you mentioned 4 things there that the study found addictive.  Levelling, Quests, Intense Fighting and PKing.

I\'ve never seen anything in an MMO outside of fighting my way through a dungeon to whack the boss that I\'d really call a quest, so lets just say for a moment that this is lacking, so far most mmos have 3 of the points you were talking about.  Now... Intense fighting, if you\'re actively involved like in an FPS or something like PSO where you have a lot of real-time control over the combat almost every fight is intense in some way but when it\'s like DAoC or Diablo or whatever, it\'s \'tension\' mainly comes from watching a stupid energy bar and freaking out when it looks like it might not last the fight :rolleyes:

My suggestion is to make the levelling take care of itself and be more subtle (more analogue, less digital) while increasing the emphasis on quests and just generally intense stuff as much as possible.  You don\'t read cool epic stories about how Kaleff sat in a field killing monsters all day to reach her 27th level and put some points into archery, you read stories about how she killed the dragon after fighting off it\'s endless minions, dodging the mountains various traps.  The fact she gets better as she does this is in the background, it\'s the feat of killing the big bad boss and knicking his treasure that you really care about =3

If you really want to go whacking the psychology stuff you\'ll find that people have 4 primary elements in what they look for in a game, and these levels differ from person to person.  They are...

- Challenge
- Curiousity
- Fantasy
- Control

based off what I enjoy it pretty much reads that I have high levels of curiosity and fantasy medium levels of control and pretty low levels of challenge
Guys in general tend to have higher levels of Challenge, that\'s where most of these games are aimed, especially with this levelling crud ><

anyways... there\'s a point buried in this post somewhere, I\'ve just went and lost it ^^;

actually me and some friends used to play Dungeons and Dragons without dice or paper, we\'d just leave it up to the GM to work out if things worked/hit or not.
Made for some exciting adventures, though the reason we use dice-like systems and stuff in PC games is because it\'s kinda hard to make a AI GM with good judgement for thousands of players at once.
That and some people are so tied up in their stats, the idea of just playing for a sense of adventure and fun almost seems long lost

bleh... people are always after a silly safety net

in RO or PSO you can\'t really tell if you\'re ready for something or not unless you try and fight it or go look at a fansite. where\'s your sense of adventure?

other clues could be put in via sound, graphics and music.  your character could take up a slightly less certain stance if the monster\'s a bit too much for you, the model could be scaled up a little bit to make it look bigger and meaner and you could drop the light a little to make it seem darker ^^
If you were subtle enough with those kinds of effects then people would pick up on them without thinking, and before someone starts being silly I\'m talking about small changes, almost barely percievable not a storm while your character quivers and the rat grows to 2000 times it\'s size.

of course being silly is half of what forum arguements seem to be about; if you\'re smacking rats about easily then it\'s a pretty good clue that they\'re not quite challenging you but it\'s not like it\'s a world of rats and dragons is it?  what kind of fantasy world would that be? =P
there would be a wealth of creatures to test your skill on between a rat and a dragon and by using the advice and experience of others (remember the social part of MMO? ) you can pretty much work out what\'s good for you to tangle with =D

and what\'s with RPGs always being about fighting 24/7?  It\'s taken long enough for people to realise that merchants and healers might be a good idea, I hate to see how long before it takes before imaginations pick up enough for other types of RPG career on a more widespread scale like entertainers and other non-combat roles that are fun or challenging without being boring :rolleyes:

I thought I\'d try MU online for a giggle but my client\'s in korean... is there an english one or is it time for me to start breaking out the korean dictionary?

lol, that only really works if you\'re silly enough to generalise people =3

I\'ve met lots more annoying high-level jerks than new people, but I don\'t assume most high-level people are bakas

it\'s just a case of taking each person as they come instead of slapping a label on a whole group of people

why the heck\'s everyone stuck on using normal creatures or standard fantasy stereotypes all the time?  ?(

one of the great things about something like Ragnarok Online is that you spend half the time shouting \'What the hell is that???\' as little smiling pink blobs, ghosts with rotating faces, ghost blobs, angellic blobs, living cards and all kinds of crazy things run about the place ^^

nobody is going to be embarrased about being killed by a Gioearth because most people don\'t even know what the heck one is lol

it\'s fantasy, try using a little imagination ^~

waii! life is good ^^

I never did get classes, after all you often see super-cool magic casters who are reasonably efficient with a sword or other weapon or a blade wielder capable of some magic and stuff in stories, so why not in games for once?

*gives the planeshift team some cookies*

classes? awwww... and there was me looking forward to playing something other than a silly class-based game =/