Stargate Worlds
Wow, even with Uru dead and gone a second time, people are still churning out ideas on what should be changed... Like it still matters? You guys don't move on much, do you? Here's my take on it: Get rid of all the stupid magical Bahro and Yeesha, the two elements that made the Myst universe completely and totally unexplainable and fantastic. With the whole "Bahro can Link themselves and others on their own" is an epic failure on Cyan's part. It's not realistic! That's the entire mood behind the Myst games (up until Exile and beyond, apparently). You'd play along and see something and you could look at it and say "you know, this could quite possibly be explained by real-world science, given enough time". But then you have Bahro appearing in K'veer after players line up in a circle? Books changing Ages in real time? Tablets? Magic... Not Myst.
Anyway, what I want to talk about... is Stargate Worlds. Haven't seen anyone talk about that since its announcement! Personally, I'd completely forgotten about it. I really don't have the time or wish to follow a pre-production MMORPG. I've learned by now that until a game is released, there's a high chance that some shortsighted publisher will waltz along and axe the project in favor of something with a number following the title. But SGW has come a loooong way since I last read the site and forums, and I'd completely forgotten about it until the forums sent me an automated birthday email.
But, yeah! I've been reading the Wiki... So far, it seems to be almost perfect for a Stargate game, even if it wasn't MMO. Think of it! The game is going to be balanced, more or less, for squads of four, of course, because that's the standard SG team size. (Seasons 9 and 10 don't count for anything, bleh. Stupid Mitchell. Stupid Vala. Stupid Ori.) Right now, the enemies are going to have elements of random in their actions... They won't do the same thing every time you encounter them like, say, in World of Warcraft dungeons. In WoW, there's a certain way you have to do things, and success is based purely off how well people know the scripted sequence of events for any given boss. It's an okay approach and we all enjoy it, but it does get rather old. Imagine yourself in an SG team of fellow players... You just got done investigating what you thought were some Ancient ruins. (Ancient as in Stargate-Builders, not just old ruins...) You head back to the Stargate and there's a patrol of Jaffa loyal to a Goa'uld who's out to get you. When they see you, they fall back and take defense positions behind the Stargate and fire from cover. You defeat them and leave... Now, say, the mission is repeatable. You go back to the ruins and come back and you know that there's going to be Jaffa there again, but, this time? They see you and they decide you're in a position to be overrun and they charge at you, staff weapons blazing! That's the premise here.
As for players, right now, there are going to be four races to pick from: Jaffa, Goa'uld, Human and Asgard! Jaffa will have two factions: Free and Loyal. Think of Free Jaffa as late-series Teal'c, when his symbiote dies and he needs to use Tretonin. Think of Loyal Jaffa as the good old fashioned snake-in-the-gut armies of the "gods". Goa'uld will simply be Goa'uld. No good, no bad, just Goa'uld. This particular faction is said to have seen how well posing as gods worked out (not very well), so they tend to act more like Ba'al, where they tend to do things on their own. Humans will have two factions, also: SGC and something called OPCORE, which is sorta like a new version of the NID, where they believe that they should acquire technology at all costs. Asgard are like the opposite of Goa'uld where if you pick them, you have no faction choice... You're just an Asgard. Kind of weird, and I wish they didn't let you pick them, but they do, so oh well. You get something called a Drone when you pick Asgard. The Drones seem to be what does all the interacting with things, seeing as how Asgard are pretty... frail and useless without their technology.
As for classes, I'm not sure if there are any classes for Goa'uld, Jaffa and Asgard, but for humans, you get to pick from the familiar abilities! Archaeologist for all you Daniel Jackson buffs, Scientist for those of you who actually understand what Samantha Carter is talking about, and Soldier, for all of you who more closely resemble Jack O'neill's method of approaching things! Archaeologists and Scientists are going to be more suited for analyzing ruins and technology, naturally. There will be puzzle mini-games that you get to work on, and Scientists and Archaeologists will specialize in these. Sometimes there will be technology puzzles that require a Scientist and sometimes there will be a linguistic puzzle or such that will require an Archaeologist, so you'll want to have access to each one, no doubt. Soldiers are, of course, suited more for combat, although each class can fight.
As you go on missions, you'll uncover Gate addresses that you can use to dial up another planet and see what's going on. So far, it doesn't seem that you'll be able to randomly dial addresses and see if a world pops up, and it'll be more that you have to learn addresses to use them. But once you know an address, you can visit the world any time you want. Some will be friendly to your faction, others will be aggressive, and others will be contested, and will serve as a sort of Player vs Player environment. PvP is going to be opt-in, which means that if you don't want to PvP, you don't need to do anything to defend yourself. (Except stay away from contested planets, probably.)
Flying craft will probably be an expansion at this point, as will the Pegasus galaxy and Atlantis. One of the original examples of the game, building a Goa'uld mothership, will probably be introduced in such an expansion, but crafting is going to be a major aspect of the game... More so than WoW's where you simply gather resources and press a button. It will most likely sport some sort of mini-game that will determine the quality outcome of a product, similar to what Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has, but... Of course, nobody's played the game yet, so we don't know!
Speaking of playing... The first release date is set for "Fall 2008", and reports say that the developers have reached every planned milestone on time, so, right now, this release date is viable. But... Knowing the nature of projects of this scale, I'm willing to bet that it's going to be pushed back as least twice. Which I'm okay with, actually. Super Smash Bros. Brawl, for example, was pushed back because they couldn't get done what they wanted... It's when someone comes along and rushes production like Ubisoft with Uru and SOE with Vanguard that you need to start worrying. I also hope that all these plans get implemented! Right now, I think the game is absolutely perfect in every way. As long as they deliver what they promised and don't have to change anything because of some technological problem? This will be a really awesome game.