Having a large variety of spells is important, but limiting the amount a person can learn is more important. New spells could be bought with experiance points, or time spent playing the game, or both. Given a large enough spell database a player will be able to choose distinct spells he wants his character to cast, and will give him more of a chance to have a unique caster (which is rare in ANY mmorpg to date). Plus the spells could increase in power as you spend experiance points on them, instead of buying a new spell for money with slightly increased effect, you should be forced to buy an improvement to your existing spell for experiance.

Spells should be able to be swapped, you can unlearn a spell and gain some experiance back maybe? And then learn a new kind of spell. But if every spell is made well enough, it shouldnt matter what spells a caster picks since they are all different but relativly equal.

Spells should be treated like skills; in many mmorpg games ive seen, casters have always had a disadvantage in combat. Melees keep on swinging over and over, but once a caster is out of mana he is virtually useless; if there was a new way to cast spells not based on mana, that would improve play tremendously. Although I have no alterior solution for mana, perhaps someone else has a good idea.

Heres a spell idea: Element = Air; Summon Bird

skill 1 = summon one bird that follows above caster, will attack on command, does 5 damage attacks every 3 seconds, has 1 hitpoint.
skill 10 = summon 2 birds, 5 damage every 3 seconds, have 5 hitpoints
skill 100 (maxxed) = summon 10 birds 10 damage every 2 seconds have 25 hitpoints, they also have regeneration

Spells should increase in power; either the more you use them, or the more experiance you spend on them, and they should be big improvements.
Ex: Wizard has a spell called \"fireball\", Line of sight spell, uses 5 mana and does 10 damage at skill 1; at skill 10 it uses 10 mana and does 100 damage; at skill 100 it uses 20 mana does 500 damage and hits multiple targets in a straight line; at skill 500 no longer needs line of sight, will travel around corners, does 1000 damage and hits multiple targets multiple times.

The way to balance it is to have creatures with many different resistences; but all in all when you learn a spell you want to be able to still use that spell long after you learn it, for the rest of the game.

My idea about item decay is flawed; but maybe once a smith has a high enough skill he can repair most items flawlessly, this will ensure a dedicated trade class who feels important, they could even go to battle just to repair items and possibly heal people. Of course they must gain experiance every time they fix something or make something, the harder it is to make the more exp they get for trying.

Of course there must also be indestructable items too, like ones recieved from a tough quest, but if the game is big enough, and people have more than just one real option for an item having limited quantities will 1. increase demand in the economy, 2. ensure higher level players have something to show for doing something first, 3. the items can still break beyond repair so they will respawn again. If the limits were something like 10000 for uncommon items, 1000 for rare items, 500 for boss loot, and possibly set up a tax or rent for valuable items so you need to play to be able to keep your items.

Risk and reward is a tough balancing issue, random rare loot similar to Diablo is ok, but some named creatures should have named items they always drop; instead of having 500 named creatures in a dungeon you could have 5, and make them tough but allow the regular stuff to drop decent equipment as well so there will always be a point to kill every last creature.
I have so much to say I could write all night, but instead Ill write new threads with specific ideas

Some of the huge mistakes Everquest made was as you advanced levels into the higher game a number of things started going wrong:
1. Old level spells lost significant value and never developed into real usable spells;
2. Old skills never improved enough to be usefull;
3. Fighting for melee was mindnumbingly boring;
4. Some classes were completely useless;
5. No chance to be unique;
6. No chance to lose anything significant in battle or death;
7. Instead of making harder 1 group dungeons they made 30 group monsters;
8. No real quests;
9. To many items that arnt good for anything;
10. Never hired a good level builder.

Here are my ideas, more like visions:
1. Make EVERY spell increase significantly in power when you max it out (ex: Levitate at level 1 lets you hover over ground only, Levitate at level 100 increases your speed by 50% levitate over anything and increase your dodging ability) more on spell ideas later.
2. Same as spells, if you have a bash skill at level 1 it should knock the creature back some with a possibility of stun, at level 100 you should be able to knock weapons out of peoples hands, stun them for a minimum of 30 seconds and do lots of damage.
3. Improving fighting is tricky, but heres what the game of the future looks like:
Ranger class = first person shooter style
Warrior class = hack and slash style
Monk class = combination style (When you learn a new fighting move, its a word on the keyboard like (firefist: if you type this in combat you will strike at your oponant with a flaming punch add 5d10 damage; but also type in combinations to keep the action rolling: firefist thunderkick lightningknee) more on this later also
4. Every class needs to bring something unique to a group of players, in EQ Druids had 2 good spells snare and thornshield and they could heal, well necros have darkness and if you know how to play a necro you can heal better than a druid, rangers have snare and thornshield and heal, all the casters have the same types of spells like buffs and wizards and mages had the exact same spells only mages did a bit less damage because they could have pets. Create a large variety of spells for the different casters that can be unique to the realm from which they came, plus melee need more skills that provide a difference so a strategy can be formed with other melee.
5. Endless supply of equipment, everyone wears the same stuff. There NEEDS to be a limit set on how many of certain items come into the game, and only respawn that item when one is destroyed. Another thing is equipment MUST be damaged when you battle and not slowly or just with weak hits, when a character gets hit for 300 with a treelimb, his armor should be bent or broken completly this is not for the sake of the economy, this is for the sake of possesing something someone else will have a VERY hard time trying to get. Plus when you repair items, they need to have a set durability number (new: 50/50) and when it gets damaged it goes down (broken: -2/50) and depending on how badly it was hurt (in this case badly) a smith must use up some of the durability points the weapon has (fixed 45/45) so if the weapon is repaired repeatedly it breaks easier, this way a smith with a great skill will take less durability points to fix the item (fixed 49/49)
6. There needs to be a real risk when adventuring, a chance to lose everything, a chance that if you go to the kings lair of this dungeon and fail, you might not ever get your equipment back. Loosing your entire corpse needs to be in the game, though it wont happen often it should at higher levels.
7. Everquest was fun as hell when you took the least amount of people possible and try something you think is insane. Before the expansoins of EQ when everyone just started hitting level 50, my group (Monk, Shaman, Necro) could kill all the fire giants in nags lair in no time at all, we could kill 2 at once; we were clearing the entire efreeti area with the same group. NOBODY else on my server even DARED, it was honestly the most fun ive ever had playing a game because I knew I could die easy, although death ment nothing to me so it quickly lost its appeal.
8. If the GM\'s made a few quest zones that they could shape or spawn anything they wanted to in, they could have run huge dungeon quests where the players are needed to find the terror lord and kill him at the end of a treatorous dungeon. More on that later.
9. To many times we would kill a dragon that took 30 of the best people in the game to kill, and some of the items we would get we wouldnt put on our twinks. If tailoring and smithing were done right, dragon loot should only consist of many dragon scales to be made into magical coats or pants, dragon teeth that could be mounted on swords for magical ability or ground up into alchemy.
10. So many of the layouts and designs of zones were horrible, shits attacking you through the floor when its above you; and most of all everything was to shallow, once you get to the bottom of guk you zone into lower guk, once you reach the bottom of that you should zone into another harder place, Guk was the only decent zone but it could have been so much better.

I have so many ideas there might not be an end, but I have a vision where a level 100 wizard is glowing in a bright light, floating above the ground, with a flock of summoned white birds following near his shoulder. A thief, black as night, is so stealthy he moves faster when hes sneaking, his backstab has a chance of instant death on any creature thats as big as him. And a monk that can disarm anything, learn quadruple combos and special techniques to paralyze or cripple oponants. We need a real MUD, bring the text to life should be the goal, do not try and cover the bad gameplay with fancy images.