I have no idea why the hell pay-to-play mmorpgs have menial tasks in them..... actually I do. They are designed to waste time and to them, time = money.
To the designers, please refrain from using these tried-and-boring-as-hell formulas, and invent fun gameplay. You don\'t necessarily have a deadline, so why not focus more on gameplay rather than time-wasting online cooking? It\'s not like time = money in a mmorpg that\'s meant to be free.
Here\'s what I really hate:
mining, fishing, cooking, digging useless holes, farming, wood cutting, weaving, sewing, shearing sheep wool, collecting chicken eggs, washing clothes, and more.
Rather than have these ulimately boring activities that one can probably do for hours by holding a keyboard button for hours, here is my suggestion.
It\'s always better to focus on designing/developping one really fun element of a game rather than many mediocre elements. That\'s why my suggestion is to scrap all of this nonsense and concentrate on purely fighting, magic, and social skills.
Fighting: This focuses on fighting skills. You basically improve fighting skills by leveling. By joining a particular guild you can improve the level of some particular skills. For example, joining an assassins guild will give a +20 skill boost to martial arts.
Magic: Ditto... applies to skills catagorized in Magic.
Social: Ditto... applies to skills catagorized in Social. These can be like bartering skills, enemy standing (an enemy town might not be hostile to you if enemy standing is high), and so on. Perhaps you can even have elections for player mayors.
Once you have fighting, magic, social skills polished, fun, and addictive, you can add in the rest. I know I\'m not gonna sit for hours improving my fishing skills... I play games to escape that kind of monotomy.
