Pick an MMO that you have not played before. They almost always have some form of free trial for a week or two, download it and make your account. Once you've got it, play it. Forget that you have an assignment and have fun with it, or try to at least. Spend a few quality hours with your new game, maybe even a whole day or two. After you've gotten over the initial rush, take a step back and do the following....
You have just been named Executive Producer of the game you just tried, effective tomorrow. From this position, you are able to affect basically any change you desire upon the game. Think carefully about your experience and what you think could have been done better, bugs that should be fixed, or things that are outright misleading. Remember that your experience with a game starts from the moment you click download. Installation is part of the process too. Having done that, write down the changes you intend to make to the game and WHY. The why is the important part here.
Start first by stating if you even liked the game, you might not have.
What are your initial impressions of the game? Is it solid as is? Or are you glad you can clean this crap up?
Now list your changes and the reasoning behind them. Try to make your argument sound. And these can be any changes from class balance, to remorking the user interface. Hit up whatever you think needs work.
And now, for my example. I used Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) for mine.
It took me a long time, a month, to decide that I do enjoy DDO. This was possible because the trial is unlimited in play and expanse, you can go anywhere. However, you are more limited and it takes more effort to do things than those who pay, but much less than most trials. DDO is good as a casual game, lots can be done in a relatively short amount of time. I did eventually sign up for DDO full time. Despite all this however, there is a reason they have a unlimited FREE trial....
My changes begin outside the game itself, with the installer. It makes nothing in the start menu, no desktop shortcut, and no quicklaunch. I have to turn it on by going through the Windows Explorer and Program Files. It leaves an icon in the system tray from which I can launch it(finally). Their tiered download, downloads it in smaller pieces, fixes the desktop shortcut and start menu problems but has its own issues. It takes as long to download the first chunk as the entire game via the regular download. And then, you only have about two hours worth of content avaliable. It will take ANOTHER four hour download to grab the rest. Part of the download is due to their servers I'm sure, but the installer needs cleaning up. It had me annoyed before I got to play the first time. Also, after you close the game, it leaves a window open that is not displayed. Clicking on the window in the Windows Bar brings up a graphic of a rolling d20... for three seconds. Then it closes and brings up the launcher. I don't understand the purpose of this, there is still the icon in the system tray, I find this pointless and annoying, so I would remove it. The installer would have to offer shortcuts on the desktop and start menu. Lastly before I get to the game, the launcher is quite ugly and uninformative. As it completes the log in steps, it blinks and flashes with each step. I would give it a makeover, and redo the process so that the window is not redrawn with each step.
Once you've made your character and are actually playing, we get to the fun stuff. Player movement feels stiff at first, and strafing left and right are mapped to f and g by default, defying an industry standard. I would remap those defaults. The movement would get smoother if the character didn't stop dead still the second you stopped pushing a direction, and the turning left and right feels awkward because they prefer to turn slowly in place and very quickly while moving. Takes some getting used to. The running animation could also be less jerky to improve this as well.
Next up is the user interface. The UI as a whole is ok, but there are some specific issues. The chat window seems to be fixed in size. I wouldn't mind that too much if it were bigger. You can only see three lines of text, which is a problem when the games Dungeon Master spits out 7 lines worth of explination every minute or so. Also, "(General) Soandso: Lvl 2 Monk lfg" alone would take up a full line. Add to that, that general chat works even when you are out of town or in an instance, and your chat log will fly by so fast you can't read any of it. But that's ok, they put in an extra tab for group only chat, guild chat, and combat text. However, not only does that mean you silence all other forms of communcation, though you can talk to them but not hear them, but the window is no narrow that half of the fourth tab's name is cut off, "General, Party, Guild, Com". This just looks sloppy. Make it bigger by default, at least enough to fit all your tabs on it, and let the player resize it.
Next in UI is the character sheet. This handy window combines your character sheet, feat list, spell list (even if you don't cast spells), autobiography, enhancements, and skills. There are so many tabs, it takes a good five minutes to find what you want each time. Split it up guys. Now that I've mentioned the feats list, let me tell you about filtering. You can filter to have only active, passive, or both types of feats shown. Fine. You can also show class specific feats, on or off. Fine. But why can I turn on feats... that I don't have? I can see this being useful when leveling up, as you can check the prereques for a feat to make sure you are going to be able to get it. But why can I do that when I'm standing around picking my nose? More importantly, why is that set to On by default? And finally, why do you flash "Please Wait..." for a second and redraw the window EVERY time I turn it off? The same is true when you're looking at your enchancements. I'd want that fixed so it doesn't make me wait, and that "Unavaliable Feats" are off by default.
Lastly, where are druids? Why are they left out? Did one pee in the Lead Designers corn flakes this morning? If they're going to include classes which are not in the standard Player's Handbook list (Favored Souls in this case) then they should first include all the ones that are there. This game is set in the Eberron campaign setting, which I am unfamilar with and may not include druids. However, this seems unlikely given that ranger ARE present in the game.
I could go on, but I think that's enough for you to swallow for now. You've all got your homework now, get to it!
Please see me after class....
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