I'd highly suggest looking at RPG systems specifically designed before World of Warcraft.
Regardless of how you feel about WoW, there's no denying that the impact it had created ripple effects that stretched far and wide throughout RPG's and gaming.
MMO's tried to emulate its design in a desperate effort to stay competitive (which arguably had the opposite effect) and even singleplayer games occasionally adopted a few inspired ideas. Pretty sure even D&D 4E's changes were inspired by certain WoW-related trends.
So if you want a wider palette of ideas, you might be better off looking back just a few years. Here's a few examples I could name that have mechanics that might diverge from what you're normally familiar with:
Star Wars Galaxies
(Pre-NGE, before they tried overhauling the gameplay to emulate WoW)
Spiderweb Software
(Specifically their slightly older games, at least in my opinion.)
Mortal Online 2
(Heavily inspired by SWG, with a dash of Bethesda "do thing to improve skill in thing" approach, and a rather unique skillbook related system)
And also look into some tabletop/pen and paper RPG's that aren't based on D&D or D20. A few that I've come across (though have minimal experience with):
Burning Wheel
The Riddle of Steel
Mythras
Guild Wars 1 is probably one of the most active pre-WoW MMOs and has what is likely the most unique class/skill building system there is.
A level cap so low its basically an afterthought, skill points that only exist for specialization purposes, going out into the world to physically learn your spells, a multiclassing system that basically allows for two simultaneous full classes instead of a main/sub like most do, and, as of the 3rd expansion, an entire separate set of characters to build alongside you main to allow yourself to become nearly self-sufficient.
And the ability to still go back and play most of it completely untouched with no sub fee of course.
Heh, I still have to go back and actually finish the final expansion on that thing. I loved what they did in base GW1 for the skills, although the bloat was getting almost too much to manage by the end.
I can understand how they ended up there, needing to make each expansion exciting and fun. But the PvE title skills they kept adding that were obviously OP but way more grind to make viable were too much time investment for the payoff, so I just peaced out.
Also playing PUGs in that game was formative in my understanding that most of the populace are truly too retarded to survive. All that practice did make my monk skills almost superhuman though.
I think the fact that most of the game is soloable, if not all, wipes away most of the normal MMO problems with grind and bloat. You have all the time in the world, thanks to no sub, and you are entirely beholden to your own desires. No "outdated" content because the levels are stuck at 20 forever and no need to git gud to go fast to keep up with impatient retards.
Just do what you want and if you don't care about being slightly more powerful you don't have to, as long as its fun.
But I do agree that some of the titles were ridiculous, probably as a result of the move towards the final expansions big hall thing regarding them (that directly leads into GW2 benefits).
However, players themselves did Legendary Defender of Ascalon entirely for fun and that was worst than any other grind by far and would take most of a year where you couldn't do anything else in the game. Its been nerfed now to be "only" a few months, but it only exists because players did it and that gave the devs the idea that players wanted that I think.
Aye. I was sadly late to the SWG game, only getting a taste of it within the emulation community, but even then I got an excellent impression on just how solidly they designed a lot of things. The camping system, housing, econ, crafting, etc. I'm not kidding when I point at how much inspiration Mortal Online 2 draws from it. Unfortunately, it has some brutally hardcore open world pvp, and not in a remotely forgiving kind of way. (A little too rage inducing for the amount of time I have to spare these days.)
Fucking Smedley, lol. Arguably he bears a fair bit of responsibility for Planetside 2 being such a faint echo of the first game. And then things went even further downhill for SOE.
Also going to split this off in a separate comment, since my comment was already getting a little text-heavy:
Another thought that comes to mind, loosely based on what I was reading about Burning Wheel, is how 7 Days to Die's internal dismemberment system actually works. I'd have to read through the game's XML's again to refresh my memory, but the TLDR of it was that each limb had a different minimum threshold that needed to be matched or exceeded in order to achieve a dismemberment. (Player-side modifiers include the weapon/item class, weapon quality, weapon upgrades, and relevant player skill levels).
I once considered adopting some kind of a core damage formula loosely based on that, but was on the fence given how in many respects, it's still a purely numbers game only with slightly different rules. Plus you end up going down a rabbit hole of trying to overcomplicate other things like bleed-out and trauma mechanics...
I'd highly suggest looking at RPG systems specifically designed before World of Warcraft.
Regardless of how you feel about WoW, there's no denying that the impact it had created ripple effects that stretched far and wide throughout RPG's and gaming. MMO's tried to emulate its design in a desperate effort to stay competitive (which arguably had the opposite effect) and even singleplayer games occasionally adopted a few inspired ideas. Pretty sure even D&D 4E's changes were inspired by certain WoW-related trends.
So if you want a wider palette of ideas, you might be better off looking back just a few years. Here's a few examples I could name that have mechanics that might diverge from what you're normally familiar with:
Star Wars Galaxies (Pre-NGE, before they tried overhauling the gameplay to emulate WoW)
Spiderweb Software (Specifically their slightly older games, at least in my opinion.)
Mortal Online 2 (Heavily inspired by SWG, with a dash of Bethesda "do thing to improve skill in thing" approach, and a rather unique skillbook related system)
And also look into some tabletop/pen and paper RPG's that aren't based on D&D or D20. A few that I've come across (though have minimal experience with): Burning Wheel The Riddle of Steel Mythras
Guild Wars 1 is probably one of the most active pre-WoW MMOs and has what is likely the most unique class/skill building system there is.
A level cap so low its basically an afterthought, skill points that only exist for specialization purposes, going out into the world to physically learn your spells, a multiclassing system that basically allows for two simultaneous full classes instead of a main/sub like most do, and, as of the 3rd expansion, an entire separate set of characters to build alongside you main to allow yourself to become nearly self-sufficient.
And the ability to still go back and play most of it completely untouched with no sub fee of course.
Heh, I still have to go back and actually finish the final expansion on that thing. I loved what they did in base GW1 for the skills, although the bloat was getting almost too much to manage by the end.
I can understand how they ended up there, needing to make each expansion exciting and fun. But the PvE title skills they kept adding that were obviously OP but way more grind to make viable were too much time investment for the payoff, so I just peaced out.
Also playing PUGs in that game was formative in my understanding that most of the populace are truly too retarded to survive. All that practice did make my monk skills almost superhuman though.
I think the fact that most of the game is soloable, if not all, wipes away most of the normal MMO problems with grind and bloat. You have all the time in the world, thanks to no sub, and you are entirely beholden to your own desires. No "outdated" content because the levels are stuck at 20 forever and no need to git gud to go fast to keep up with impatient retards.
Just do what you want and if you don't care about being slightly more powerful you don't have to, as long as its fun.
But I do agree that some of the titles were ridiculous, probably as a result of the move towards the final expansions big hall thing regarding them (that directly leads into GW2 benefits).
However, players themselves did Legendary Defender of Ascalon entirely for fun and that was worst than any other grind by far and would take most of a year where you couldn't do anything else in the game. Its been nerfed now to be "only" a few months, but it only exists because players did it and that gave the devs the idea that players wanted that I think.
Aye. I was sadly late to the SWG game, only getting a taste of it within the emulation community, but even then I got an excellent impression on just how solidly they designed a lot of things. The camping system, housing, econ, crafting, etc. I'm not kidding when I point at how much inspiration Mortal Online 2 draws from it. Unfortunately, it has some brutally hardcore open world pvp, and not in a remotely forgiving kind of way. (A little too rage inducing for the amount of time I have to spare these days.)
Fucking Smedley, lol. Arguably he bears a fair bit of responsibility for Planetside 2 being such a faint echo of the first game. And then things went even further downhill for SOE.
Also going to split this off in a separate comment, since my comment was already getting a little text-heavy:
Another thought that comes to mind, loosely based on what I was reading about Burning Wheel, is how 7 Days to Die's internal dismemberment system actually works. I'd have to read through the game's XML's again to refresh my memory, but the TLDR of it was that each limb had a different minimum threshold that needed to be matched or exceeded in order to achieve a dismemberment. (Player-side modifiers include the weapon/item class, weapon quality, weapon upgrades, and relevant player skill levels).
I once considered adopting some kind of a core damage formula loosely based on that, but was on the fence given how in many respects, it's still a purely numbers game only with slightly different rules. Plus you end up going down a rabbit hole of trying to overcomplicate other things like bleed-out and trauma mechanics...