Evolving MMO Progression - Character Legacies and Inheritance

Everyone who's played an MMO is familiar with character development to some degree. There have been many ways to push it, but the most common is level and loot progression. You kill X monster for Y experience and some chance at Z loot. Easy, straight to the point and one of the major fundamental mechanics in today's MMOs. Be that as it may, is it really the only viable progression path out there? After all this time and development of supposed next-gen gaming, isn't level based progression for a character and that character's player a little dated and boring?

Before I get too far ahead of myself, you're probably scratching your head at the phrase "a character and that character's player." Most people never really stop to think that the rewards given out to a player for spending X amount of time in a game (usually called veteran rewards or some such nonsense) are usually for decoration. True, World of Warcraft and a Everquest 2 have instituted a system of heirloom rewards,  in which a character may give items found or earned on one character to another that would normally not be allowed to be traded with other players and World of Warcraft's even scales to the level of the new player, but aside from that, there's no real attachment from one character to the next. Sure a person can make up any story they wish and roleplay until the cows come home, but in the end the game mechanics for such a thing are non-existent. Also, most of these items don't rear their heads until you're a higher level, where the company then expects you to make another character and play the game again.

Not all items on an adventure will invoke emotional responses. But what of those that do? What of those that I pick up and think "I want my bloodline to possess this throughout the ages?" And what of those items you find early in your character's life that you want to hold on to, but wish to pass on for either sentimental or practical value? I speak, of course, of the topic of inheritance: the bequeathing of items from one generation of characters to the next, via in-game mechanics and with in-game reasons and repercussions.  The idea of alternate characters is by no means new. Many of us have more than one character active when we plan an MMO and the reasons for such usually stem from being locked into classes or scoping out different factions. When you make a new character, even if you have a made up reason to do so, it just appears as yet another character on your character select screen. Given the mechanic of inheritance, we now introduce living methods, aging and legacies to our virtual worlds.

The only way today's characters die in an MMO for good is if we personally delete them. We wouldn't want our hard earned time and loot to go to waste now, would we? Of course not. There have even been a slew of rants and raves about who owns virtual property and even players committing suicide because they get so attached to the things they've earned. What if we turn the focus from item-centricity to something else? The whole idea is probably best expressed in an example.

Let's say I create a character named John. I choose John to be a hardy warrior, best suited to the ways of a blade and shield, with heavy armor. This suits John and he makes a good living as a warrior, starting out with his home town's militia and slowly working his way up to be a war hero while serving in the local magistrate's army under the Queen. He's led a great life, battled many foes and collected many spoils. He ages, like most men do and soon finds himself doing more desk work than adventuring. His skills begin to slip and he realizes that soon, he will have to father an heir to continue his legacy or all he's done will be forgotten in time. Of course, John doesn't want this, so I create his son George. George has inherited many of his father's traits and John instills some of his wisdom in the ways of the sword before he is fully retired and spends the rest of his days in the castle, mulling about and advising the Queen's battlemasters. Meanwhile, George like the idea of swords, but he's not sold on the idea. He definitely knows how to use one, but he's more interested in the budding idea of magic and its uses for the good of the kingdom. He goes off to the academy and incorporates what he's learned with the idea of magic and in the end, evolves the warrior class into a battle mage class.