I was thinking about how they could do colors and one game that had a system like that that comes to mind is Quest 64. In that game you found spirits in the overworld that you would spend in one of the elemental categories: Air, Earth, Fire, Water. You would then get different spells based off your totals in each. You could adapt that to Magic pretty easily, changing elements to colors and having significant landmarks of the proper color give the proper color mana. Quest 64 even had a pretty decent semi-turn based tactical battle system.
In WoW there are starting zones for each choice of race, and there are something like 12 races...
Maybe they can have two "races" for each color, and these races can start from a smattering of planes. If the game started with 5 planes to explore, that would be pretty cool. More than that would be gravy.
I'd love to see a race / class / plane / color customization for your character, but I doubt we'll see such a fine gradient as a Zendikar merfolk vs. a Lorwyn merfolk, for example. If you want to be a merfolk, you'll come from X plane.
How combat ought to work:
In any combat situation, there are three broad things that matter: skills, equipment, and environment. In a typical MMO PvE situation, skills equate to button presses, equipment equates to stats, and environment is a series of small things like opportunities to LoS or skip combat altogether, proximity to other mobs, maybe a special interactable object, etc.
I don't think it has to be interpreted this way, though, and an MMO based on Magic really ought to do it differently because the focus is so different in a card game. What if the environment were where you got your button presses from? This makes a lot of sense in terms of Magic because it has a similarity to drawing cards: you enter combat and "cards" become revealed in the environment around you, and if you want to cast spells, you have to actively go and draw them. Your "equipment" would be, essentially, your deck: your way of manipulating the kinds of cards you're capable of finding while in combat. And your skills could be interpreted as your mana, or maybe your ability to develop mana while in combat.
Imagine if mana was developed by actively making connections with the land in your immediate vicinity. You enter combat with no such connections, and if you just stand still then you have to limit yourself to 1-mana things, but if you run around and interact with the environment, then you get access to more cards and more mana and can fight with more versatility. So sometimes you draw just cheap stuff and can be a turret, and other times you draw 7-drops and have to adapt by turning the fight into a running battle. And if you prefer one playstyle over the other, you can adjust your deck to affect the kind of cards you see in combat.
Trash combat would necessarily take a lot longer than the 5-8 seconds it takes in, say, WoW, so it would also be commensurately less common: quests would be to kill one monster, instead of 10, for example, and you wouldn't necessarily have to deal with random fights with wildlife, and killing off creatures during combat would only be necessary as part of a larger strategic objective. I can only see this as pure upside.
Okay, so I see a realistically possible implementation of MMO combat that would actually be kinda Magic-y, which I definitely didn't before. So color me interested enough to be disappointed when the actual combat system they use turns out to be utterly generic, which is still almost guaranteed. But hey, at least I'm interested now.
I would like an MMO in the style of TOR but with better quests and less stylized graphics, but I doubt it would happen since the budget would have to be MASSIVE.
However they do the mechanics of combat, what I really want to see is the customization be good:
1. Pick a species. Different species have different stats and maybe one or two unique traits or abilities--small things.
2. Pick a class: warrior/ranger/paladin type/mage etc. 3-6 options. These set your available spell trees.
3. Mana loyalty. For a given class, the balance of "loyalty points" or something adjusts the spell list available--a red heavy mage might have a lot of blaster spells, a green mage might get to summon big dudes, a green fighter might get huge steroids, a black ranger might get tons of on-hit debuffs.
This gives the feeling of "I am X" but with the option for player growth and evolution over time.
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[quote from="SultaiAscendancy »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/other-magic-products/mtg-mmo/777778-speculation-wishes-and-hopes-for-the-mmo?comment=11"]There are two possibilities for playable characters:
1. Almost all of the preexisting planeswalkers are playable characters. I think that the Marvel MMORPG has a similar system where players choose from preexisting characters. There would be enough playable planeswalkers that you wouldn’t run into duplicates too often. A few planeswalkers might have to be excluded for being much bigger and more powerful than most other planeswalkers (Bolas, Garruk, Karn, Ugin) or being dead (Elspeth, Freyalise, Teferi, Venser, Xenagos). They also might want to reserve some or all antagonistic planeswalkers to be used as bosses. But overall this is a very practical and reasonable choice, albeit a bit uninteresting in my opinion.
If they did it this way they would be to limited in the number of planeswalkers there are. They are going to have to set this after the mending otherwise the planeswalkers are going to be to powerful, and for all there are a lot of planeswalker cards there aren't that many planeswalkers currently only 35 so there it would be likely that you are likely to run across a lot of people using the same walkers especially if there is a tiering mechanic that limits when you get access to the different planeswalkers which would allow you to put in the slightly more powerful walkers.
I do not see Cryptic doing it this way either, as their games are geared towards allowing the player to make their own characters.
2. You play as a custom-built planeswalker for which you can choose your race, class, and perhaps plane origin. Maybe you even start out your home plane for a while before your spark ignites and you gain access to other planes. This would be perfect given the premise of the game (“you are a planeswalker”) and many players’ tendencies to come up with “fanwalkers” as a result. However, this would be much more difficult to implement. There are a huge number of races and types of magic; it would be almost impossible to put all of them into game, and people would be disappointed by the exclusions. Having different players start out on different worlds would make matters even worse. It isn’t impossible to have races start out in different areas (WoW does it) but it would still be problematic in many ways. I think that this is less likely than them using existing planeswalkers, but it would be really cool if they did it.
If they were able to transfer the Elder Scrolls levelling mechanics up to a MMORPG it could work. Give the player some choices around Species, world and initial color specialization then allow how the player acts work out the sort of abilities they have with skills centered around both spell casting and the more physical abilities. Whilst we haven't seen it that much in the story there should still be some scope for characters that rely on the more physical skills like close combat, stealth and archery.
Until we know more, we can only speculate as to what the gameplay will be like. Cryptic though does like to have combat in their games though so I imagine the planeswalkers using a lot of spells and depending on if they focus in with the fact that certain planeswalkers use weapons too, swords, staves, etc.
It will be interesting to see how they implement planeswalking. It should make it easy to get between different areas, but I doubt that this will be a complete sandbox game so there will have to be some sort of order that you unlock planes in (the most obvious choice being Zendikar, Innistrad, Kaladesh, Amonkhet, Ixalan). I assume that when you die in combat you will planeswalk to another plane’s hub area. Perhaps one plane will be the main starting plane/hub area, but I would expect that every plane has both areas with enemies and areas without them. If they do use one plane as the starting plane/hub area, I would expect it to be either Dominaria, Ravnica, or Shandalar.
This seems like a sensible way to manage it and is similar to how Bioware handles a similar issues in Star Wars: The old Republic. Though as this is the company that is behind the Star Trek MMO any one know how they deal with travelling between the various planets? As for a starting plane, if they are forced to use an existng MTG plane rather than creating new ones Ravnica would probably be the better choice as it seems to be the current hub of the multiverse with Dominaria still recovering from the events of Time Spiral and Shandalar not really well known outside of the the long term MTG players.
I've played STO since it went free to play. The way they handle travel between planets is that the player gets a ship which doubles as their avatar for space. They have a special portion of the map called Sector Space which is an astrometrics grid of the places that exist in the game that players visit for quests (or missions as they're referred to). They could make a zone similar to this and call it the Blind Eternities and have us choose planes that we can visit from there.
Ravnica would be a good place to be since it's now established that the Gatewatch has established themselves on Ravnica.
Like what if instead it's just an mmorpg based on the wealth of lore and backstory from decades of MTG cards, with classes based on the different guilds or something?
Like what if instead it's just an mmorpg based on the wealth of lore and backstory from decades of MTG cards, with classes based on the different guilds or something?
We've already deduced that it won't be a card game based MMORPG. This studio likes letting players create their own characters and setting them loose in the game world that they built.
Strictly speaking WotC aren't developing the MTG MMO so I don't see how it is related to MTGO. I think the MMO will be about the lore / storyline / content, rather than to do with the card game itself.
Yes, but WotC maintain control of the IP and final product. That they believe MTGO is good enough when it accounts for 30-50% of their revenue is all I need to know about their quality control.
It would have five generalist classes (mono colors). At a certain level you can start leveling into another class for a more specialized role (guild colors).
Having played all of Cryptic's MMOs at one point or another I feel pretty certain that this game will probably play exactly like all the other Cryptic MMOs do because they are all basically the same game but with slightly different skins (and Star Trek Online has ships, but the ships really just behave like characters that can fly and constantly move forward). You will be able to make your own character. You'll probably be able to visit various planes for particular quests, but expect those to be limited to a small area or two each and a main hub world to be 75-90% of the game. The game will definitely be free to play and heavily reliant on its cash shop if you want to do anything. Cryptic is a company good at exactly one thing: Grinding out MMOs cheaply. At least, that's what it used to be known for back when MMOs were a thing. It's probably down to a skeleton crew by now so temper your expectations from there accordingly.
I just hope there's endgame, most MMORPGs I've played lately seem to focus a lot on the lvling experience and end-game ends up feeling empty and repetitive, or straight up lacking in comparison to WoW, heard great things about FFXV or w/e the number is, but haven't personally checked it out.
Hope the game is good enough most of my wow guild jumps ship, most of them play MTG and are, like me, quite a bit hyped about an mtg mmo.
I think a City of Heroes power pool system limited by archtype makes sense for a game like this. So if you can access red mana, you could choose a pool of fire powers or a pool of lightning powers and then as you level up you gain various powers from your selected pool, ie, you start with Shock and eventually get Lightning Bolt and other lightning related powers.
I also think you would be custom created planeswalkers and a starting zone on Ravnica could make sense. There is a lot of things you can do there that would get players into the game as part of a sprawling "Gatewatch" organization that saves planes from dangers.
I can easily imagine each of the colours having access to pets, since summoning creatures is a pretty big part of the lore for planeswalkers, and part of the stories as well.
I could see starting zones for different races, but I think it would just be easier for them to say that you start as a planeswalker just after your spark ignited, and you planeswalked to Ravnica because the Gatewatch did some crazy thing to attract newly igniting sparks to help introduce new planewalkers instead of just letting them roam around freely. That way you could still have a bunch of starting races and home planes, without having to do a lot of actual starting zones.
I don't know think they would do different factions. Magic has those five clearly defined colours, but the point of the Gatewatch is to bring the colours together. That said, PvP could still be done as planeswalkers fight against each other a lot for a variety of reasons and it could be open-world PvP on certain servers or limit PvP to arena's or zones designed for PvP (low WoW's battlegrounds).
I think being able to tie a player's magic into the environment in some way, as someone mentioned above, would be pretty cool and a unique thing in the game, beyond just the things that are unique for the IP. I don't know exactly how I would want it to play, but forcing players to gather mana in some way by moving around in combat could keep that part feeling dynamic. You would have to do it in a way that doesn't just crowd the screen with "mana nodes". Maybe they only appear during combat and their purpose is to unlock the most powerful abilities, but not your regular abilities, sort of like how Nissa can still summon elementals on Ahmonket, but they are not as strong as they are on Zendikar (ie. not as strong as when she can get to an green-mana node during a battle).
I am very excited about the MTG MMO - so much so that I just registered to talk about it!
I think it is clear that the game will try and incorporate MTG fantasy races and lore into the game. I think they'll also incorporate the class subtype card lore into character creation (to give your planeswalker a class associated background like soldier or assassin) - what I would like to see, beyond what has been discussed, is as follows:
Race/Species should be the only hard choice at character creation - outside of combat, I would like to see the ability to change your class and your skills/spells, to create a new 'deck' of sorts on the fly. Race/Species should provide some passive benefit (such as humans having higher power/toughness, or elves regenerating mana quicker, etc.). As new planes are released, hopefully new races will be released as well - imagine a game where you could play anything from an aven to a vampire, with more options made available as you explore the multiverse.
I would like the classes to be geared towards certain colors without requiring that skills/spells from those colors be used. For example, a wizard could be a direct damage/control class with bonuses to direct damage and stuns, that works best with red and blue skills as they deal damage and stun respectively, but could be built to use white or black skills with similar effects. An archer could be a direct damage/evasive class that works best with green damage boosts and white evasive skills, but could be built to use other colors. This would give everyone a sense of being their own planeswalker without breaking balance overmuch.
I think that all equipment should be referred to as Artifacts, and that these Artifacts should have limited skill or mana specific features that make them truly unique - it gets a bit boring picking up gloves+1, gloves+2 etc. - it would be neat if you could improve Artifacts you like and use by sacrificing other Artifacts to it. Such as a set of Lightning Boots that increases your movement speed for a few seconds after using a 'red' ability, or Gloves which summon a short term thopter pet when you cast/use a colorless spell/skill, with base level attribute bonuses that can be improved by sacrificing other Artifacts to it.
Finally, I think it would be neat if new spells and skills were acquired by visiting other planes and learning the skills/spells from skill masters who provide related quests (sort of like Guild Wars 1). It would be great if you had to defeat or aid the characters associated with a MTG spell to earn a skill of the same name. It would also provide a framework for endgame content that is a frequent concern for those who want a 'constant' sense of advancement - I'm not one of those players, but it's worth considering.
Ravnica would be the best 'hub' plane, although Dominaria is a close second. Base races could be aven, goblin, sylvan elf (basic elf), and then either vampire (Dominaria)/dark elf(Ravnica) or Merfolk/Vedalken.
You would think that the characteristic (sentient) races would be the selectable races, no?
So Human, Aven/Cat (White), Merfolk (Blue), Vampire (Black), Goblin(?) (Red), and Elf.
Other races would be MTX, likely. (I'd pay for Vedalken.)
As for the rest, I would hope that the reason that they chose the company that did CoH and CoV is because of the very freeform nature of the characters (to my knowledge; never played) as well as the Minion archetype. Specifically, one of the stumbling blocks to making a Magic MMO before the Gatewatch era would have been the overwhelming emphasis on PWs summoning creatures, and MMOs tend to a more personal approach to conflict. CoV, at least, though, had an entire archetype around summoning a LOT of pets for damage.
Anyway, what I hope for / expect?
The color pie needs to be central. Almost everything should revolve around it. Powers, stats... everything. In fact, I would be perfectly fine if the only 'stats' were the affinities for each color.
Playing multiple colors must be viable. Assuming a split in focus, there should be payoffs for 'taking' multiple colors.
I hope that the starting / tutorial area is pre-spark, and you Spark when you finish the area.
With a little more detail, it would be nice for an 'attack / support' duality. Quite like Path of Exile or similar games. Say you are playing a Red / White PW. You have your Lightning Bolt spell. You could 'attach' the Lifelink support you got from White to make yourself leech the damage from the Lightning Bolt... at an appropriately higher cost, or what have you. Most keywords could work this way.
Finally, I want to meet a LOT of story characters.
Oh, please let us have another skill landscape! Just replace PoE classes with the color wheel.
Speaking of PoE, they could take more inspiration. Mainly the business model and the awesome dedication. Yes, I am a hopeless optimist...
When I think about the idea of a planeswalker mmo it makes me think of the different deck types
aggro/burn = you ARE the attacker, as in attacking the other player/creature/baddie with your own burn spells and attacks
control = you are casting spells that prevent your opponent from casting their own stuff and "debuffing" them while you have your own summons/minions attacking them
That is just a basic idea of what I think of in this game.
When you summon creatures to walk with you its like being a necromancer build in a mmo where you have several dudes walking around with you. Grind out basic quests to craft items that let you gain mana points to be able to cast/summon more things. Items become mana rocks that add another point of mana to your skill pool. You can only cast 5/5 points of red spells, a goblin takes 1 up while he is summoned at your side. Or even to be able to reduce the GPU being used up on it have your character walking around on the solo then a cut screen open up then it becomes battle. With the advancement of video games over years people have become acustomed to the free range action of combat, FF15 did that one for us or also something like WoW.
Mainly WoW would be the model for this game since WotC has set its sights on Blizzard as their gaming enemy and only competitor for the TCG market. Area coming out and being a direct assault on hearthstone then the announcement of a MMO around the same time? I'll stop wearing the tin-foil hat when its safe to come out.
I was trying to create a RPG a few years ago.
I was using actual Magic cards for the spells that players would cast. Character level would dictate the casting cost and rarity limit and use different archetype for their basic abilities (Martial, Primal, Arcane, Stealthy).
Gameplay could reward different cards to add to one's arsenal of spells.
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Maybe they can have two "races" for each color, and these races can start from a smattering of planes. If the game started with 5 planes to explore, that would be pretty cool. More than that would be gravy.
I'd love to see a race / class / plane / color customization for your character, but I doubt we'll see such a fine gradient as a Zendikar merfolk vs. a Lorwyn merfolk, for example. If you want to be a merfolk, you'll come from X plane.
In any combat situation, there are three broad things that matter: skills, equipment, and environment. In a typical MMO PvE situation, skills equate to button presses, equipment equates to stats, and environment is a series of small things like opportunities to LoS or skip combat altogether, proximity to other mobs, maybe a special interactable object, etc.
I don't think it has to be interpreted this way, though, and an MMO based on Magic really ought to do it differently because the focus is so different in a card game. What if the environment were where you got your button presses from? This makes a lot of sense in terms of Magic because it has a similarity to drawing cards: you enter combat and "cards" become revealed in the environment around you, and if you want to cast spells, you have to actively go and draw them. Your "equipment" would be, essentially, your deck: your way of manipulating the kinds of cards you're capable of finding while in combat. And your skills could be interpreted as your mana, or maybe your ability to develop mana while in combat.
Imagine if mana was developed by actively making connections with the land in your immediate vicinity. You enter combat with no such connections, and if you just stand still then you have to limit yourself to 1-mana things, but if you run around and interact with the environment, then you get access to more cards and more mana and can fight with more versatility. So sometimes you draw just cheap stuff and can be a turret, and other times you draw 7-drops and have to adapt by turning the fight into a running battle. And if you prefer one playstyle over the other, you can adjust your deck to affect the kind of cards you see in combat.
Trash combat would necessarily take a lot longer than the 5-8 seconds it takes in, say, WoW, so it would also be commensurately less common: quests would be to kill one monster, instead of 10, for example, and you wouldn't necessarily have to deal with random fights with wildlife, and killing off creatures during combat would only be necessary as part of a larger strategic objective. I can only see this as pure upside.
Okay, so I see a realistically possible implementation of MMO combat that would actually be kinda Magic-y, which I definitely didn't before. So color me interested enough to be disappointed when the actual combat system they use turns out to be utterly generic, which is still almost guaranteed. But hey, at least I'm interested now.
1. Pick a species. Different species have different stats and maybe one or two unique traits or abilities--small things.
2. Pick a class: warrior/ranger/paladin type/mage etc. 3-6 options. These set your available spell trees.
3. Mana loyalty. For a given class, the balance of "loyalty points" or something adjusts the spell list available--a red heavy mage might have a lot of blaster spells, a green mage might get to summon big dudes, a green fighter might get huge steroids, a black ranger might get tons of on-hit debuffs.
This gives the feeling of "I am X" but with the option for player growth and evolution over time.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
I do not see Cryptic doing it this way either, as their games are geared towards allowing the player to make their own characters.
Until we know more, we can only speculate as to what the gameplay will be like. Cryptic though does like to have combat in their games though so I imagine the planeswalkers using a lot of spells and depending on if they focus in with the fact that certain planeswalkers use weapons too, swords, staves, etc.
I've played STO since it went free to play. The way they handle travel between planets is that the player gets a ship which doubles as their avatar for space. They have a special portion of the map called Sector Space which is an astrometrics grid of the places that exist in the game that players visit for quests (or missions as they're referred to). They could make a zone similar to this and call it the Blind Eternities and have us choose planes that we can visit from there.
Ravnica would be a good place to be since it's now established that the Gatewatch has established themselves on Ravnica.
Like what if instead it's just an mmorpg based on the wealth of lore and backstory from decades of MTG cards, with classes based on the different guilds or something?
BG Rock
Modern:
RW Sun & Moon
RBG Dredge
RWG Burn
Legacy:
W Death & Taxes
We've already deduced that it won't be a card game based MMORPG. This studio likes letting players create their own characters and setting them loose in the game world that they built.
Yes, but WotC maintain control of the IP and final product. That they believe MTGO is good enough when it accounts for 30-50% of their revenue is all I need to know about their quality control.
It would have five generalist classes (mono colors). At a certain level you can start leveling into another class for a more specialized role (guild colors).
Hope the game is good enough most of my wow guild jumps ship, most of them play MTG and are, like me, quite a bit hyped about an mtg mmo.
I also think you would be custom created planeswalkers and a starting zone on Ravnica could make sense. There is a lot of things you can do there that would get players into the game as part of a sprawling "Gatewatch" organization that saves planes from dangers.
I can easily imagine each of the colours having access to pets, since summoning creatures is a pretty big part of the lore for planeswalkers, and part of the stories as well.
I could see starting zones for different races, but I think it would just be easier for them to say that you start as a planeswalker just after your spark ignited, and you planeswalked to Ravnica because the Gatewatch did some crazy thing to attract newly igniting sparks to help introduce new planewalkers instead of just letting them roam around freely. That way you could still have a bunch of starting races and home planes, without having to do a lot of actual starting zones.
I don't know think they would do different factions. Magic has those five clearly defined colours, but the point of the Gatewatch is to bring the colours together. That said, PvP could still be done as planeswalkers fight against each other a lot for a variety of reasons and it could be open-world PvP on certain servers or limit PvP to arena's or zones designed for PvP (low WoW's battlegrounds).
I think being able to tie a player's magic into the environment in some way, as someone mentioned above, would be pretty cool and a unique thing in the game, beyond just the things that are unique for the IP. I don't know exactly how I would want it to play, but forcing players to gather mana in some way by moving around in combat could keep that part feeling dynamic. You would have to do it in a way that doesn't just crowd the screen with "mana nodes". Maybe they only appear during combat and their purpose is to unlock the most powerful abilities, but not your regular abilities, sort of like how Nissa can still summon elementals on Ahmonket, but they are not as strong as they are on Zendikar (ie. not as strong as when she can get to an green-mana node during a battle).
I think it is clear that the game will try and incorporate MTG fantasy races and lore into the game. I think they'll also incorporate the class subtype card lore into character creation (to give your planeswalker a class associated background like soldier or assassin) - what I would like to see, beyond what has been discussed, is as follows:
Race/Species should be the only hard choice at character creation - outside of combat, I would like to see the ability to change your class and your skills/spells, to create a new 'deck' of sorts on the fly. Race/Species should provide some passive benefit (such as humans having higher power/toughness, or elves regenerating mana quicker, etc.). As new planes are released, hopefully new races will be released as well - imagine a game where you could play anything from an aven to a vampire, with more options made available as you explore the multiverse.
I would like the classes to be geared towards certain colors without requiring that skills/spells from those colors be used. For example, a wizard could be a direct damage/control class with bonuses to direct damage and stuns, that works best with red and blue skills as they deal damage and stun respectively, but could be built to use white or black skills with similar effects. An archer could be a direct damage/evasive class that works best with green damage boosts and white evasive skills, but could be built to use other colors. This would give everyone a sense of being their own planeswalker without breaking balance overmuch.
I think that all equipment should be referred to as Artifacts, and that these Artifacts should have limited skill or mana specific features that make them truly unique - it gets a bit boring picking up gloves+1, gloves+2 etc. - it would be neat if you could improve Artifacts you like and use by sacrificing other Artifacts to it. Such as a set of Lightning Boots that increases your movement speed for a few seconds after using a 'red' ability, or Gloves which summon a short term thopter pet when you cast/use a colorless spell/skill, with base level attribute bonuses that can be improved by sacrificing other Artifacts to it.
Finally, I think it would be neat if new spells and skills were acquired by visiting other planes and learning the skills/spells from skill masters who provide related quests (sort of like Guild Wars 1). It would be great if you had to defeat or aid the characters associated with a MTG spell to earn a skill of the same name. It would also provide a framework for endgame content that is a frequent concern for those who want a 'constant' sense of advancement - I'm not one of those players, but it's worth considering.
Ravnica would be the best 'hub' plane, although Dominaria is a close second. Base races could be aven, goblin, sylvan elf (basic elf), and then either vampire (Dominaria)/dark elf(Ravnica) or Merfolk/Vedalken.
So Human, Aven/Cat (White), Merfolk (Blue), Vampire (Black), Goblin(?) (Red), and Elf.
Other races would be MTX, likely. (I'd pay for Vedalken.)
As for the rest, I would hope that the reason that they chose the company that did CoH and CoV is because of the very freeform nature of the characters (to my knowledge; never played) as well as the Minion archetype. Specifically, one of the stumbling blocks to making a Magic MMO before the Gatewatch era would have been the overwhelming emphasis on PWs summoning creatures, and MMOs tend to a more personal approach to conflict. CoV, at least, though, had an entire archetype around summoning a LOT of pets for damage.
Anyway, what I hope for / expect?
The color pie needs to be central. Almost everything should revolve around it. Powers, stats... everything. In fact, I would be perfectly fine if the only 'stats' were the affinities for each color.
Playing multiple colors must be viable. Assuming a split in focus, there should be payoffs for 'taking' multiple colors.
I hope that the starting / tutorial area is pre-spark, and you Spark when you finish the area.
With a little more detail, it would be nice for an 'attack / support' duality. Quite like Path of Exile or similar games. Say you are playing a Red / White PW. You have your Lightning Bolt spell. You could 'attach' the Lifelink support you got from White to make yourself leech the damage from the Lightning Bolt... at an appropriately higher cost, or what have you. Most keywords could work this way.
Finally, I want to meet a LOT of story characters.
Oh, please let us have another skill landscape! Just replace PoE classes with the color wheel.
Speaking of PoE, they could take more inspiration. Mainly the business model and the awesome dedication. Yes, I am a hopeless optimist...
aggro/burn = you ARE the attacker, as in attacking the other player/creature/baddie with your own burn spells and attacks
control = you are casting spells that prevent your opponent from casting their own stuff and "debuffing" them while you have your own summons/minions attacking them
That is just a basic idea of what I think of in this game.
When you summon creatures to walk with you its like being a necromancer build in a mmo where you have several dudes walking around with you. Grind out basic quests to craft items that let you gain mana points to be able to cast/summon more things. Items become mana rocks that add another point of mana to your skill pool. You can only cast 5/5 points of red spells, a goblin takes 1 up while he is summoned at your side. Or even to be able to reduce the GPU being used up on it have your character walking around on the solo then a cut screen open up then it becomes battle. With the advancement of video games over years people have become acustomed to the free range action of combat, FF15 did that one for us or also something like WoW.
Mainly WoW would be the model for this game since WotC has set its sights on Blizzard as their gaming enemy and only competitor for the TCG market. Area coming out and being a direct assault on hearthstone then the announcement of a MMO around the same time? I'll stop wearing the tin-foil hat when its safe to come out.
I was using actual Magic cards for the spells that players would cast. Character level would dictate the casting cost and rarity limit and use different archetype for their basic abilities (Martial, Primal, Arcane, Stealthy).
Gameplay could reward different cards to add to one's arsenal of spells.