Why are we still in the "Kill 10 rats" era of MMOs?

[Kaphik]

I just wonder if the word "dynamic" would help this particular scenario? It seems to be what people are after lately. That random sense of 'omg, this is happening right in front of me, what can I do about it' type stuff. It would appear that it needs to be singular and personal. At least that's the vibe I am getting from most game forums of late. It's not a bad thing either, I just have no idea how the game devs would implement it so that people would be happy. GW2 is having a crack at it or so we are led to believe....... But we have been led to believe it many times now....

 

You nailed it right on the head, specifically with the words "dynamic" and then "singular and personal". It's nearly impossible to have a unique single player experience in an MMORPG because of how an MMO has to work to provide the same experience opportunity for every player.

[jgelling]

I wonder if there'll be an MMO where player choices actually affect the world around them and the common story, instead of having everything instantly respawn and reset. Nothing ever changes in the MMO world environment, which really takes a lot of the realism out of the game. It's better in dedicated story areas, but still not what it might be if games were more intelligent.

 

Until there's an intelligent, flexible world environment, you end up with kill 10 rats. And the rats will reappear in 1 minute for the next player to kill. And the next.

[Vagessel]

I think it's interesting that everytime someone comes up with these "innovation" threads, they proceed to call systems used in failed games as examples of how it should be done. Where's the common sense?

 

And if you wanted to condense everything to it's bare bones you could say "collect" rats of anything just like you could say all vertebrates have a spine, ignoring that if you added the flesh one would be Cameron Diaz and another some unknown fat slob.

 

Star Wars is fully voiced, and I and many others find that fresh, interesting, engaging, innovative and fun. Stop looking for excuses not to like things and start looking for excuses to like them.

[Daeada]

Except Guild Wars 2.

 

It's a lot harder for a game that makes no money except for box sales (and microtransactions) to be as successful as a sub based MMO. They may last as long, but they probably won't make as much money in doing so.

[jgelling]

I think it's interesting that everytime someone comes up with these "innovation" threads, they proceed to call systems used in failed games as examples of how it should be done. Where's the common sense?

 

And if you wanted to condense everything to it's bare bones you could say "collect" rats of anything just like you could say all vertebrates have a spine, ignoring that if you added the flesh one would be Cameron Diaz and another some unknown fat slob.

 

Star Wars is fully voiced, and I and many others find that fresh, interesting, engaging, innovative and fun. Stop looking for excuses not to like things and start looking for excuses to like them.

 

Ehhh, full voice-acting isn't so innovative, especially since Bioware is the creator of the KOTOR series. It's at best a very modest evolution, and I think the OP wasn't denigrating the game so much as thinking about what a revolutionary MMO would be.

 

But Star Wars as such an expensive franchise couldn't afford to gamble on something too revolutionary. It'd devastate EA if they had tried something way outside the box and it failed. The next big thing will probably come from a smaller developer, or one with a cheaper (or new) franchise to work with instead of Star Wars, which must cost a fortune to license.

[Varteras]

It's a lot harder for a game that makes no money except for box sales (and microtransactions) to be as successful as a sub based MMO. They may last as long, but they probably won't make as much money in doing so.

 

Exactly. Guild Wars 2 could sell twice as many copies as WoW but not even make half the money WoW did. What is this GW2 hard-on anyways? The game hasn't even released, I've heard plenty of mixed feelings from people who have beta tested it, and yet there are so many people that are already praising it like it's the second coming. I really feel sorry for the mods on that game's forum after it releases and people likely realize that it was all hype. I'm sure the game will be fun but come on now.

[Mdesade]

The game hasn't even released, I've heard plenty of mixed feelings from people who have beta tested it, and yet there are so many people that are already praising it like it's the second coming.

 

Well, it is the second coming. It's the second coming of Guild Wars!

Edited April 19, 2012 by Mdesade

[Ojustaboo]

The problem with why BW couldn't do this is easy to see simply by looking at the Advanced Class decision. People are constantly complaining about that choice being permenant(sp?). Imagine if every big choice had a lasting effect on your character.

 

Yep and that is the main problem as far as developers are concerned.

 

I love mmos but they have been dumbed down enormously over the years. But they are also big business now.

 

Sure, I would have loved it to take 3 months of hard graft to get to end level (meaning it would take a good 6 - 9 months at a non hard graft but still a good few hours a week playtime), mobs along the way needing tactics to kill and often needing groups of various skill classes to overcome.

 

But if that was the case, there would be an outcry from the majority of players, unable to find groups, not having the time to play as much as me and not seeing why they should never get to experience the stuff I'm experiencing, after all they are also paying a monthly sub (sure with a brought single player game, the same scenario would arise, but they aren't paying monthly for that)

 

For every person like me, and for every person not like me but with different opinions to make the game more interesting for them, there are 10000s that would complain all the time and it would end up being a niche game for hardcore mmo fans, hence there wouldn't be the profit/return to warrant making it in the first place, yet alone to continually upgrade it.

 

And everyone's opinion does differ completely. I personally like immersing myself in the storyline. I don't want to be told to go and kill 10 rats, I want to know who wants them killed and what the killing will achieve for them. A good friend in my guild couldn't care less about the story and would skip it as fast as he could and just go kill them.

 

I loved Lotro but over the years I felt it lost something because they altered the game play to appeal to the masses. I also enjoyed things that many of you would find mind numbingly boring. I liked how long it took to craft food. I would spend hours each month crafting food, farming etc knowing that I could sell it for a good return to those that found no enjoyment out of making it themselves so were willing to pay the high prices.

 

Then there was EQ2, I loved the housing in that. The housing was rubbish in Lotro and loads of people complained about it, but a far more vocal amount said they weren't' interested in Turbine wasting time on housing when they had no interest in it. In EQ2 you could place things virtually where you wanted to, for me, kitting out my house, designing it how I wanted, was another element of the game that I loved and from time to time, I would take time out from the battles/grind and go mess with my house instead (maybe even craft some furniture).

 

For me, I like the whole package, not just fighting.. But for every person I find like me, I seem to find at least 10 that aren't interested in crafting, aren't interested in housing, think the prices on the AH are extreme (don't think they realise how much time I put into crafting on Lotro) and would rather all future development put into end game raids that they will rush through in two weeks and complain about the lack of content (I love end game raiding, just saying what I've observed).

 

There's a thread on Sky TV forum in the UK complaining about them removing a channel that I've never heard of called Current TV. They removed it because it wasn't popular enough. But loads and loads of people are saying it was their favourite channel and was like no other one. But the same rules of big business apply. Why should Sky waste time keeping a small amount of people happy when the same money invested elsewhere could keep a large amount of people happy.

 

It's sad, but I think MMOs have changed over the years in a way that's not very good for people liking a real challenge, and I don't see them ever returning. Even if a game was brought out tomorrow that ticked all the boxes I love most, I guarantee you within the year there will have been so many complaints from others about how hard it is etc, that they will either have closed the game down, or changed it completely leaving the original players fuming about how easy its become.

 

Sad but true.

[Mr_Jonse]

Ehhh, full voice-acting isn't so innovative, especially since Bioware is the creator of the KOTOR series. It's at best a very modest evolution, and I think the OP wasn't denigrating the game so much as thinking about what a revolutionary MMO would be.

 

But Star Wars as such an expensive franchise couldn't afford to gamble on something too revolutionary. It'd devastate EA if they had tried something way outside the box and it failed. The next big thing will probably come from a smaller developer, or one with a cheaper (or new) franchise to work with instead of Star Wars, which must cost a fortune to license.

 

I don't think it's the VO as much as the story that has made the difference for me with SWTOR. This is why I could never stick with WoW, and why I'll always prefer Zelda to Mario: I need to know why I'm killing 10 rats The VO is a function of the story and, to me, it;s the story that has made this game so much more playable than any MMO I've tried in the past (plus, y'know, lightsabers).

 

You're right though: no ones over going to fund a AAA rated MMO which completely breaks the UO / WoW mold, until a smaller dev does is successfully first. It's like with movies: the big studios give you great production values but it's the little guys who drive innovation.

[Sycopat]

Because we're still in the 'kill 10 rats' phase of video games.

 

Go to X, do Y, go to Z. Z may or may not be = X. Insert pieces of 'plot' along the way.

 

That's the basic structure of pretty much every single modern narrative based videogame. MMO/FPS/RPG/Action. It is the implementation of the game around this structure that defines it's genre.

 

The problem with MMO's is that they don't give the illusion that you alone are having this experience, everyone else is seeing the same stuff and doing the same quests. Occasionally at the same time. People don't care about 'kill 10 rats' in skyrim (where it's kill a random number of dragons) because it's framed slightly differently (dragons) but at it's core it's the same structure. (Go to X, kill dragon, go to Y, kill dragon. Btw, I love skyrim and am not disparaging it, but it's underlying structures are fundamentally the same as many other games.)

 

Now I do dislike the 'kill 10 rats' stuff, not the structure but the actual quest. Kill until you hit an arbitrary number is lazy writing. But for the most part in swtor, it's generally limited to the optional bonus quests. And I tend to do them because on my way to rescue some one(then kill them because I'm a sith)/find an artefact etc. I either achieve them, or come close enough that rounding up a few stragglers is easy and dispatching them is fun.

 

But what I think when I hear people give out about 'go here, kill this' is 'you must not play a lot of games'.

[Fox_McCloud]

So, i was kinda thinking today about MMO's in general, and I have to wonder, with the advancement of other genre why is it that a AAA critically acclaimed MMO like SWTOR resort to the same old boring "Kill X number of enemies" Or "Click/collect X number of items"?

 

Couldn't we do better? Shooters have evolved from run down (relatively) flat corridor A to room B shoot guys on the way to epic movie quality story with physics mechanics and vehicles, branching nonlinear gameplay etc etc.

 

RPGs went from menu driven battle systems to active time to real time battling/sword fight, awesome exploration, free flowing skill systems, and incredible presentation.

 

Sports games have gone from top down click button throw ball games to motion sensitive actually throwing/hitting the ball, full body experiences.

 

 

MMOs? Or SWTOR specifically as well. Same crap(for the most part) from EQ days. Go kill some rats. Go collect some weeds.

 

Push buttons 1-12(- and =) on your keyboard, move sometimes, watch guy swing sword/lightsaber or fire gun. Still managing 4 hotbars of buttons. A mindless rotation of buttons with a few situational thrown in,

 

I thought the light/darkside choices would actually make a difference but essentially once you reach 50 you all have follow the same path/railroad with very little difference. THats right, you lightside jedi will end up at 50 in the same position my darkside one does.

 

Heck i even tried to be the absolutely worst Jedi imaginable(Killed, murdered, stole, lied), and i still made it out of the academy, became a Jedi knight, then a master and so on etc etc...

 

I call that the illusion of choice.

 

Its not impossible to bring something new to the table. AoC had semi interesting combat mechanics, FE was a full fledged Mad MAX style shooter MMO, SWG had genious crafting.

 

Why does it fell like SWTOR did a great job with story, but grabbed the rest of their game from 1999.

Having great story, and boring/repetitive game mechanics doesn't make a great game.

 

Especially when you roll an alt and have to slog through 90% of the same quests again, do the same dailies a mindless amount of times to grind gear, and ALWAYS no matter what choices you make, end up in the same place as the last 50 guys.

 

I loved the game when it first came out, it was fantastic.. until I realized its the same crap that has been shoved down our throats since the EQ theme-park. Every planet has X organization that needs help because nobody can do anything on their own, you go kill some guys, click on some terminals/bombs/boxes, you move on to the next planet.

 

Ill continue this post later.. TBC

 

It is quite simple really, because they did grab the rest of their game from 1999.

 

You want MMO genre advances? Well it is not SWTOR, you only hvae to wait a bit longer, its called Guild Wars 2 and it is moving the genre forward out of 1999 where it has been stuck.

 

Guild Wars 2 beta event for everyone who pre-purchases is April 27th-29th.

[dazednconfuzed]

Now, on another tact, people say they want innovation, but I’m not sure they really want it. I am NO developer, and certainly no raider / PVP-er, but, you want something innovative (ish… don’t know what’s out there), but here’s my try.

 

NOTE = I would never touch my own example with a 10 foot pole. I’m honestly trying to make a game “for you guys”, and throw in innovation, but here goes…

 

SETTING = Star Wars (duh), 3,000 years in the past.

 

GAMEPLAY = Skill system. You can learn a bit of everything. Semi-logarithmic costs so that the first skills come easy, then slower and slower. Combination of skill result and actual twitch/area awareness.

 

LEGACY = Hardcore death. That’s right, you have 1 life. Sort of. Like Legacy in SWTOR, a fraction, say 1 out of 10 of the EXP goes to a pool. For example, you have 20 skills but have enough EXP to have 2 banked skills. You die? You back to 2 skills. Once you are back to 12 skills (i.e. 10 more skill points), you have 3 points banked.

 

(DISCLAIMER IN BIG BOLD LETTERS = “We are not responsible for lag / your computer / our software causing your character death”)

 

PVP = As above, since death is permanent, all gear goes to the winner. Planetary defences would be high at your “home” world, but not so much to make it impossible to invade. Ditto with City defences. There would be a “The farther from your beachhead, the weaker you are” kind of deal.

 

Open world, of course. No safe spots, but “safe-ish” spots if your in the middle of the capital in the middle of your home world.

 

When a city is about to fall, a named NPC in the Lore comes out to try and bolster the losing side. A bigger more known NPC comes out when a planet falls.

 

If a capital falls, a new “hidden capital of the resistance” spawns at a random secret undisclosed location (sorry, had to). Ditto for a home world.

 

Faction imbalances are tempered by a combination of random events (sabotage, wandering NPC raids, plagues) that attack the over-numbered side… as well as a “Robin Hood” type buff that appears on the under-numbered side. Not enough to make it even, but enough to make overwhelming numbers on one side have a nice steep diminishing return.

 

Winning PVP in an area gives you access to resources for crafting, ship building, and the like.

 

GEAR = The rarely dropped gear is the equivalent of “WHITE” TOR gear. Expensive Storebought is “worse than WHITE”. Green, Blue, Purple gear exists, but is OMG rare. Looks, stats, etc… all that is customizable, assuming you have the crafting.

 

PLANETS = Since it’s level-less, there is stuff to do on all planets. Materials are planet specific for crafting. In hostile planets, you need gear to survive the elements. Sorry, you need masks / protection on a Quesh, tons of water / vaporators on Tatooine / cold gear on Hoth, etc…

 

Since it’s level-less and open exploration, then there’s a reason to go to each planet and no planet is “above your level”.

 

CITIES = Evolving. NPCs will be building to expand the city. NPCs can be killed, helped, etc… If Anchorhead, say, is destroyed… after X amount of time, New Anchorhead starts at a different spot in the desert. Some resources are also specific to various cities.

 

CRAFTING = Components come from specific planets, as above. Crafting can make items, consumables, etc… but can also make player housing, increase the abilities of players and NPC, lots and lots of customizability in looks, and the like.

 

COMPANIONS = Can be avoided, or gained in the course of play. Do without, or have a small army, your call. But giving them skills above what they come with comes from your own EXP pool, and they are just as dead as you are if they die. You only find out their likes / dislikes through time / conversation.

 

CONVERSATION = Text (to allow for frequent updates) that can be skipped, or read for flavour. Some skills would be Diplomacy / Haggle / Intimidate so you might be able to get some objectives without firing a shot.

 

LIGHT SIDE / DARK SIDE = Sorry, no one knows ahead which action will do which, no ESC to restart, though common sense should apply to major shifts. No indication of Light or Dark in actions or conversations.

 

Light / Neutral / Dark affects some abilities, pretty much balanced, say, going dark gives you more damage, but less defence, and vice versa, but really, each skill has it’s own light / neutral / dark preference, so there is no way to min/max it out.

 

SPACE = Open free flight, of course. Allows for dogfights, cargo runs, exploration and colonization of new planets, space anomalies (black holes), etc…

 

Sure, you can try and use your ship to strafe at ground targets, if you are THAT good… or think you are. Just be aware that at ship speed, mountains pass a really fast clip. Don’t hit one. Ship dies, you die too.

 

SANDBOX = Have very open mechanics for fights / exploration / resources / content, with players being able to raze the forest, make it a city, or bomb a city, and let it regrow back to nature, and all the good stuff sandbox stuff does…

 

EVENTS = Some GMs periodically take control of some NPCs and rally / attack / get support from players to do permanent world changing events. If the rakghouls infect everyone in Taris, Taris is lost, the end, unless players come back and wipe every single rak in there. If someone bombs the tar out of Korriban… it’s back to being a rubble / dead planet till the players recolonise.

 

Not too keen on the permadeath idea, but other than that, I want to play this game!!!

[Vagessel]

Well, now. It would appear the entire topic has drifted from - barely - discussion about SWTOR to discussions of other game's altogether. Someone put this poor animal out it's misery.

[Fox_McCloud]

Oh and by the way, Guild Wars 2 is better then the second coming, because Guild Wars 2 is going to happen.

[Varteras]

Well, it is the second coming. It's the second coming of Guild Wars!

 

Ah I see what you did there.

[DeadlyScythe]

Maybe its the dumbing down of games for a new generation?

 

you just said it here arleady. games got easyer. Hell you want that it becomes like CoD but thats also a dumbing down games.

[faymar]

It is quite simple really, because they did grab the rest of their game from 1999.

 

You want MMO genre advances? Well it is not SWTOR, you only hvae to wait a bit longer, its called Guild Wars 2 and it is moving the genre forward out of 1999 where it has been stuck.

 

Guild Wars 2 beta event for everyone who pre-purchases is April 27th-29th.

 

LOL......my husband is in beta, stomping on frost worms and helping the farmer collect his crops aren't advances, neither are RIFT like public quest that suck when no one else is around.

 

Also why in the hell dose GW2 get a free pass with their you have to buy our game to play in our beta weekends scam? if TOR did that the forums would have been lit up with QQ, Kotaku would have written an article about the huge scandal and the BBB would have set up a satellite office at BioWare Austin. The hypocrisy of the Zealot GW2 fans is sickening, the beta has a lot of people screaming about lag and performance issues but they get a pass from the yellow journalist in the industry because GW2 is the darling dujour.

 

Pathetic really.

Edited April 19, 2012 by faymar

[Neloth]

While the basic task we do in mmos can be quite boring, I have difficulties in seeing how we could make it better than Kill/Collect/Escort or any derivative. You would end up with something like Minecraft or Second Life.

 

However the difference is how it is presented and TOR do a good job there, in fact the best job yet in any mmo. There are many things that can be done, and even reasonable so in TOR:

 

• Change the hotbar combat into less hotbar focus and more focus on the combat itself. Less buttons, more movement, placement, tactics. AoC did a nice job at this, Skyrim as well.
  
• Sandbox crafting
  
• Sandbox space
   
  

 

You have to compensate for the weak parts and several other exciting things to do can do just that, suddenly have an epic mmo where people are willing to ignore the essence of Kill/Collect/Escort questing.

[VanderII]

We love SWTOR and not GW2!

[Tewnam]

Eve took simple concepts and tried to make them difficult to confuse people....

 

Eve the only game where you are not punished for not playing... Your character can still advance.... There will always be players better than you because they have played the game longer. It doesn't come down to skill it comes down to who has had the longest active account. Also EVE has like 100000 subscribers...

 

EVE is a horrible example of an MMORPG .... It's just an MMO without the RPG element.

 

Sorry, but that argument fails. No, you can't fly a Titan in your first month, but it doesn't take years before a character can be a very effective tech 1 frigate flyer. That encompasses 80% of high-sec PvP and you can run many level 3 missions in a frigate, so you just unlocked a huge chunk of the game right there. The older a character is in Eve, the more different things they can do, but it doesn't take long at all to do a handful of things well.

 

That being said, this game is not Eve. Stop asking for it to be Eve and just go play Eve instead; I still do and I enjoy both.

[Neloth]

Sorry, but that argument fails. No, you can't fly a Titan in your first month, but it doesn't take years before a character can be a very effective tech 1 frigate flyer. That encompasses 80% of high-sec PvP and you can run many level 3 missions in a frigate, so you just unlocked a huge chunk of the game right there. The older a character is in Eve, the more different things they can do, but it doesn't take long at all to do a handful of things well.

 

That being said, this game is not Eve. Stop asking for it to be Eve and just go play Eve instead; I still do and I enjoy both.

 

I'm sorry to say that's just wrong. nothing useful can be done with a T1 frigate, except a Goon style suicide gank. 80% of high sec PvP is cargo ganks with battlecruiser or battleship where you need high skills to pull it off before getting Concorded. Missions in Eve are a repetitive snorefest. You need 6 months to a year of focused training minimum to acceptable in any kind of alliance warfare.

[rhirne]

I wonder if there'll be an MMO where player choices actually affect the world around them and the common story, instead of having everything instantly respawn and reset. Nothing ever changes in the MMO world environment, which really takes a lot of the realism out of the game. It's better in dedicated story areas, but still not what it might be if games were more intelligent.

 

Until there's an intelligent, flexible world environment, you end up with kill 10 rats. And the rats will reappear in 1 minute for the next player to kill. And the next.

 

Actually, there is an MMO like that; it's called Wakfu. In that game, nothing respawns. If you kill everything in an area or farm all the crafting materials in an area, they will NOT come back. You can literally cause an area to become barren. So you (or someone) has to actively farm the creatures / plant life in that area for seeds so they can be re-planted. Once re-planted, the creatures / fawna start to respawn.

 

Now you see an inherent problem... you get a bunch of high level people go into low level areas and kill everything / farm all the crafting materials and now what do you have... nothing in those low level areas. So now lowbies can't level cause nothing is going to respawn. that's all it takes to screw it up.

 

FFXI did something similar with the Wings of the Goddess expansion. You traveled back in the past, and depending on how the players were dealing with the creatures in the past, would cause the present world to change - more mobs, different mobs, etc in those areas.

 

 

Now look what BW did with the Rhakghoul plague. There is a 4th iteration thread asking for it's removal (that's means BW re-created the thread 3 times); which started day 1 of the event. And what are they complaining about - "I don't want to be effected by it. I want to Opt-out." people complain they want something dynamic, then when they are given something dynamic, they complain that it's dynamic. A developer can't win.

 

A great many people do not want someone's actions to effect their game. That's why a lot of stuff is static / solo. A developer has to cater to as many people as possible, without singling out one group or another; while still trying to make a game for everyone to enjoy. Thing is, you can't please everyone, and people will complain about the littlist thing they can find; "When I click the button, my character moves .00000000000004 micrometers to the left. It's ruining gameplay." Try and do something innovative, and people say "Well I want it to be like XYZ game!" It's a no win situation

[faymar]

Actually, there is an MMO like that; it's called Wakfu. In that game, nothing respawns. If you kill everything in an area or farm all the crafting materials in an area, they will NOT come back. You can literally cause an area to become barren. So you (or someone) has to actively farm the creatures / plant life in that area for seeds so they can be re-planted. Once re-planted, the creatures / fawna start to respawn.

 

Now you see an inherent problem... you get a bunch of high level people go into low level areas and kill everything / farm all the crafting materials and now what do you have... nothing in those low level areas. So now lowbies can't level cause nothing is going to respawn. that's all it takes to screw it up.

 

FFXI did something similar with the Wings of the Goddess expansion. You traveled back in the past, and depending on how the players were dealing with the creatures in the past, would cause the present world to change - more mobs, different mobs, etc in those areas.

 

 

Now look what BW did with the Rhakghoul plague. There is a 4th iteration thread asking for it's removal (that's means BW re-created the thread 3 times); which started day 1 of the event. And what are they complaining about - "I don't want to be effected by it. I want to Opt-out." people complain they want something dynamic, then when they are given something dynamic, they complain that it's dynamic. A developer can't win.

 

A great many people do not want someone's actions to effect their game. That's why a lot of stuff is static / solo. A developer has to cater to as many people as possible, without singling out one group or another; while still trying to make a game for everyone to enjoy. Thing is, you can't please everyone, and people will complain about the littlist thing they can find; "When I click the button, my character moves .00000000000004 micrometers to the left. It's ruining gameplay." Try and do something innovative, and people say "Well I want it to be like XYZ game!" It's a no win situation

 

BRAVO!

 

I am glad someone finally had the spine to point out the Elephant in the room.

[RocNessMonster]

I'd like to know which genres of gaming have evolved. FPS games are down from 12 weapons of various wackiness to now two weapons max that are just boring. You're gonna bring up Skyrim? Sorry that's not new Ultima 4 was doing living breathing world decades ago. If anything gaming has devolved to allow the brain dead jocks to feel special about themselves once they learn the real world doesn't give two ***** about their success in high school football

[mokkh]

Sure!

 

Tracking/BH quests where you have to research/tail your target and find the right time to strike or capture them. Tail you target, track them down etc etc..

(FE has this)

Is a kill quest.

 

 

PUZZLES! (SWTOR has a few but its mostly just in raids) DDO did this GREAT btw. All kinda of puzzles in that game. TSW is suppose to involve a lot of this as well.

 

Massively multi-player puzzles? You're bringing up things in old games, that's not ground-breaking by your own definition.

 

LIVE DYNAMIC EVENTS!

How hard could this be? I like the Rakghoul thing sure, but its static, and one day we will wake up, and it will just disappear.

 

The word dynamic means that it will change states... like disappearing for example.

 

UO had entire cities INVADED by undead armies, with boss mobs controlled by REAL people, who roleplayed the part and everything. Hell they had QUESTS that were like this, with riddles and clues and all kinda of crap.

 

So did EQ with its GM events, but again you're bringing up features of previous releases.

 

CRAFTNG! Why don't we have quests involving crafting? You would be surprised how many folks would like this. Going out and finding rare minerals or materials, meeting buy orders etc.

 

This is in SWtOR.

 

I know with limited interfaces like the Keyboard and mouse its tough to innovate, but other genres have done it, why not MMOs?

 

I dont just mean quests btw. I talk about a lot of concepts that have grown stale, or been over used.

 

In short, none of your suggestions are groundbreaking by any stretch of the imagination, the MMO is dependent on active participation by other people, centered around single-player and/or co-operative combat. Expecting something brand new every year without actually contributing to its development seems juvenile on its face. Lastly, there have been no real advancements in FPS from the Wolfenstein era other than the insertion of cinematics and overly glossy character skins. Sure, the physics rendering has improved by it is merely an expounding on previous tech, not a reinvention, i.e. the same rocket launcher physics I loved from Doom still exists at the core of any CoD explosion.