Nice concept, and I think Gods sounds cool…sign me up for beta testing 
I think the idea of a command structure works well, encouraging more experienced players to help noobs rather than find them an annoyance.
Also…how cool would levelling up be if you get a medal on your avatar, and are then issued noobs to command.
The problem with -that- idea is that “newbs” HATE FOLLOWING ORDERS. Will they take a quest from an NPC? Sure, because they can do it, not do it, whatever. If you tell them “go here and do this” they’ll blow you off, because who says you know better than them? They’re here to have fun, not listen to some loser who thinks he knows everything 'cause he’s been playing for longer!
Maybe if you baited them with XP/ingame rewards for following orders, but then, what’s stopping the ‘C.O.’ from issuing really easy orders so people collect tons of rewards?
Players. Just can’t trust 'em to work with your ideas.
Except that, in WW2 Online, they have absolutely no problem doing exactly that. I also remember becoming a rather respected flight leader in the old Air Warrior, and most of my team there had no problem with me telling them to bomb this, or defend that (I did get one hate mail over it tho, from some newb who wasn’t aware of the context). Remember, the concept is Darwinian, survival of the fittest. If you aren’t a team player, the team has no use for you (at which point you become a free agent/rogue, for which there is room in my above model).
Well, the implication behind my idea is that the more mature types would gravitate towards such a model, just as they have in WW2OL. Probably a pipe dream, yes. 
WW2 Online is not exactly a successful game though. MMO developers aren’t shooting for 20-50k subscribers.
True, but with the right background to “suck” them in, I think something like this could work (which is why, in my idea, I based the world on the highest high fantasy I could draw on).
I dunno. Shadowbane is pretty close to what you’re describing, and it shut down a year ago. (And in any case it was a pretty tedious combination of meaningless capture-the-flag game and noob-griefing).
Planetside had a command hierarchy. It was kinda funny, actually, listening to the self-appointed commanders bitch each other out over the best strategy to take. But on the rare occasions when the horde of otherwise-contrarians players all got together and committed themselves toward a unified goal, the results were spectacular.
Exactly!
Can you find people who want to/are willing to play this kind of game and be smart about it? Sure. Can you find a few million willing to pay for the opportunity? Survey says…no.
you don’t need the goons to be smart, you just need to feed them more immediate rewards than winning.
More precisely, you need to give them a reason to want to follow orders. More often than not, games reward players based on kills, and so many people throw all concern for strategy out the window in favor of racking up kills. That creates an incentive for a meat grinder, not an organized battle.
has there been any good attempts to correct that? WoW tried to encourage defending by awarding buffs to players who stick around flags, i’m not sure how well that works. similarly, we might perhaps give commanders deployable “buff flags” to encourage people to stick around an area?
A new version was just released yesterday and Steam has it 40% off until the 27th.
Close. They were saved by Atari.
To find a few million to play any MMO is getting very tough: there are a huge number of them out there with little difference between them.
So it’s not a case of whether developers can afford to put more inventive mechanics / objectives in their MMO concepts, it’s whether they can afford not to 
There’s a rather odd virtual world called the Endless Forest that I’ve noticed a time or two. You play magic, sort-of-human-faced deerlike creatures that…hang out in a forest. And sometimes do a little magic stuff. I think there are a few mini-game type activities, but no combat at all. Communication is all non-verbal, as I understand it.
It sounds pretty boring to me, but it might be worth looking at. It’s free, even to register (which allows you to name your deer with a pictogram and gives you a few extra perks).
Having brought up Endless Forest, I figured it behooved me to at least load it and look at it. Having now done so…
Never mind.
(It’s severely glitchy and not at all pretty, in addition to being boring.)
I will forgive you for being “behooved” to try something where you play a deer. This time.
Double honor for defending in the vicinity of an objective. It doesn’t work – simply because defending an objective that isn’t being attacked, or is attacked only seldomly, is still boring regardless of the reward. People care about fun more than winning the objectives. If they have more fun losing the objectives (aka meat grinding), then your team loses and nobody cares!
I’ve been out of the loop for 3-4 years, so the following may or may not apply to the present day…
There’s A Tale in the Desert, famous for its experimental non-combat-based gameplay when it came out years ago.
In terms of High Fantasy, EverQuest II and Vanguard both had complex (for their time) crafting systems and both are now playable on a combined Station Access pass. I believe both games separate your crafting level from your combat level altogether, so you can focus exclusively on crafting if that’s what you enjoy. Note that it’s every bit the grind that combat is, minus the visual and exploratory excitement; you’re stuck by a forge/loom/whatever all day clicking dialog boxes.
The same pass also lets you play Star Wars Galaxies and Pirates of the Burning Sea, both of which may have some type of crafting, but I don’t play either so I don’t know.
If you’re willing to try non-fantasy games, Eve Online is probably the most political/social of MMOs out there, and it takes mining/salvaging/crafting/espionage/trading/political intrigue to whole new levels.
Second Life is the most famous “virtual world” type game, different because it’s just one giant sandbox populated, coded, and run by its players; every player can design and make their own objects/areas/interactions/games, resulting in a world filled with everything from shooting mini-games to rampant sex arenas.
The thing about ATitD (which seems to still be active) is that it is very far from evocative/immersive - it looks like a crowded industrial park from all the blocky-looking player-made structures all over the place.
Have you seen Love? I don’t know much about it, but it’s intriguing, and definitely not your usual mmo.