DISCLAIMBER
Whatever I’m going to say next, is just a fun thought I had when bored, it’s just a fan concept of “What If”.
Yes, this whole post and thing that will be mentioned below do look distantly similar to upcoming Kingdom/Town alignment, I’m just taking that to a new level
World of Magic was a fun game while it lasted, sure, it wouldn’t work due to how it was made (story and overall game design), but it became what we now know as Arcane Odyssey.
But what we did lost with transition from WOM to AO are roleplay branch of the community. Don’t get me wrong, they still exist, but not in the amounts that existed in WOM ages. But why’s that?
Where are RP players?
RP or roleplay, currently comes in forms of OC’s (Original Characters), simply speaking our files. We can customize our file’s appearance, name, magic, class and etc. But if you think about it, in WOM we had less customization, specifically in vanity, hair and something that did not exist before – Classes. Yet…Somehow…there were subjectively speaking, MORE role players than there’s now in AO. So, why’s that?
Main reason, from my point of view, is that WOM was RPG game, as Vetex stated, no story was planned for WOM, it was just you getting stronger and playing in open world with different cultural events and etc. While AO is linear story game, where we are no one from nowhere and have to fight purple guys.
Can there be a roleplay in AO?
Anywhere with any degree customization RP can exist, its just that comparing to WOM, AO player base have much less RPers then before. Anyone who played WOM can easily remember the “hero” role players, where they would attack any negative-reputation player in “sake of judgment”.
In AO, I personally, saw roleplay only during fishing sessions or in specialized servers / forum roleplay writing category.
.
.
But recently I got an interesting idea…Imagine AO, but with WOM game design.
Arcane Odyssey but with World of Magic game design.
Before diving in, lets clarify some things first. What is “World of Magic game design”, by WOM game design I mean following:
No linear storyline;
Each character having their own Culture (Kingdom in AO case)
Fully randomized quests.
From now on I will refer to “Arcane Odyssey but with World of Magic game design” as just “Warring Seas”, It will be a kind of name of that “game”.
Now that we cleared it up, lets dive in…
How will it work?
1. Cultures and Names
While in WOM we were RANDOMLY given 2nd name based on our culture which was also randomly chosen for us, in “Warring Seas” we will be able to choose our own Kingdom that we want to spawn in, our hometown, and surname based on the culture/town.
Let’s say I’m creating a new file – Blondie guy with water magic. I have a choice between 2 currently added Kingdoms – Ravenna or Sameria. I choose Ravenna, then, I can choose between my hometowns – Frostmill Town, Monoah Village, Rasna, Rubica, Tiberia. Let’s pick capital town of Ravenna – Rubica. And so, I see following.
You awaken in your hometown, the capital of Ravenna Realm – Rubica. You are young, and have recently discovered that you can use magic…
Cool, now we have our Adrian Bronze, level 1 blondie with water magic, basic combat and simple dagger. What do we do now?
2. We all love Quests.
Here starts the good old and by some hated mechanic of quests. We have a Rubica at our hands, we can go travel to Rasna or Tiberia, but not to other islands because we don’t have sailboat or even rowboat. What do we do? Quests of course!
We run around the town or island and complete randomly spawning quests of NPCs, whether they are dynamic or not, and just like in Kingdom Alignment trello card, we can either be a hero or a villain.
Complete quests, help people with simple fetching quests or even some bandit cleaning – get some pocket money and get fame or local hero.
Steal from private storages, fight positive NPCs outside the town walls – get money and become criminal, and don’t get caught by stationary guards.
Okay now, we got some basic equipment – armor, better weapons, sailboat, invested some of our stats into what we need (no locks), and we are ready to gets sail. But before we do, lets stay over Rubica to talk about…
3. Joinable factions.
Just like in current AO, where we can join AS or GN, in our “Warring Seas” we will be able to:
Join army of your own kingdom (e.g. Bronze Legion);
Join different kingdom (If you have high reputation of that certain kingdom);
Join bandit gangs (Similar to those WOM bandit groups)
Join Clans, GN, AS.
Joining an army would be very similar to current GN or AS system. Whenever you join army your fame stays, but you also get a different ‘clan bar’, and while doing special Army tasks (which give more ‘army fame’) or regular positive quests, you get fame and ‘army fame’ to respective bars.
Army tasks could be pretty much anything:
Go to X location and clear out Pirate blockade for merchants.
There’s high criminal activity on X island, go hunt criminals down.
Escort high valuable cargo from X to Y.
X island is currently being attacked by a different kingdom, stationary ensigns need help. Cassia Town quest.
Being in Bronze Legion will make you wear clothing of your certain rank: Ensign, Legioner, Centurion, Captain, General etc. And each rank will have its own requirement similar to leaderboard. The only perks I can imagine for now is ship repairment and salary depending on rank.
3. Open Sea.
Now that we are more or less done with Ravenna, our level 57 Adrian Bronze gets on his newly bought sailboat, and starts his sailing in the Bronze Sea.
Seas in this theoretical “Warring Sea” is not much different from AO’s. You have your islands, castaways, marine creatures, NPC ships etc.
What I would suggest is to create more weather for open seas, and maybe add some sea events:
Merchant ship was sunk, and now sharks are circling around the shipwreck, kill sharks and rescue castaways.
There’s high bounty ship sailing around, go sink the ship and arrest them.
Etc.
4. Player activities.
What the fun playing RPG game if all you can do is fight, right? So lets finally add Auctioneer house and player professions. At first I thought of making buyable buildings for shops, but while it could be a cool feature, I think auctioneer houses would do the trick, so instead, we could more active professions.
Lets say alchemist instead of just buying ingredients, brewing potion and maybe enchanting items, had to actively go to Dark Sea for rare reagents, and they would be the only ones who are able to actually use enchanting scrolls, as any other person had 33% of it working like a randomized enchantment.
Someone like tailor could have a “stands” on his boat, so people could buy stuff from there.
5. Classes and builds.
I’m going to be honest, I don’t really enjoy class locks in AO, that is why I love playing savant, even though they are not that good right now. So why not just get rid of them in “Warring Seas”? A mage with 2 magics, blast shapes, old weapons and crash. Or Warrior with imbued cannon fist onto Ravenna Great sword and Great axe.
6. Other stuff.
Some other stuff that I forgot to mention:
War between kingdoms similar to that one idea from WOM where cultures would siege one another;
Kingdoms being able to claim islands and build towns or outpost on them for players to spawn on them. (Town – starting players; Outposts – army players.);
Moderators actually being some higher-ups in kingdom (Imagine Mimhere as Julian);
Spawning at the last seen location like in WOM;
Dark Sea actually changing your character either permanently, or until high tier healing is used.
Conclusion
I know that whole idea of AO with WOM game design is silly, but I kinda am a RP person, who comes up with lore for all of my randomized files. So, I just wanted to have place to finally write it down somewhere in order to forget about it, lol.
Throw tomatoes if you want, but I will still wait for Kingdom/Town Alignment to be what I imagined it in my head and then get disappointed 
Joke ^
