For a bit of background, I was an AD&D geek in high school and college, where I also took up Champions (now called the Hero System). For any number of years it was my cheif social outlet, a ready excuse to get together with friends and socialize. We could get together and create our own mythos, a collect body of stories and characters, from the Blue Moon Killer to Aegus, Defeeeeender of Los Aaaaangeles (cue theme music). I have fond memories, and a mental post-it note to get back into it, write up that fantasy city I've been thinking about, all that. But I haven't had the time, and that just doesn't look like it's going to change.
Enter MMORPGs. My first experience was looking at Asheron's Call on a friend's PC and thinking 'that looks utterly cool'. My wife and I tried to load it on an old PC we had. We tried to upgrade it to play, but it was so buggy we abandoned it. We had to sit through hours of AC talk any time our friends got together. They were creating stories without us, and it felt weird.
At some point we got a new computer and played City of Heroes. Now that was cool. As of this posting I still haven't seen a better character creator (at least in tems of individualizing your avatar). Then we all tried World of Warcraft, and then D&D Online, and even Lord of the Rings Online. We jumped from one to another seeking some elusive quality of play, new sights, new gaming mechanics. The number of nitpicks I could make with any of them is large, but that would miss the bigger picture: essentially, MMORPG's aren't much fun without the close knit social group, which would be fun even without the game.
Much of this perceived shortcoming is because I'm trying to recapture some vitality of my youthful experiences, the way things were so new and open back in the day. Nothing would fill that ticket; the games I grew up with don't seem to either, so why should I expect computer graphics to do what my own imagination can't? You kids today, they don't make em like the used to, the good old days, yada-yada-yada. But there are several things that I consistently run into in these games that limit my enjoyment. The first is the lack of roleplaying - the RPG in MMORPG. Others have noted this, and perhaps I just haven't encountered the tenacious underground of RPers under the layer of video-gamers. But it seems any time I go into a mission with strangers, they have the entire adventure pre-configured and optimized, min-maxed and planned out. I understand the idea of party and character balance, but if there is really no reason for a character to select sub-optimal choices for their character, why even have them? You can't make a character with an unusual background, or reason for adventuring, because it means nothing. You have no personal goals or secret demons - you are a part of a pre-made story line, and if you don't like it, tough. If I'm not allowed to really make my own character, why try to give me the illusion that I can.
Which segues nicely into the next bone to pick - your character is insignificant to the game-world. Everyone does the same quest a hundred times. Failing the quest means nothing, because they're not going change anything just because you lagged at the wrong moment and failed to save the princess. No, you just go back to the bar and get the quest again. In most games, you can't even build a base. 90% of everything around you is like a movie-set, and you can't explore beyond the confines of what they could create. What if everyone made their own dungeons, or taverns for brawling, or even shops for those people who get into the whole buy-low sell-high gold-gardening thing. There would be no end to the content because the people would make their own content. In WOW, you can be a good guy or bad guy, but you can't make a castle for the other guys to storm. You can't even chop down a tree. And none of that matters because the over-arcing story line of the world is written without any consideration for your character. No matter how powerful, you're just one account among thousands. You're not the hero of the story, because stories only have a few heroes, and everyone else wants to be the hero too. Maybe if each server only had a couple of dozen players on it, that might change things, especially if the end-game for each server was different.
And that brings me to the third thing. Since they're Massively Multiplayer, most of the games are written so you have to join a team to do anything. But your team-mates are complete strangers, some of whom may be newbies, some may be serious gamers, some may be just farting around. I have yet to get into a team that I clicked with. I've gotten into a few that made me want to scream. It's like high school cliques without all that adult supervision. Maybe I haven't put in the time to find like minded players, but I really am not inclined to do so. And you always hit a wall where you really can't progress your character without getting in a team.
Obviously, I'm in a minority. These online worlds have millions of players, and I'm sure they won't miss my participation. It just seems these things could be so much more, but that's probably fodder for another post.
<2008> I have to admit I've gotten back into WOW. I have a hunter that I play with my wife's cleric, and we've gotten into the fifties. I do enjoy playing, but it still feels like a replacement for table top games, which I just don't have the time to prepare for. It's a fast-food sort of entertainment, but enjoyable for all of that. I do still miss a sit down dinner though.
