i think that everyone should start out as the same kind of paramecia, a type of protozoan slime, with the potential to become anything. Players start out in a small pool, secluded from the world ocean. they float about with their cilia, talking, metabolizing, doing various little things to get the hang of things, gaining a few levels. (this could possibly be a tutorial area, explaining things for the noobs.) After a few levels, they get the option to sprout either fins, (fish) or to sprout tentacles (octopi or jellyfish). these larger creatures must then leave the tidal pool and go into a larger pool with more little fish-things. In this pool, little bits of plankton and seaweed float about, which you must eat to survive. eating only plankton will evolve you into a carnivore, eating only seaweed will evolve you into a herbivore, eating both will evolve you into a omnivore. Again this is just a learning area where you talk and level up, and begin your journy to the mature creature you want to become. You leave this pool, and enter a somewhat large undersea cave, with openings large enough for small creatures, but preventing the larger oldbies from coming in and doing some noob killing. In this cave, you begin to prey on small creatures, (for carnivores, of course) possibly small NPC fish, or krill or shrimp. omnivores still eat seaweed obviously. Also, monsters also exhist in this cave, so players can get battle experience. Leveling up here gives you the option to develop \"magical\" skills, such as electricity, or poison. also things like speed, manuverability, camoflauge, and intelegence can be evolved. after a few more levels, you are released from the cave, lest you grow to big and get stuck. You are now in the open ocean. To survive here, you must band together with your own kind, as the streangths you developed in the cave are your only defense from predators. Electrical fish, for instance, protect themselves because their combined electrical charge is enough to kill larger fish. but in order to find food, you must break away from the group, and make yourself vulnerable. Your food is still NPC. As you continue to grow, you must begin to break away from the large schools, and form smaller schools. This will make finding food easier, and also because there will now be fewer of your \"species\" due to seperate evolutionary paths. also, you may now begin feeding on straglers in player schools. (maybe to promote this, eating player characters give you experience.) at this time, you may also begin to develop imunities, so that you may now safely swim closer to the electrified schools, bettering your chances of getting food. or poison imunity so that you can eat poisonous fishies. More evolving, yada yada yada, then at some point, you have the choice to develop into an air breathing creature. You then can either stay in the ocean and develop as a whale or dolphin like creature, or you can even develop as a land creature, sprouting short stubby legs, becoming a lizard. if you want to continue being a fish, you can forego lungs, and develop into monsters of the deep, sharks, giant squid, or anything else we can think of. On land, you can develop further, eating smaller NPC lizards, snails, bugs, etc. more evolutions... Then you have another major fork. you can decide on becoming warm-blooded, and develop hair, or you can keep your lizard like properties, and continue twords the path of the ultimate dinosaur. Otherwise, you go onto the path of primates. (It shouldnt be possible to evolve into humans, more like uber gorillas, or somthing.) Anyway, thats my vision of such a game, and if you bothered to read the whole thing, thank you! of course, there would be traditional rpg elements, mainly quests. Im not sure how they could be implmented, maybe kill a mob of fish terrorizing other fish, or go find a rare turtle shell or somthing... If anybody else hase any ideas, share them!
