aren't great, but it has a ton of features and is a crafter's paradise.
Is this the game formerly known as Horizons?
If so...they had better have done ...a metric crap ton of stuff to the dragons. Let me relate just the dragon part of this since I beta tested that game and know a bunch of political stuff as well...but for this post, we'll just talk about the dragon.
You start as a baby...and you have to grind gem mining to level up your "horde" (read as treadmill barrier to levling) and play the game normally to level up your class level. There were 3 dragon level, babe, adult and ancient. As any level dragon...any level, babe, adult, or ancient...you were subpar any crafter/gather in the game because you had limited armor slots and all other races could put on crafting armor and carry more. This game had no fast travel ..period. You could load up a crafter disc and cart it back to your crafting station moving at like 85% of normal speed. But dragons carried less than the pixie class crafters...talk about disconnect. Then there is over the shoulder view which mean no upclose and personal combat. They were the weakest DPS/Tank classes in the game. BUT THEY COULD FLY!!!!!!!!!!
So, let's review.
purposeful grind to slow leveling.
gimped crafter
gimped in combat
for the advantage of flying (no combat while flying).
That being said, this game was awesome when it came to crafting, we called it craftzons. I'd like to see a similiar system get some updated treatment. Also another cool thing was that all the mobs used the same set of abliities and stats as players. could have been a great game if literally not for the Suit that fired the original developer of the game and then rushed release and filed for bankruptcy within 6 months of launching to be bought up by a newly formed company owned by the Suit's brother-in-law.........
Lots of changes since then.
Still 3 sizes of dragons (hatchling, adult, ancient)
Still lots of grinding, it is a slow crafting game essentially.
Don't need to grind for hoard anymore. There are tons and tons of hoard drops from mobs. You'll probably have 100+k before level 10 without doing any hoard craft grinding. Actually pretty much every mob has hoard drops. You can still grind caft hoard if you want though.
Bipeds still hold a little bit more, not a lot but a bit. Too offset dragons being able to fly and get to resources much faster.
There has always been fast travel in the game through the portal gates. There are a few more portal gates now - every city and town pretty much.
Dragons do more dmg/survivable than a biped class. The trade-off bipeds get to multi-class. So dragons are about equal to a biped with 3-4 schools.
There are some discs now that you can use the portals with, but you still have reduced movement with discs, supposed to represent being heavy.
Over the shoulder view? You could always switch from 1st to 3rd person.
Dragon lairs have been in for many years, nice huge massive lairs you can build almost however you want.
It was never bought by the suits brother in law but eventually some of the orginal devs did buy it back, and are still running it. The suit was David Bowman, he did get rid of David Allen, both have been gone for a very very long time.
I believe the ownership went something like Atari (funded orginally) to Aritfact Entertainment to Tulga games (this was an odd one admittedly, if I recall I think they sold it to themselves, don't recall a brother in law), to El Interactive (think they owned savage something or other) then to some of the original devs (now Virtuam) for the last 6ish years.
That being said, it is a slow crafting game, good for a change of pace. I play it a couple months twice a year maybe.
Graphics are not bad, blocky in some areas. Slik and Dragons are IMO better than a lot of graphics today still. Lag is much better, still an issue when lots of players though.
edit - it is still one of the most sandboxy games aorund (much more than Ryzom IMO) full multi-classing, full crafting, full plot/lairs to build/design in the world, not instanced. And if you want to play as a human and not have a plot, you can play free and learn every skill in the game.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Originally posted by TheRealBanango I can't believe no one has mentioned his bird mmo idea........it's amazing, I bird simulator where you can build nests and fly around exploring the world with your friends!!! You could be an eagle in the forest, a parrot in the jungle or a pidgeon in the city! Imagine you and your friends are geese and have to coordinate to fly in a v formation in order to gain speed LOL!!!! I would so play that game.
Couple of things...I recall the portals now, but yeah, you couldnt take anything through them, and the dragon flight didnt make up for the discs harvesting load; numbers wise.
They were just starting to talk about adding lairs when I left. I took off shortly after the bankruptcy and yes, I may have the relation wrong, but it was shown on the forums by some peeps that Tulga games was owned by a close to Bowman (AkA The Suit). It was kinda scary actually cause these people were pulling the case files and going over them and such to make the connection. He will always live in infamy with me as he came into IRC chat and told us testers, concerning dragons...you havent seen half of the content for dragons such as their classes(they were the exact same as all the other races, so he outright lied to us.)...and he was the first one I ever heard say...we have this build in house that is so much better than what you are currently testing...aka "the miracle build" ....
I actually liked the game, was in a guild that we had our own dragon language and everything. My dragon name of Maleficeince and nobody made the connection to to Disney. Part of the fun for me was watching the dragon names and pinning them to the novels/songs/movies they had taken the name from. That was actually my first MMO and I did like it, it was just handled very poorly.
Couple of things...I recall the portals now, but yeah, you couldnt take anything through them, and the dragon flight didnt make up for the discs harvesting load; numbers wise.
They were just starting to talk about adding lairs when I left. I took off shortly after the bankruptcy and yes, I may have the relation wrong, but it was shown on the forums by some peeps that Tulga games was owned by a close to Bowman (AkA The Suit). It was kinda scary actually cause these people were pulling the case files and going over them and such to make the connection. He will always live in infamy with me as he came into IRC chat and told us testers, concerning dragons...you havent seen half of the content for dragons such as their classes(they were the exact same as all the other races, so he outright lied to us.)...and he was the first one I ever heard say...we have this build in house that is so much better than what you are currently testing...aka "the miracle build" ....
I actually liked the game, was in a guild that we had our own dragon language and everything. My dragon name of Maleficeince and nobody made the connection to to Disney. Part of the fun for me was watching the dragon names and pinning them to the novels/songs/movies they had taken the name from. That was actually my first MMO and I did like it, it was just handled very poorly.
I remember following Horizons and all the crazy crap that went on. It was one of the most disappointed MMO's I played for what was expected. Naive I was back then.
Couple of things...I recall the portals now, but yeah, you couldnt take anything through them, and the dragon flight didnt make up for the discs harvesting load; numbers wise.
They were just starting to talk about adding lairs when I left. I took off shortly after the bankruptcy and yes, I may have the relation wrong, but it was shown on the forums by some peeps that Tulga games was owned by a close to Bowman (AkA The Suit). It was kinda scary actually cause these people were pulling the case files and going over them and such to make the connection. He will always live in infamy with me as he came into IRC chat and told us testers, concerning dragons...you havent seen half of the content for dragons such as their classes(they were the exact same as all the other races, so he outright lied to us.)...and he was the first one I ever heard say...we have this build in house that is so much better than what you are currently testing...aka "the miracle build" ....
I actually liked the game, was in a guild that we had our own dragon language and everything. My dragon name of Maleficeince and nobody made the connection to to Disney. Part of the fun for me was watching the dragon names and pinning them to the novels/songs/movies they had taken the name from. That was actually my first MMO and I did like it, it was just handled very poorly.
Dragons use the same discs as bipeds (and they have flying discs too) so the difference is just what you can carry which is only a couple hundred units, at 10 units per item is only about 20 items.
I remember maleficence actually , I think someone may be using your name, or something close to it in the last couple years. And no I never made the connection haha.
Ya David Bowman was alwasy a bit um... iffy IMO. I remember several months after it came out we were wondering when we could get to adult and fly, they swore up and down that the reason we couldn't was no one had yet met the requirements. Then 6 months later when the quest to become adult and fly came out, the requirements were only 30 days in game, 250k hoard, 30 adv and 20 craft and there were people that were near maxed out near 100 craft, 100 adv, 6 months played adn 25 million hoard....
That bugged me.
You were in Kier Chet Ellerton? Nice. That language is still used by some today. I just wish it was a wee bit faster paced, not in level speed or anything, just in travel, or combat - while nice for a change of pace it is still a bit slow, even for the change of pace.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
well since there seems to only be 1 game that you can play as a dragon, anyone know some good free mmos where you can play as a humanoid dragon? Or those where you can have one as a pet and not need to pay real life cash for it or be a ridiculously high level? I've been looking all over for good ones but most seem to be browser based, not that that's bad, but some good 3d ones would be great.
well since there seems to only be 1 game that you can play as a dragon, anyone know some good free mmos where you can play as a humanoid dragon? Or those where you can have one as a pet and not need to pay real life cash for it or be a ridiculously high level? I've been looking all over for good ones but most seem to be browser based, not that that's bad, but some good 3d ones would be great.
I think you can have dragon mounts in Riders of Icarus.
You can't mix Dragons with normal humans and somehow balance it. The dragons would have to be special characters that have thier own quest lines and "towns" and that either pay a huge subscription or have gonethrough th game once already
You should make the game, that once you reach top levels, you can if you want, restart your game as a more powerful race or monster. Like you can become a minotaur and play out a different version of the MMO in the Minotaur village. Or maybe a lizardman, goblin, orc or Gryphon or whatever. You are actually hostile to normal human players and friendly to some of th eother monsters but there is similar content for you as that monster, just in a different part of the world and of course the village is more like a cave or nest and the quests are more monster oriented. Like attacking human villages or actually kill a human player. Eventually you can lead entire armies into a "Raid" into a player controlled human kingdom. Be like Realm vs Realm except you have to playthrough the game to become a monster race.
Then after leveling up as this tier 2 monster race. You can restart AGAIN, and become a tier 3 monster race. Giants, Golems, Dragons etc. Your game is a little different but still in the same vein of quests and leveling. Just against different sorts of enemies. The combat might be the smae but as a giant you're lumbering slowly and your attacks are pretty much ares of effect. Dragons can fly, Fairies can use cool magic etc.
Then you can restart AGAIN and become some sort of diety. Playing in the outer realms with teh other gods. Again a different game but very similar with slightly different god-worshiper mecahnics. You can visit the earthly realm and players canactually worship you as a deity, gives you power.
Each increase in tier after a playthrough would also increase your subscription fee, or the subscription is based on how many players are already in that tier. There has to be a lot less of these more powerful characters running around.
Comments
LOLOL, why didn't I realize that? Your totally right, how could I have failed to realize what you certainly know and confirm developers are willing to do? Thank you for representing the developers for us so we know what is and isn't permissible preference. We shan't have to worry about what the community or developers will accept so long as you aid us. Thanks again.</p>
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, if they get angry, they'll be a mile away... and barefoot.
I don't see the conversation going anything like this, because when you go to you sponsor for money you don't just go in their with out anything to support why your asking for the money.
If the conversation is as simple as this it would go something along the lines of:
Hello Sir, we would like an extra $10 million for our game to create artwork that is specific to each individual race.
Sponsor "would it have a tremendous affect on the game?"
Your answer would have to be yes and try to convince him as to why it is a necessity, so you answer would be something like this:
Yes Sir, I do believe that it would affect the game tremendously, because of the terrible visual affects it would affect the over all user experience.
"Would it get more players?"
Yes it would get us more players, because... what ever reason you come up with.
Now That's simple way to have a conversation and this never happens as you usually have a business team that deals with all this. You would go to them with the problem and they will go to the sponsor with very well illustrated graphs and other such things as to "help" convince him to pay for this.
One way to have powerful dragons is to limit the number of players who can be dragons. You'd likely have to make it random and/or rare circumstances that you could become a dragon or in the F2P world sold.
I do like the idea of players being able to become typical npc roles like dragon, liches, etc. Give them the ability to then go around collect minions and set up dungeons for players with their character as the boss. If they're online they can take over and play the role. Nice player created raids.
I want a game where you can breed dragons with genetic codes like in sims 2 (best genetics ever made). I wish the ultimate reward of Skyrim would have been the dragonborn having an option to become one of the dragons. Yeah, I'm down with being a dragon. I'm thinking it would be nice in an mmo but graphics in mmo's these days suck to compensate for lag.
Is that Istaria game f2p?
- - - - - - - - - - -
Actually it is not f2p if you want to be a dragon: it's f2p with high restrictions -
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/2721/okx3.png
The answer is simpler than you would expect. It is very easy to relate to a humanoid race, while it would be incredibly hard to get into a role of something completely different. Our minds work that way. In other words, you would need to try much harder in terms of plot and immersion to keep people playing as something completely alien to them, and it could still fail miserably, so no one will take the risk. And that is totaly justified.
It's a great game. I don't know what you mean by "primitive and unpolished." It's 10 years old so yeah, the graphics aren't great, but it has a ton of features and is a crafter's paradise.
Smile
I wouldn't mind a game with an expanded monster play style gameplay from LOTRO, just not limited to one zone. So you get to play as the monsters.
Generally though I agree with the other posters, dragons are rare and mythical creatures who possess great power. If you dumb them down to being as powerful as a single humanoid then they lose a lot of their appeal and awe.
Is this the game formerly known as Horizons?
If so...they had better have done ...a metric crap ton of stuff to the dragons. Let me relate just the dragon part of this since I beta tested that game and know a bunch of political stuff as well...but for this post, we'll just talk about the dragon.
You start as a baby...and you have to grind gem mining to level up your "horde" (read as treadmill barrier to levling) and play the game normally to level up your class level. There were 3 dragon level, babe, adult and ancient. As any level dragon...any level, babe, adult, or ancient...you were subpar any crafter/gather in the game because you had limited armor slots and all other races could put on crafting armor and carry more. This game had no fast travel ..period. You could load up a crafter disc and cart it back to your crafting station moving at like 85% of normal speed. But dragons carried less than the pixie class crafters...talk about disconnect. Then there is over the shoulder view which mean no upclose and personal combat. They were the weakest DPS/Tank classes in the game. BUT THEY COULD FLY!!!!!!!!!!
So, let's review.
purposeful grind to slow leveling.
gimped crafter
gimped in combat
for the advantage of flying (no combat while flying).
That being said, this game was awesome when it came to crafting, we called it craftzons. I'd like to see a similiar system get some updated treatment. Also another cool thing was that all the mobs used the same set of abliities and stats as players. could have been a great game if literally not for the Suit that fired the original developer of the game and then rushed release and filed for bankruptcy within 6 months of launching to be bought up by a newly formed company owned by the Suit's brother-in-law.........
Lots of changes since then.
Still 3 sizes of dragons (hatchling, adult, ancient)
Still lots of grinding, it is a slow crafting game essentially.
Don't need to grind for hoard anymore. There are tons and tons of hoard drops from mobs. You'll probably have 100+k before level 10 without doing any hoard craft grinding. Actually pretty much every mob has hoard drops. You can still grind caft hoard if you want though.
Bipeds still hold a little bit more, not a lot but a bit. Too offset dragons being able to fly and get to resources much faster.
There has always been fast travel in the game through the portal gates. There are a few more portal gates now - every city and town pretty much.
Dragons do more dmg/survivable than a biped class. The trade-off bipeds get to multi-class. So dragons are about equal to a biped with 3-4 schools.
There are some discs now that you can use the portals with, but you still have reduced movement with discs, supposed to represent being heavy.
Over the shoulder view? You could always switch from 1st to 3rd person.
Dragon lairs have been in for many years, nice huge massive lairs you can build almost however you want.
It was never bought by the suits brother in law but eventually some of the orginal devs did buy it back, and are still running it. The suit was David Bowman, he did get rid of David Allen, both have been gone for a very very long time.
I believe the ownership went something like Atari (funded orginally) to Aritfact Entertainment to Tulga games (this was an odd one admittedly, if I recall I think they sold it to themselves, don't recall a brother in law), to El Interactive (think they owned savage something or other) then to some of the original devs (now Virtuam) for the last 6ish years.
That being said, it is a slow crafting game, good for a change of pace. I play it a couple months twice a year maybe.
Graphics are not bad, blocky in some areas. Slik and Dragons are IMO better than a lot of graphics today still. Lag is much better, still an issue when lots of players though.
edit - it is still one of the most sandboxy games aorund (much more than Ryzom IMO) full multi-classing, full crafting, full plot/lairs to build/design in the world, not instanced. And if you want to play as a human and not have a plot, you can play free and learn every skill in the game.
Yeah, I'd give that a go. Dragons, nah.
Couple of things...I recall the portals now, but yeah, you couldnt take anything through them, and the dragon flight didnt make up for the discs harvesting load; numbers wise.
They were just starting to talk about adding lairs when I left. I took off shortly after the bankruptcy and yes, I may have the relation wrong, but it was shown on the forums by some peeps that Tulga games was owned by a close to Bowman (AkA The Suit). It was kinda scary actually cause these people were pulling the case files and going over them and such to make the connection. He will always live in infamy with me as he came into IRC chat and told us testers, concerning dragons...you havent seen half of the content for dragons such as their classes(they were the exact same as all the other races, so he outright lied to us.)...and he was the first one I ever heard say...we have this build in house that is so much better than what you are currently testing...aka "the miracle build" ....
I actually liked the game, was in a guild that we had our own dragon language and everything. My dragon name of Maleficeince and nobody made the connection to to Disney. Part of the fun for me was watching the dragon names and pinning them to the novels/songs/movies they had taken the name from. That was actually my first MMO and I did like it, it was just handled very poorly.
I remember following Horizons and all the crazy crap that went on. It was one of the most disappointed MMO's I played for what was expected. Naive I was back then.
Dragons use the same discs as bipeds (and they have flying discs too) so the difference is just what you can carry which is only a couple hundred units, at 10 units per item is only about 20 items.
I remember maleficence actually
, I think someone may be using your name, or something close to it in the last couple years. And no I never made the connection haha.
Ya David Bowman was alwasy a bit um... iffy IMO. I remember several months after it came out we were wondering when we could get to adult and fly, they swore up and down that the reason we couldn't was no one had yet met the requirements. Then 6 months later when the quest to become adult and fly came out, the requirements were only 30 days in game, 250k hoard, 30 adv and 20 craft and there were people that were near maxed out near 100 craft, 100 adv, 6 months played adn 25 million hoard....
That bugged me.
You were in Kier Chet Ellerton? Nice. That language is still used by some today. I just wish it was a wee bit faster paced, not in level speed or anything, just in travel, or combat - while nice for a change of pace it is still a bit slow, even for the change of pace.
You can play as Ao Kuang the God of dragons in Smite. Not technically an MMORPG but great nontheless.
Might not be what you think of when you think of dragons though.
You can't mix Dragons with normal humans and somehow balance it. The dragons would have to be special characters that have thier own quest lines and "towns" and that either pay a huge subscription or have gonethrough th game once already
You should make the game, that once you reach top levels, you can if you want, restart your game as a more powerful race or monster. Like you can become a minotaur and play out a different version of the MMO in the Minotaur village. Or maybe a lizardman, goblin, orc or Gryphon or whatever. You are actually hostile to normal human players and friendly to some of th eother monsters but there is similar content for you as that monster, just in a different part of the world and of course the village is more like a cave or nest and the quests are more monster oriented. Like attacking human villages or actually kill a human player. Eventually you can lead entire armies into a "Raid" into a player controlled human kingdom. Be like Realm vs Realm except you have to playthrough the game to become a monster race.
Then after leveling up as this tier 2 monster race. You can restart AGAIN, and become a tier 3 monster race. Giants, Golems, Dragons etc. Your game is a little different but still in the same vein of quests and leveling. Just against different sorts of enemies. The combat might be the smae but as a giant you're lumbering slowly and your attacks are pretty much ares of effect. Dragons can fly, Fairies can use cool magic etc.
Then you can restart AGAIN and become some sort of diety. Playing in the outer realms with teh other gods. Again a different game but very similar with slightly different god-worshiper mecahnics. You can visit the earthly realm and players canactually worship you as a deity, gives you power.
Each increase in tier after a playthrough would also increase your subscription fee, or the subscription is based on how many players are already in that tier. There has to be a lot less of these more powerful characters running around.
http://baronsofthegalaxy.com/ An MMO game I created, solo. It's live now and absolutely free to play!