I used to play Gemstone III (which became Gemstone IV) via play.net back in the late 90s before I played EQ (and even played it here and there after that). It had a fantastic combat and class system (based on death crits, etc - more realistic than "you did 15 points of damage!" although that is a part of the system in GSIV). If you did a free trial of that, it might give you some really good ideas.
If I had more than 1 or 2 friends that played it (and they quit before I did), I probably never would have quit.
Also, I apologize if you meant something far more technical than just basic game mechanics. I'm just an SQL data monkey, i'm not that sophisticated in programming/etc
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