Hey all, I'm working on an Anime MMO setting for my friends and I. That being said, I'm pulling inspiration from Log Horizon, .Hack Sign, SAO, and a bunch of Isekai. I have a rough idea of things like the actual setting (the game itself), lore, and the like. But things like quests, character classes (or careers depending on the wording you're used to), specializations (especially talents), and even monsters to include are all giving me issues, simply because of the variety in all the stuff to choose from.

What are some quintessential things for these categories that you feel would be a must have in a Fantasy based anime MMO setting? I have an idea myself, but I want more opinions outside the people I'm gonna run this for when all is said and done, so that I can compare what I've come up with to what other people would like to see (especially since I want to do a few things that aren't necessarily things you normally see in every MMO). I also have ideas for subclasses (much like Log Horizon), where I'd treat them more or less like signature ability trees in size and scope giving bonuses to certain checks, decreasing strain taken using things like Parry, and so on.

Let's hear some thoughts.

A lot of the western-style fantasy that crops up in Japanese anime and manga, light novels, and video games is heavily influenced by Dragon Quest. If you've ever seen a series use or parody the "chosen hero vs the evil dark lord" trope, it's probably aping Dragon Quest in some way. The prevalence of cute slime monsters in Japanese fantasy series is entirely Dragon Quest's fault. Here's a list of the classes from DQ3, which influences a lot of the classes you might see in an anime and you could use for inspiration.

You can also look at the Final Fantasy games (in particular, the first, third, forth, fifth, ninth, eleventh, and fourteenth games, as well as the Tactics games) for influence on classes and such. Fun fact: The first Final Fantasy game pretty much stole its entire enemy list from Dungeon & Dragon's monster manual, to the point that the western versions had to change one of the enemy sprites to not be a blatant copy of the beholder enemy.

If you're set on using careers and specializations, The Forge podcast's episode 18 did a good overview of how to design trees, with input from Sam Stewart, who designed the bulk of the trees used in Star Wars. One that gets brought up is that spec trees benefit a lot from being tied to the lore of your setting, in that you can introduce a career or tree that's somewhat unique to your setting.

I'd make Genesys races the player's real-world profession, rather than the MMORPG races. Professional Gamer, Salary Person, Student, Programmer, Artist, and the like. Then each Genesys Career would represent their relationship with the game, such as Fighter, Role-Player, Guildmaster, Moderator, Content Creator, Casual, and the like. That would open up some unique gameplay elements to drive immersion of "this is a VRMMORPG."

I would also avoid making an AI a playable race, and stick it as a Companion option. Keeps stakes higher when they are relatable to everyone and avoids plot holes like: "Well, if you are part of the system, can't we just always hack it?"