1.) Story.
The fate of people, not the fate of the world.
The world is to big to comprehend, the fate of your friends/group/party hits closer to home and come on people, lets have small brake or changes. You kill guy A, you need to go to guy B.
Expensive, yes, but if done right, this path can make it seem like there is tons of story modes, while keeping it cheep.
Branching linear storyline is how to go.
2.) Location.
Fantasy. I love fantasy...when it's done right. I'm not talking about just the generic magic/swords/magic green glowing forest/lava island. I'm talking about Glass Forests, Citys in the air, Mountins with REAL views or the land you traverse and BEYOND.
Ridges that are so tall you are above the clouds so you look down and you see clouds, beautiful white puffy clouds, lush green jungles with hills and mountains to climb and overlook and to feel like your an explorer from 1850's, polar regions with snowstorm you can get cought in and lost, savannas that go further than the eye can see with no end at all knowing somewhere there is some small town that has yet to be discovered in the game, real tropical islands with real beaches and clear water like you would see on an advertising commercial, and other unnatural sea like materials (metal that glistens in the sun...). Deserts where you feel out in the wild under the stars, alone, not knowing where your path takes you, cliffs with huge cities built into them, ruins that ascend into the sky, cities or fire (yes, the burning kind, like in the earth, and it all burns with a real looking flame). Sci-Fi themed areas that are just mind blowing awesome.
You know area's that make you stop and say "no way..." or "beautiful..." and take your breath away! It's not an RPG if you can't escape the real world for a bit into something much grander. It needs to be fun to explore, and exciting, interesting. Where it makes you WANT to explore the world. It has to be a huge one, one so big you feel like your exploring unexplored area.
3.) Weather
Weather is important. It could be area based, world based. It could be run on an clock, randomly, so that at 10:00 am it could be sunny, but by 2:00 pm it could storming and tornado's. It would all be random based for random time. All weather conditions: sandstorms, blizzards, rain, tornado's, hurricanes, floods that could block paths, along with possible some dangerous conditions such as hail, which could cause certain conditions, or heat wave that causes certain conditions. The reward for times where conditions are extreme could be better drops. You think of it, it would be done, even some for the area’s the game makes up, like a metal sea, Sci-Fi world stuff.
While the certain conditions weather would be much harder to implement, the others can no problem. Random weather can run on a random clock. Not to hard to put into practice.
Night/day. Enough said with that.
4.) Weapons
Weapons, everyone loves weapons. Brake free from the basic MMO's by getting intersting, what about primitive guns, whips, objects to be thrown, crossbows, make stuff up, be creative, spread your wings and brake some ground. I don't think anyone will mind an MMO that has a fantasy alternate world, and primitive guns with that.
5.) Grinding
I'll be blunt:
Worse.
Idea.
Ever.
I think it was incorporated just to make gamers angry. No one likes doing the same thing 50 times just to get 1/100th of what you need to do. Throwing grinding out we all got to admit that being level 100 just sounds cool, even level 300, or even 500.
Get rid of grinding. Yes, there needs to be some kind of way to prevent super leveling, but what about hard quests. Guild Wars does a great job with quests, it's 'go to point a, then to point b, then back to a, then back to b, then to c, then to d, then to a and so on.' That's grinding. Maybe do some quests, you some monsters you can kill to gain items to turn in for XP. GW2 said they were gonna have some kind of system where you can group with someone and they can take you as a side kick or something and you can temporary gain near a level. Great Idea.
If you had some way to gain 12,000 XP from varrious bosses that varies in levels to gain large amount of XP, grinding would be cut greatly. Think about it. Need 900,000 XP to go from level 99-100, killing a boss that would drop an item that you could gain 50,000 would be a nice way to level up. You could regulate this to some extreme by saying it only dropped it for your character every 15-30 minutes or what ever. These items would have extra value as they can be sold and turned in only at a certain level to prevent mass leveling, and only done so every 15-30 minutes per item. Maybe some reward to leveling in increments of 50 or so would be nice. Some elite attack move or something.
Being level 700 sounds sick and when you arn't always grinding the same area/quest/boss (because each vary in level and location) all the time.
I think it would all be cool to say we slayed a level 1000 monster by our self.
6.) Equipable items
Items would be on your character. Armor, tatoo's, weapons. Maybe if your in combat for a long time, your armor could show wear and tear. Maybe just as a graphics choice. It would return when you talk to an armor trader or so that way you can return to a town and just make it so it appears to be held togeather with just the seams. Also having them show up in cutsceans would be awesome. If someone decks out their character to a ridiculous degree, shouldn't they see them that way in a cutscean. Guild Wars hit this spot on!
7.) 2 Options on worlds
Sometime meeting friends at a certain location outside a town is the way to go, maybe for a healer, a tank, support, or to have someone already busy to join you later. A mass open world causes it's own problems too. Some things more so than other. Such as effects within the world. Environmental changes in geography being one. You can make some epic things happen with environmental changes.
A world generated for you and your team (like Guild Wars). This could be used for a more private party, no crowding in on monsters, environmental geography could happen for certain quests, where this would be the only action possible.
I once made an idea for how this could mesh perfectly into the game world, so it's possible, I just don't remember how.
8.) Risk/Rewards
To prevent elitists, if you take such a level character a certain percent lower, the chances of rare drops increase by a certain percent. This way it will be a gamble to take someone along with a lower level, but the risk/reward thing must pay off a good 75% or more to make it worth it.
9.) Skills
Magic and all is cool and fun. Attack skills too. But there is a lot of ground to be gained here in this field. There are many people would love to see something else revolutionary such as NPC control, where a risk/reward thingy would happen, such as losing control of your character to a computer controlled thingy with increased damage. Computer controlled for 10 or 15 seconds can get you killed, but if it can increase your skills by 25% it might be worth the risk. Maybe certain objects in the environment can be moved or used as weapons. In a cave and you got a stalactite on the ceiling, you cause it to fall on something. Maybe someone who can only use items, any, but some are only allowed to be used for that class.
10.) Customization
To be able to customize your character to a large set of preset options, as well as being able to recreate your character through the same presets. No one wants to loose their favorite character because you regret you made him/her bald.
11.) Dungeons
Dungeons that aren’t repetitive by using various traps/groups of enemies in various locations, the layout possibly changing, the look and style.
12.) Homes.
Custom housing: not just the typical building or small area, but you can grab some land and build. Not just on the ground, but in tree’s, underground, in cliffs, in caves, in the sky. You just find some ground/location anywhere you want in the massive world and choose an option to build and the game would tell you what you have to work with.
On trees you would need a support for a big room being a tree, maybe some bridges, some kind of pulley or ladder to get up.
In cliffs, you can have things that are both inside and suspended outside the cliffs.
These homes could store many things, and only your house would be visible to you unless you decided to let other people see it. The homes could store storage, bedroom, kitchen, den, garage (if you want to throw some kind of cool transportation in there), any thing you would want. You could have multiple houses.
To balance some of these things, each room you would add would cost you, but it wouldn’t be super expensive to fill a house with what you want where you want if the house had 6 rooms. A house idea done right would be fun.
13.) Trophies
If someone slays that level 400 monster by them self, shouldn’t they have a right to show it off as bragging rights? If someone did something extraordinary shouldn’t they have a right to show it off?
Trophies could be collectible items, armor, things in your house, titles, or anything else.
14.) Danger Area’s
Different from elite dungeons, these are area’s where the reward is huge, but the risk just as big. These area’s can hold random effects that are unknown until you enter, being either weather or some kind conditioning. Paths can change, limited visability, and monsters can range range 100’s of levels above what the warning says. The only way out is to exit through another exit or to finish it. Logging off could prove fatal as it would not log you out for a certain time afterwards. Elite dungeons would be the same thing, same level monsters, same quests. Danger area’s would vary in all things except overall theme of the location.
I think these would brake the MMORPG build, and still be different and fun.