How to create a Living MMO World full of Adventure

Gradually increasing the difficulty the further away from cities and roads

To allow lower-level players to traverse zones without being killed by every enemy, we have to create sort of a 'safe-zone around roads and cities, in which these heroes can play and encounter lower-level enemies.

As the enemies move further away from those cities, the difficulty should ramp up, forcing players to move back into the zones they are best suited for or gather a group to push forward together.

This would require the zones to be bigger/wieder than current MMO game zones.
This would help group players of similar levels (since they can't advance further alone).
And would help us create quests in those areas suitable for heroes of a certain power.

Players being hunted

To make heroes feel like they are on an adventure, we need zones to have higher-level enemies that can notice, track and hunt down players in zones.

Examples:

• Players hunting goblins must fear getting spotted by orcs or Trolls. And once they are being tracked, they need to get back to safety before getting killed;
• Players in a dungeon could fear setting off an alarm;
• Wolves and other packs of animals;
• Border patrols and similar patrols;
• etc

This sense of dread and urgency would give players much better immersion into the game.

Multi-level quests to promote cross-level gameplay

Allow for dynamic quests that include heroes of different levels.

Examples:

• When a higher-level (solo) hero meets lower-level groups, it could trigger events in which they are ambushed and have to support each other to survive;

Enemy type should define it's strength (not the zone it is in)

This is a common mistake in multiple games. Game creators don't want to make players fight against "boring" enemies like rats, so they introduce cooler enemies right at the start.
The problem with this, is that players often end up fighting the same enemies multiple times across the game, the only different being a higher lvl attached to the enemy.

It looks a bit dumb when one wolf is level 5, and another wold that looks exactly the same is level 50.
Of course, there is sometimes because assets are being reused, but in those cases the weaker enemy should be at least smaller and/or have a different color or shading.

Easy rules:

• Give each enemy type the power it's asset, Lore and size deserves.
• Avoid having low level demons, or wolves at the same level as dragons.
• If you have to reuse assets, make the weaker enemies smaller. A lvl 5 wolf can be smaller than a lvl 50 wolf.
• Don't use scary looking assets for low level enemies.
• Legendary enemies like Dragons, Trolls, Demons, Beholders, etc should always be powerful, enough to not become a joke for players.
• Legendary enemies should not be standing around doing nothing, waiting to get killed. Give them a grand entrance.

Allow Players to get Lost

Sometimes it is good to have a map, other times it isn't.

I think there should be areas in the game where the map becomes unusable:

• A dar forest.
• A dungeon built like a labyrinth.

However, when implementing systems like that, it is important to copy design elements from Roguelike games:

• You want every visit to the location to feel different, but you don't want to punish players fo picking the wrong route: avoid dead ends, make sure every path leads to an objective and give every path a way out.
• Find ways of shuffling the map around from time to time, to avoid players learning the location by heart. This can be done easier in forests, in which trees and vegetation can switch locations, creating different paths on every visit.
• Make sure to adopt the difficulty to the players in it. If there are 2 different groups in a dungeon, and they meet up, be sure to, instead of punishing them for competing for loot, rewarding them with a special encounter that they wouldn't be able to beat alone.

Adding these mysterious areas can greatly help to keep the game fresh and not repetitive.

Player driven quests.

Instead of filler quests with boring stories, allow players who are looking for resources to post "looking for" quests. These quests can then be picked up by lower level players in the auction-house (adventurer's guild).

See: Healthy Economy in MMO-RPGs: Professions, Auction House and Questing

Don't divide zones by Level/Progression

Zones should be relevant for any player of any level of progression. But at the same time, there should be safer areas, so that low level players don't run into overpowered enemies by accident.
The solution to this is to have bigger zones than in current MMO's, and to have the difficulty of the challenges increase relative to the distance to cities and roads:

• low-level enemies close to cities,
• medium-level enemies close to roads/towns,
• high-level enemies further away from cities and roads.

The Seesaw Method for zone building

Create zones in a way that the difficulty (and rewards) vary over time.

• In each zone, have 2 separate factions of NPC's that are at war. For example: Orcs cutting wood Vs. Dryards protecting the forest.
• Allow players to solve quests for either faction depending on their race, alignment and reputation #tags. See:Player-driven Reputation System: How and why.
• The faction that progresses more, gradually becomes stronger, spawning more NPC's, rewards, shops or even buildings.
• The losing faction gets smaller and smaller, until it hits it's limit.
• After hitting the limit, the losing faction will take some drastic measure to fight back, turning the losing faction temporarily into raid content. For example: Dryads losing their forest use forbidden magic to protect it, and end up corrupting the forest. They then take over the whole zone, creating content for the players.
• Once the players "beat" that content, balance is restored to the zone, and now again the player's actions will decide which side will evolve and which side will lose and end up becoming raid content.

Like a sesaw: One side goes up, the other side goes down, and then it flips.