Complete lack of any AI for the monsters

[Brother Laz]

There is a certain 'ruleset' that is used in all MMORPGs as a matter of fact.

· Hit points? Resistances? Damage reduction from armor? It is not very realistic that an elf and a rock golem hit each other 20 times until the rock golem drops dead. In real medieval melee combat, people wore armor to deflect incoming hits, and if a hit wasn't deflected, it was usually crippling or fatal. But in a game environment, this would translate into Russian roulette, so someone in the '70s came up with a hit point system and everyone copied it due to lack of a better alternative.

· Damage ratings? Arthas' magically enchanted doom sword would be exactly as deadly as a normal one. Either would maim or kill a person in one hit.

Perhaps the enchanted sword would be more effective on things that are large enough to shrug off normal swords, such as dragons, or invulnerable to them to begin with, such as golems. But against most normal critters and people, it would make no difference.

· Healing? If you get bashed upside the head with a mace and don't die instantly, chances are your head and helm are a mess. Apparently, healing spells can repair armor, remove arrows and shrapnel and reattach limbs that have been cut off and fallen into a lava pool...?

· The whole magic item system. Aside from the fact that furbolgs typically don't carry robes and flayer shamans don't carry crossbows, the concept of magical items is flawed from a realism standpoint. Why does a tiny ring have the same enchantments as a set of full plate? What happens to an enchantment on a bow when you replace the bowstring? How can you even repair enchanted items without breaking them? Etc.

· Magic. Even in a low magic world like Sanctuary, it doesn't take a genius or twenty years of study to cast a two second spell. D&D attempts to explain this with the whole precasting thing, which results in perhaps the most stilted gameplay ever when translated to a computer game. The Force approach only works in high magic worlds, and does not explain the rigid classes such as druid, shaman, warlock, mage.

· Buffs and curses. What happens when you MotW something and it loses a limb? Does the limb still have MotW? Then I think I'll use one as a weapon, with bloodlust and MotW cast on it. If not, then a good way to get rid of a deadly curse is by cutting off a fingernail.

· The lone hero concept. If there is a demon hiding in an underground labyrinth and threatening to take over the world, why go in alone instead of with a few dozen ninja wizards by your side? Or why do you fight Onyxia with 40 people instead of 4000?

· Lesser monsters first. If Diablo was serious, he'd send all of his balrogs and oblivion knights at the hero who killed Andariel, not wait until he kills Duriel and Mephisto too.

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Bad AI doesn't really make it any more unrealistic...

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[Edit: there *IS* a 3D game with randomly generated levels under development right now. It is called Hellgate London, made by a team of ex-D2 programmers with about one tenth the manpower of Blizzard, and is basically a first/third person 3D version of D2 in the near future]