With the exception of subscription fees (and even those can be skirted around,) EVE Online avoids all of those problems.

#2 has been addressed, even in WoW (although not wholesale). Instantiated areas, sometimes cleanly meshed with the regular world, can phase through generations. You enter the area, and it seamlessly moves you to a part of the server where the dragon has already been slain, and the world is at peace -- or the armies of undead have taken over after all of your quests to undermine the human government, and now everything is in ruin.

Sure, some games are not executing on this idea in the best manner, but it's the best solution to deal with a static world.

I'd say City of Heroes does a fair job at getting around number 1 with the mentoring/sidekicking mechanic.

And Warhammer's public quests is also a step in the right direction.

Tanks holding aggro is classic D&D. It's also in Lord of the Rings, remember when Boromir is protecting the hobbits? That's a tank holding aggro. There's other examples in Lord of the Rings too, the final battle (the name escapes me) features a tank holding aggro.

As far as grouping goes, it gets easier in WoW. It's fairly clear that Blizzard wants you at the level cap quickly so that you can in fact group with other people. And the class/race mix requirements have been relaxed somewhat in the newest expansion so that you can more easily group with a variety of people.

Button lock is definitely a problem, in fact it's one of the main reasons I keep leaving these games. The game gets reduced to cooldowns and you do miss all of the great combat that they are trying to put out there. I sure hope it gets fixed somehow someday.

The most common and stressful part of being a gamer is becoming bored with a game or finging out that your brand new game is a bust (Two Worlds ring a bell?). Playing WoW lets me get my gaming fix on a regular basis without spending sixty dollars every two weeks on a game that is simply a gamble (plus I dont have online console, so games like Left 4 Dead where the real meat of the game is about the online play is kinda wasted money). There isnt much room to complain about subscription fees when the cost comparison of fees vs. new game every two to four weeks, puts me at a financial positive.

The most common and stressful part of being a gamer is becoming bored with a game or finging out that your brand new game is a bust (Two Worlds ring a bell?). Playing WoW lets me get my gaming fix on a regular basis without spending sixty dollars every two weeks on a game that is simply a gamble (plus I dont have online console, so games like Left 4 Dead where the real meat of the game is about the online play is kinda wasted money). There isnt much room to complain about subscription fees when the cost comparison of fees vs. new game every two to four weeks, puts me at a financial positive.

mr.e I dont think its the cost of the monthly fee that is the problem...atleast for me I think tom gets at it well when he discusses the "guilt" of the fee. I feel obligated. I'd rather pay once and forget about it, that way i dont feel obligated to pay. or like im wasting money if I dont pay...

I agree that MMOGs are broken, but the only point I really agree with is static worlds, and to a much lesser extent, payment models.

MMOGs have a problem that other kinds of games don't--they need a huge infrastructure to run. Thus, you can't really have a one-time payment model, if you need to spend a million or more a month on a datacenter and bandwidth. Also, these games are horribly complex to write, and cost upwards of $20 mil, and I bet closer to $40-50 nowadays. You can't even sell enough boxes to break even. I agree that subscriptions cater to the more hardcore gamer. Microtransactions might be OK, but have to be done right. The other options are pay-by-usage and ad-supported.

Static worlds are certainly the big problem, and this is where someone needs to find innovation. But the problem with innovating is that it usually fails many times before it succeeds. And if it takes $20-40 mil per shot, who's going to take that risk, especially when it's not your money but some group of investors? We need to have games cost about $5-10 mil before we'll see improvement. And in doing this, maybe they'll solve the other problems you cited.

Subscription Fees: One alternative is the Guild Wars model of one-time per-expansion fees rather than a recurring one. But it has its disadvantages as well: you'd need rapid release cycles to keep up the same level of income, people will feel like they're overpaying if they're just starting out and have to buy a bunch of 'old' stuff as well, driving up the starting cost, and you can't discount the old stuff too quickly or people will shy away from the new stuff if they know it's going to become cheap before too long.

Aggro: I'm not sure if anything can really be done here either. The AI has to go through some kind of decision-making process to decide who to attack, and players will figure that out and min/max it no matter what you do. If you make it random, then you have to make every class equally capable of tanking or a lot of people are going to be pissed off when they get one-shotted for absolutely no reason. (AC's was semi-random, I think, with enemies often wandering off to attack someone else nearby for no apparent reason, but players could generally hold their own.)

Playing with friends: Like the commenters above mention, some games help keep you close together in levels, but it's a lot harder to solve the social aspects, like when a friend gets sucked up into a guild that's always keeping them busy and discouraging them from wasting their time with some non-guild scrub. Not that I'm bitter or anything...

The Guild Wars payment is probably not possible for a lot of games. It works for them because all content is instanced, and run peer-to-peer among its players. The only shared infrastructure is a social area, which is probably cheap enough to suck up into the box sales.

Phantasy Star Universe has a fairly nice way of getting groups made in a chat-room like joining system. plus it's great if ur playing on xbox live to have instant voice communication. each dungeon is on a private server so it's harder to kill-steal. and it relies on how u position ur char and if your weapon hits the monster. some might call it too simple, but each weapon only has one or two special moves. but you have a pallet of weapons you can easily switch between, and it beats cooldowns on 50 different spells/special movies/items/mounts/cooldown quickeners. and, having only 3 classes really, even then, it's still fairly open to similar classes being able to finish a dungeon. now it still relies on a subscription. and im not sure about aggro. but i find it's a nice break from the usual MMO drudgery.

a problem i have with MMOs is that for a genre that's supposed that's supposed to aid in making friends. it doesnt. maybe i havnt done it right, but it seems alot of the conversations are more about the weapons trading than say politics, war (the real ones), or life. when i first started playing MMOs, i thought they would be games/chat rooms. but really, like in normal chat rooms, u have no clue who is AFK or just ignoring you. everyone is so busy getting the elite, epic, epitimy of evisceration weapon to sell it that they -have NO time- for that human interaction bull. unless u got something worth trading.

Ad supported? I'm gonna stop playing of there's a big sign in the middle of the epic dragons cave that says "drink pepsi"

5. Subscriptions. Yeah, this is broken, but it's also where the funding for all that content comes from. Lose the recurring revenue, and you will lose the content, and wind up with a pure PvP game, or pure grind hack-and-slash game.

4. Aggro. I don't think this is such a big design problem. It's just a lazy approach to motivating people paying attention in combat. Of course when a gang of players attacks a single foe, the foe has to attack someone at any given moment unless it's all AOEs, but aggro isn't necessarily the answer.

3. D&D Online tried to implement a more action-oriented game. Didn't work out too well, so maybe that's not really what the world wants (not that DDO didn't make many other problems for itself). But I do think the row-of-skill-buttons approach is more designer laziness.

2. Earth & Beyond couldn't solve the static world problem per episode -- bosses and minions would respawn in the usual way -- but they had planned to turn the game world on its head from episode to episode, which they originally specced out for every 2 weeks. If they had managed to maintain that kind of schedule (admittedly unrealistic, but they were sabotaged to a large extent by management) they might have at least given a stronger impression of the world changing over time.

1. City of H/V and a few other games have allowed upward and downward leveling for particular quests or missions, but while those were laudable efforts, they don't really solve the main problem you're pointing out. Clearly more work needs to be done to allow this to happen.

My dog can make a list of flaws. No skill to do that. Provide valid fixes for what you "think" is broken. Since you can't, the article is pointless.

5. I've read a lot about this one and I agree that the monthly fee system is completely broken. That is the biggest hurdle for me to play a MMO. A few ideas I've read that might work could be microtransactions instead of a monthly fee. I remember someone suggesting a combination of a monthly fee and micro transactions but I can't remember how it would work.

4. As long as MMOs are built on dice rolls and stats over action this one is here to stay imo. The other side of the arguement is that I bet healing or support classes would be unplayable if there wasn't a way to divert attention from them.

3.That screenshot, I think I had a nightmare like that once. That kind of min/max is why I avoid end game raids.

2.Good point, the only idea that comes to mind right now would be playing on shards on the server and whomever does the big deed first has it stay that way for a few weeks or certain quests will alter the world for a select period of time.

1.This would require a MMO that doesn't have leveling period, however in this generation of MMOs I don't think that would be possible.

I had a bit to say in response:

http://www.brokentoys.org/2009/01/28/answering-tom-chick-five-easy-pieces-and-one-snide-one/

(pimped manually since I don't think this supports trackbacks)

I enjoyed the article and this blog, Tom, so don't take this the wrong way. But I love how on every occasion you made no actual suggestions on how to fix the problems, but still included a "what needs to be done to fix it" part of the article. Perhaps intentionally?

Subscription fees do not cover costs, really. The total cost for Blizzard since 2004 (salaries, maintenance, etc) was 200 million. (As per their Analysts Day). So 50 million a year. Basically, 1.5 months of North American Subs (only). Rest is operating profit. The other countries income is pure profit, and so is 10.5 months of sub fees from NA.

Lets toy with their numbers some more. With 11.5 million active subscribers, that is about 575 million from the box sales alone (not including people who bought it who aren't active). There is plenty of profit in box sales by themselves. Now add the first expansion (with the same number of users) and the newest one, and hey, Blizzard is doing fine.

The Sub fee is a lie!

Take a look around for Jumpgate: Evolution

while this blog was put together well and written very well, you just talked about the same 5 issues any MMO vet will tell you about, this is basically taking information that everyone knows and saying it over again without adding any constructive feedback as to how to resolve them. if you're gonna talk about flaws of MMOs talk about things most people wouldn't think about being a flaw

check out wizard101, too. it doesnt have any of these issues.

(ok, that's a bit of a stretch. it actually answers 4 out of the 5. the game is still mostly static, cept for pvp of course.)

Nice blog article, I mean troll. Next time I'd have some good commentary to go along with your complaints, rather than "I don't know what to do."

Sure, WoW is broken (in so many ways). That being said, it's pretty freakin' amazing when it's good. All that math that you're talking about. Thank Blizzard for that. I'm so glad the only rolling I have to do nowadays is for loot.

I don't take issue with any of the points, I take issue with the claim that repurposing 10-year-old topics or poking at a sacred cow to generate clickviews is in any way audacious. I was hoping at least one of the 5 reasons might be something new. Oh well.

I'm fine with subscription fees. I think the current $15-a-month standard could be toned down, though. If I were paying $5 a month I'd cheerfully keep certain MMOs on retainer just to be able to do events with friends a few times a month. Or hell, even just talk to them if they're sufficiently addicted. Neither do the next two "problems" particularly bug me. I'd be interested to see other approaches, but those are mechanics that, on the whole, I like.

#s 2 and 1, though - those are killer. The static world issue is exactly why I don't want to see licensed MMOs (you'll never get to do anything genuinely heroic like the characters in the original story) and a big part of why I still prefer singleplayer RPGs and wish studios would quit switching over to MMO production. You simply don't have a real impact. You're a cog in the machine. That's not all that exciting. (And respawn issues can be a pain in entirely other ways.) This *has* been addressed, though, in some MMOs - it's called instanced content. The major story events (or even all of it) happen in your own private version of the world and have whatever impact they have. Sometimes permanent ones. WoW's new expansion uses a similar technique to (apparently) seamlessly alter the game world for people who've done certain events. It's one of the things I'm looking forward to seeing.

Unfortunately, there's a good chance that instancing solutions to #2 will exacerbate problem #1. Another hoop for your friends to jump through before they can play with you. Level-related issues have been solved in some games, mind you. People have mentioned the mentoring/sidekicking system from CoH, and there are similar systems in other games like EQII. Guild Wars simply had a really early level cap and most of the game content was beyond it. CoH even recently introduced possibly the most perfect solution of all, at least for two people - a system where two characters can universally share all experience gains equally, regardless of location, being online, etc. Unfortunately, the level/gear/questing disparity isn't the only thing getting in the way of playing with your friends - or even the most problematic one.

The real problem? Servers. Nearly every MMO out there runs multiple servers - usually several. In WoW's case, hundreds. And every one of them that does so ties your characters to a particular server they're stored on. Which means that if you start playing the game independently of your friends, there's a real good chance you'll wind up on a different server than they are, and then you will very likely *never* be able to play that MMO with them. Ever. Sure, sometimes they offer paid character transfers, and if you haven't set down roots on your server and *all* your friends are on a specific other server, that's an option. But that's never been my experience. Hell, when I first got into WoW (at launch), almost everyone I knew was also playing WoW, but almost every single one of them was playing on a different server than any of the others or me. Some of those people I'm no longer in touch with because it became impossible to communicate with them. They were always in WoW, but not my WoW. The only solution I've ever seen to this problem? Guild Wars, EVE Online. Both games are, if not single-server under the hood, at least one shared world for everyone. But that's structurally impossible for many MMOs.

Darkfall. (If it ever comes out)

I really liked this article. I agree with most of it, even the not knowing best way to fix part. Not a big subscription fee fan so I went with Guild Wars. I can play when I want or take a couple month break (if i choose) with no fees to feel guilty about. There's also no permanent world or server you're stuck on. Couldn't play with my friend's cause my WOW charracter was created on a different server... That Blew!

You've provided a bunch of problems and zero solutions. It's amazing.

From the top.
5 "Subscriptions suck! But they work! Waaaa!" Ignore that subscription models are a valid method of off-setting the massive costs incurred in making a server that can hold thousands of people at once run.

4 "Aggro isn't very realistic and it forces gamers into specific roles!" Classes force gamers into roles too. And you know what else isn't very realistic? Riding a dragon around.

3 "Pressing the same button all the time doesn't let you watch the pretty battle animations! Also I hate maths". Yeah, except that once you press the same button with the same timing enough you can do that crap without thinking and watch all the battle animations you like. There's your solution, right there. And about the math - it's an RPG. Other games with maths... DnD. The Final Fantasy series. Any RPG you can think of. Deus Ex. Any game with weapon stats.

2 "Static worlds make me feel insignificant! Also I don't know how to fix it!" It's called phasing. WoW uses it to some extent. So do other MMOs.

1 "My friends all want to play the same class as me also we're not the same levels so MMOs suck this is totally MMOs fault and not mine". Wrong. Your friends suck, you suck and maybe someone should bite the bullet and play another class, level together and actually hang out. You know, like friends do.

Long post inc!

With the exception of the monthly subscription model the game you are looking for is the upcoming mmo Darkfall.

Agro – A monster notices you at a realistic range. (Line of sight.) No more near-blind mobs. (Oh, they can hear and sometimes smell you too.) Also, there is no aggro management or taunting like in other mmo's such as wow. It's also worth mentioning that the monsters in Darkfall use an advanced script and function more like quake bots unlike any monster you've ever fought in an mmo before. They will run around all over the place, hit and run, get some distance on you to launch ranged attacks, call its friend of flee. It's like fighting another player.

Button lock - Darkfall is FPS combat. There's no auto target, auto attack, stand in one spot and clicky clicky the buttons on your hotbar when their cool-down is up. Think Morrowind or Oblivion. You aim your arrows and lead your target, you swing your sword.

Static world – Clans can build cities and control large swaths of territory. Clans can lay siege to each others cities and vie for world dominance. Maybe one guild will have a powerful empire for a year or more and then like the fall of Rome it will crumble. (Refer to Eve Online and how corporations wage war for different portions of space.) The players make the content and shape the world.

Monsters can go extinct after they are wiped out in one area, and then they will begin to repopulate another part of a map. Some monsters roam around in packs on no preset path. Some monsters will start banding together, form camps and then begin raiding player settlements. You and your clan might kill a powerful monster in a cave and then it will be gone forever. If more people go into the cave after you they will never find it again – you killed it. Of course some other monsters might start to move in there some day. In Darkfall the players control the world.

Grouping – While some races are hostile to others, anyone can play with anyone they want to. The players have the freedom to do whatever they want.

There's a lot more, such as open pvp, full loot, monsters have realistic loot, (if a monster has a sword you can loot the sword and bears to not magically have axes inside their bodies, they have pelts and meat.) You can construct a variety of ships and wage war on the open seas, be a pirate, be a mercenary, be a merchant, be a solider or maybe even a great leader with multiple cities under your control.

Darkfall features the largest world for an mmo ever created and everything in it was hand placed and designed. No radar so you can hide and sneak up on people and no EpIC LoOtz so player skill will decide the battle. (And not having gear that it takes a long time to grind for makes the full loot concept work.) Darkfall has no levels and no classes, instead there are hundreds of skill you can learn and you level up those skills by doing them. Want to become an expert swords man? Pick up a sword and use it. Don't like swords any more and want to focus on magic? Stop using your sword and the skill will slowly decay over time. I could go on and on.

There are a lot of people out there who still think it's vaporware but all you have to do is a quick search on Google and you'll see that the game is obviously real, player beta is well underway and there are a lot of leaks to confirm this. (In addition to all the other media available of the game.)

So if you're burned out on mmos and looking for something different, Darkfall might be just the thing you've been looking for. That is, if you like to pvp.

Hey, great comments, guys (well, for the most part). Thanks for weighing in. Keep them coming!

I confess it's a rudimentary list, and there are certainly exceptions. Which is part of why I wrote it. As an MMO dilettante, I'm always happy to hear about the exceptions to the rules. Thanks for mentioning those specifics, Miramon, which are unfamiliar to me.

I apologize for the slightly trollish tone. Be sure to click on the link Scott Jennings posted up there; his is a worthy rebuke. Great point about servers, malk; it's always disheartening to discover that a friend is playing the same game, but you're in entirely separate dimensions. I love the mental image I get from Halibut pointing out AC2's random aggro. Now there's an interesting solution.

It's funny that I keep forgetting about Guild Wars when I talk about MMOs. I love that game, and I have a mental block when it comes to lumping it in with other MMOs simply because it fixes so many things that I feel are broken. Also, I really like LOTRO's solution to the static world (it uses various slights of hand to progress along the familiar Lord of the Rings narrative arc). Based on what Mystery wrote, it sounds like WoW has come a long way with the later content (I've barely ever been past the Barrens...).

Zygote, great write-up of Darkfall's promise. I look forward to seeing how it turns out, but I'm also reminded of Zhiroc's comment above that the problem with innovation is that it often goes hand-in-hand with failure. I can't help but worry that Darkfall is going to be one of those failures. :(

Darkfall innovation?

Darkfall is more or less an updated UO; and it is everything that UO2 would have been.

One game: Darkfall

Will solve all the problems.

Tom,

Yeah, I understand your concerns. I guess we'll both know in a month! (Unless it's delayed again. GRRRR!) Something to drool over if you haven't seen it yet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1k3hsv0tfU&feature=related

The thing is whether it's the sort of game you're into or not we need mmo's like DF to try new things and allow the genre to grow. To many mmos out there are still stuck in the same mold we've been playing since the original EQ. (Eve, while not for everyone, is a notable exception.) In addition there's some other games that look promising coming out soon like Fallen Earth that are trying to give players a little something different.

More than anything I think people are burned out on the grind. Grind your levels, grind for gear, grind for rep and that cool new mount, grind honor for pvp for more gear. Grind through the same quests just like everyone else. New expansion! Grind some more. While games like Wow have certainly come up with some creative ways to grind, its still grinding and eventually people will get sick of it and want something new.

If all the new mmos coming out have nothing to offer other than the same old grind-based mechanics with a new coat of paint this will ultimately hurt the industry in general. People will get burned out, stop playing, money will stop flowing, games will die, (TR anyone?) investors will stop investing and it'll be all over.

I think that in the post wow world mmo's will not find the greatest success trying to emulate wow, but instead by going against the mold and not falling into the same five mmo failings mentioned in the article. (Although I'm all for subscriptions personally.) I also think they will reduce the grind and offer more in depth social experience than most mmos do today.

Or I could be completely wrong! Time will tell as always.

Tom Chick! Always a pleasure to read your doses of Truth!

I am SO happy I came across this post - I am the CEO of a new gaming software StartUp in New York, and we've developed some proprietary technology that we're hoping will kill off some of your major issues here.

Let me just say, we're long-time gamers and the frustrations you air here are almost too kindly phrased (although I know... it's a public place).

I'd love to talk more about these issues with you, maybe see if what we're doing makes sense to you.

I'd greatly value your opinion... can't think of anyone better to talk to about fixing the world's games.

Couldn't find your Email anywhere... Would love to hear from you - Jonathan.Mo@GSD.VG

Wow... foolish of me... I see your email now...

Ya know, I have to say, I've never thought of these types of games in the way that you've stated. Actually, it makes a lot of sense. But, as you've stated, I also know of no way to fix these problems. All I can do is post a link to a FREE MMORPG, it's called Shaiya, from http://www.aeriagames.com/ It may address the issue of having to pay, but, alas, it still has many of the same inadaquecies that you've mentioned previously. As well as having to pay for certain items to enhance gameplay. Otherwise, it's FREE. The only other drawback, you have to create an account...But, it is fun to play.

Tom, always a pleasure to read your articles. Game On!!

@Jonathan Mo:

Uh, if you scroll up the page and look in the top left, you can see Tom's email address: editor@fidgit.com

You can't eliminate subscription fees. You clearly have no idea how much it costs to maintain the data streams, bandwidth, and personnel necessary to keep an MMO operational. Unlike 1 time paying games the servers are all hosted by the company that made the game. That's what makes them MMOs: Everyone is all on the same set of servers. Since these servers are host to thousands if not millions of players they take an incredible amount of bandwidth and maintenance, not to mention customer support and design teams. You lose your monthly revenue stream and you lose all of that. No more patches. Broken classes and abilities stay that way or take years to fix. No more customer support. Character bugged? Tough luck, roll a new one. No more added content. What you bought is what you get, take it or leave it.

Static worlds can only be combated with instances, and they have been for the most part. Instanced are specific to your group or raid and therefor changes made to that instance only affect you.

Agroe is how we walk around without being dismantled by every mob 20 levels above us because we needed to move through a hazardous high level zone.

The only point I agree on are skills. Clicking and waiting is excessively boring, but that doesn't apply to combat at all. Ever heard of binding your keys? You don't need to stare at your hot bars. Darn you have to wait for your cool down timers, but if they're short then by all means key mash. If they're long then glance occasionally. If you spend all day glaring at your timers then maybe you need to re-evaluate the way you play, or why you play for that matter.

ya every game out there has its pro & cons, MMOs could be fixup

#5 FEES - PRO this is EZ 15$ for WOW is ok i would like to see it free / FREE CON = it would get so hacked and get like Diablo and other free games that it be like why play it? this is true with all the free online games almost all PVP games i have seen have been hack to bell

#4 Aggro not lot you can do here AI can only do: "IF x does Z = 1-10 randon" in all games even if they could do more then it would be a real person only way this could ever be if in any game is if you let player be the monsters to

#3 Button Lock: this also i put in with ya every one loves god mode: PRO you just click and its dead CON: why turn it into just another game point and click if you have cool downs then you have to use your head think about what you are doing. IN REAL LIFE COMBAT if you hold the trigger you run out of ammon on gum if you do that your with break the gun it it will not fire if you are boxing if you try to get a KO at start the other guy will 99.99% get the KO or TKO so cool downs go is just trying to bring real life into the game so its not really a CON unless you can use your head

#2 static worlds again in all games some do it better than others true but blizzard or any game would have to 24/7 patch it would have to be WOW is not to bad it could add more but more you do the more it breaks all games are like this so real thing here is do you wonna play or load patches all the time

#1 i dont know what game your talking about here i play with same people all the time on all the games i play and we still play Xwing vs TIE by IP: Address also a level 1 player cant keep up with level 80 so why try what is fun about WOW is you are playing with others but they dont have to do what you are doing Guild Wars your in a group and your stuck going from ponit A to ponit B if i wonna do that ill turn on the TV play Solo on the PS2 or XBOX in wow you can help out another player or take his kills i just wish you could pick race & faction

PS: MMOs are not to be Played as normal games if you wonna normal PVP or PVE then get that type of a game MMOs is D&D on the computer why i like them and is Based on DICE not hack & slash like zelda or have god mode on nothing can kill you / never run out of bullets like the cowboys on gunsmoke

This forum post reads like a huge bunch of whining.

What a fail rant. How can you moan about things and then offer no plausible solution other than 'I don't like this, someone sort it out plzzz!'

haha. obviously the author of this has only played WoW. which is a disaster in itself. But also provided no solution whatsoever to any of the "problems" he listed it. What a pointless article.

As interesting as that all is- and I agree with most of it- you offer no solutions. If you have no solutions, then please don't have a header entitled "What needs to be done to fix it:" followed by... nothing substantial at all.

What a waste of time. All whining... no solutions. There are a lot of issues with games and the world in general for that matter, but why write about them if you don't have a hint of a solution.

Yes! I totally, totally agree with the points in the article. I've been thinking the same for a couple of years and been amazed that I haven't heard anyone else make the same comments. As much as I want to enjoy MMOs, they reduce everything to an exercise in statistics. I think the only answer will be when someone creates an MMO when gameplay isn't so fundamentally driven by numbers.

I actually would love to play a game that was so deep and rewarding that it kept me coming back for more on a regular basis - and for that I would pay a subscription without qualms. The subscription issue is all about the quality of the game, and MMOs are nowhere close to providing enough value.

As for the future, this is a situation ripe for disruptive innovation - I guarantee that some little independent studio is going to come up with something way better than the current mould of MMO and it will completely take over from WoW. People will be looking back saying 'can you believe we spent so much time and money on that crap?'

This sounds more like scrub QQ than journalism. If you are like this in game, I'm not surprised you can't find groups. Of course it's difficult to manage your cool downs when you faceroll the keyboard. L2P or quit paying, it's your right as a consumer.

In reguards to #1, it might be worth looking up information on Final Fantasy XI's Level Sync system

I agree that Guild Wars does a pretty good job at solving these issues. This is going to sound like a fanboy rant but it's the truth rather then me trying to defend it.

5.No subscription fee, but all areas outside towns and outposts are instanced. It sounds bad at first, but when you realise you only need to see a general population when you want to team up for questing/trading etc, what does it really matter? Do I miss some idiots spamming world chat or stealing mobs? No. It allows you and your team to affect the world outside the towns; enemies stay dead for one. For better or for worse you rely on the group you take with you out into the open. It really is a team based game - not being in the same area as your buddies is not going to happen.

4. The mechanic of aggroing is still there, however you aren't reduced to the usual big hp tank to front/big dmg to back/monk. If your team is good enough, or you pick your skills well you can go as all casters if you want. As an example, there are also skill sets that can make mages better tanks then warriors.

3. It does a much better job at keeping you in the action - the pace seems far higher. There's only 8 skill slots so you pick your skill sets before going out of towns. Again sounds bad, but it serves to keep things simple, and you can always change things around when you are back in a town. Cool downs are generally far quicker then other MMOs I've played. You have a primary and secondary profession (the secondary can be changed at any time later in the game) which allows you to mix up what skills you can bring. Your attributes are handled very easily - you can change those up and down when you are in a town. So no worries about skill trees.

2. Kinda talked about that in 5, it still is a problem though, you see many people gaining the same quest reward.

1. This is what GW does the best. As the max level anyone can get to is 20 (and you get there quite quick), teaming up with people is easy. When you complete a mission you are usually transported to the next or near it. So by and large the people in the same outpost as you will have done what needs to be done, and even then there are only a few specific points in the campaign that need to be completed.
Not having to grind levels might sound bizarre to some but there are still plenty of things to do without (in my opinion) the most tedious part of an MMO. The lv20 cap also makes things fair in PvP - no one person/team is stronger than another EXCEPT if they pick the right build to trounce the other, or they simply play better.

Don't get me wrong it still needs its improvements, but it's nice to see atleast one MMO trying to solve these issues.

I agree with pretty much all of your points. But I'm one of those people that hasn't been playing MMOs very long. I resisted even trying any MMOs for a long time if only because when I heard my friends talking about WoW or Everquest, it sounded like they were working a second job. But I finally went ahead last fall and signed up for free trials of WoW and LoTRO. I think one of the things that surprised me was that while I was thinking PC RPGs had essentially been abandoned by developers, in truth they all just migrated to Online games. Quite to my surprise I found that I might as well be playing a single player game as trying to group was such a hassle. I'm too shy to solicit help from strangers and the people I knew who played both games were spread across the four winds of server and level separation. But I could have a good time playing Solo where there were well written chains of quests and interesting environments to explore.

Ultimately I dumped WoW and subbed to LoTRO taking advantage of their Mines of Moria upgrade offer. When it came down to it they played so much alike that LoTRO's more sophisticated graphics and interesting setting were the tie-breaker. WoW felt extremely refined, but almost too much so. The universe and the environments were so transparently engineered to facilitate gameplay that it started to make me nauseous. At least Middle Earth was packed with locations invented for something beyond quest-vending.

Of your list there are two things that bother me the most. First is the static nature of the world, a rather existential problem for the whole genre. One which had seemed to promise a dynamic and evolving experience more than anything else, but for technical reasons struggles to perpetuate even the illusion of progress. Others have mentioned instanced content and other ways developers attempt to jigger this into the experience, but it remains one of those open secrets we all pretend not to car about.

The second, and imminently more fixable problem is button lock. I don't know which game came up with the mechanic of cooldowns for ever single combat skill, but it's a travesty and, despite some of the other comments here, not something that should be an innate feature of the genre. One of the most basic issues is that you can't win fights against anything but the weakest foes without spamming a variety of combat powers in repetition. In every offline RPG I've ever played regular attacks, while not flashy, were usually enough to kill your average rat or boar of wolf. Not so in an MMO. If you go out in the work thinking that way you'll die. And god forbid you're soloing and accidentally get two rats attacking at once! Even all the special moves in the world might not save you then! And if you want to say that I need power smack and heavy whomps to get by, well, let me assign those as my default attack as I level up and learn skills (speaking of: screw this trainers bullshit. I not only have to grind experience, but find some yahoo, pay money and occasionally complete a chain of quests to do something fundamental like increase combat skills? That is a real pain in the ass for no good reason).

If we're so married to this plurality of combat skills it could still be implemented better. When FFXII came out people use to talk about its MMO-inspired combat mechanic, but if that's true, I'd like to know which MMOs actually feature such a system. I'd love if LoTRO let me automate combat in such a fashion. Let me stare at skill buttons and think up chains of attacks in a planning menu in town, not while in the field where it's to the point I've never seen what half my attack animations look like. Even if you insist that I should have to time things, come up with a system like the Witcher where the indicator is on the pointer itself as I'm clicking the enemy. That way I can see what's around me, what I'm attacking, if there's anyone nearby, if my heath is dipping, if my power is drained, etc, cause I'm not staring at a bar of hot keys playing whack-a-mole with my abilities.

FFXI has fixed #1 with a concept called Level Sync, this will reduce a higher level character to that of the person you want to play with. In a party it reduces the entire party to that level. This way you can always go backward to play with a friend. While this isn't always exciting for the highest level characters it certainly will allow you to hang out which is really the point of MMO's anways.

etting around number 1 with the mentoring/sidekicking mechanic."
They also allow a "superfriend" type thing where you can pick one friend that will level up with your character even when they are not there...

A little out of topic question. I love the way the hud looks, on the picture on problem nr 3. Anyone know what addons are used?

Darkfall uses some other cind of NPC AI- Looking forvard to try it. :)

I find that the fee to play is my down fall. My wife asks why i need to pay to play a game that eats up a lot of my time. I have no real answer and thats not good enough.Thats the reason i quit playing mmo's,to escape the wife aggro.

This post is about what type of games you like to play MMOs and not broken they could do with fixing but the reason why im willing to pay for a game is less to no hacking of the game guild wars is for is for the people that like to play solo WOW is players doing what ever they wanna do that your not stuck in a normal game like guild wars is WOW is more than just do quest you skills to work on SKINNING and COOKING even FISHING yes it take lot of time to work on WOW charaters i rather work at some thing than be GOD mode cool downs i think is good for games it makes them more real than games you can just spam a action and in WOW groups are EZ to fine but most of it where you can solo the game and level with out getting stuck and group only if need to for most every one that goes off and play a WOW killer plays for like month but they come back to WOW and as for the monsters never dieing they respawn that is no real big deal most of time you move on and never do the quest again i did not like GW cuzz you have to group to play some time i just like to goof off in a game and raid or fish or try to work on the skill and WOW may be static but you can play it 1000 ways and level but if your stuck in chain quests all the time that like playing ZELDA or LINK just click to swing a sword to fire a spell END GAME and start over

Silly post, author does not know much about MMOs and is obviously used to short flashy single-player games.

5. Subscription payments match the cost structure of game provider (ISP fees, support personell, electricity bill). If you want to try different games, there is month-by-month subscription. If anything locks you into game, it is time to learn the game, level and get items.

4. Yes aggro-holding is a role to play. It is a roleplaying game, remember? Aggro radius in every game, mmo or single; rpg, strategy or fps.

3. Button lock occurs only in solo play in early levels. After that, you also gotta stare at own healthbar, monster healthbar, teammates & actions they take, pets, adds. Yes it distracts from animations, which is good b/c animations get boring after first couple hundred times you see them.

2. Static world makes the game last longer. Worked fine in Diablo II. Besides, you can always have PvP land-control battles, the outcome of which remains persistent. Eve, Warhammer, Anarchy Online all have that.

1. "Can't play with other level/race/class". The author apparently does not know he can have more than one character in an MMO. Nor is he familiar with the joy of helping a weaker friend through a tough spot. Heck, maybe he does not have friends.

Just a comment on #2 and WOW. WOW has actually gone further than just instancing through its new "phasing" technology. It's still in the rudimentary stages, but shows promise.

The best example I can think of is if you can get access to a brand new death knight character. Do so and try some of their special starting area. Almost every time your character completes a quest or 2, time advances and the *entire* world around you changes, based on your actions.
Old characters disappear, a peaceful farm becomes charred killing fields, a flotilla of human ships appear on the horizon, you can no longer see junior death knights (other players) doing things you've already done, etc.

I've heard this has also been used to make certain key characters in major cities disappear once certain quest chains are done and they are confronted and unmasked as evil.

Article about it:
http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/08/25/phasing-is-the-new-instancing/

Christ look at all these junkies here in the comments, hooked on their product and coming up with all sorts of sad excuses for their buying into the whole racket. And no, intelknight, when I think of "playing a role" in an "role playing game" being "the aggro guy" is not what comes to mind, at all. What about a highwayman, holding people up on the road for money? Nope, just "mobs" to kill, and then repeat, all for gear. You guys are so brainwashed by these tired old moth eaten mmo mechanics you can't even consider a game that would work differently. When you hear there's a new mmo you're already wondering what are the "dps" classes and "instances" and crap. It couldn't possibly work any other way.

Aggro/combat can be solved by looking at other real time games like RTS and FPS. FPS and RTS have advanced beyond the blind charge combat they originally were by allowing NPCs to do more than just attack and use fancier attacks. Nowadays, enemies are allowed to dodge, retreat, call for help, take cover, and otherwise act like intelligent mobs rather than mobile XP stations. In the same manner, some of the UI issues are a result of the basic reliance on systems that were never suited for open ended play like levels and the associated idea of accumulating more and more abilities.

As for subscriptions, I think it's a matter of publishers and developers seeing MMOs as goods and experiences - the mentioned idea of a theme park. However, MMOs (and any sort of game really that is intended to be supported in the long term) isn't a theme park. After all, you don't spend 20 hours a week in a theme park for a year straight. MMOs and what not are in fact services provided to a consumer. And it is this distinction that holds back ideas of what else could be done with money and time (ie subs or micropayments).

I don't think the issue is sub or micro. The issue is in how that money is spent and how it's perceived to be spent. With a sub, time not played is time wasted because whether you play or not, that money is gone. With micros, the general attitude is either nickel and diming to death or basically superficial and worthless items (a dollar for a piece of clothing that doesn't do anything). I think taking cues from say... the cable and cell phone industries that something -better- can be developed. Phone provides universally nowadays give you practically all the time you want - and most of them, if you don't use that time, it is rolled over for you (abit to a reasonable limit). Thus, the only waste is in the consumer buying more than they actually need and even then, they can usually still buy more minutes.

IntelKnight is correct, it really doesnt look like the author knows what he is talking about at all.

The SUB fee is a lie. There is no massive costs on internet traffic and maintenance.

I already said this (but many just skipped over it, so will say it again).

Blizzards TOTAL expenses since 2004 on ALL maintenance, ALL salaries, and all CS expenses is a tiny 200 Million. Thats 4 years.

Their annual full subscription 2008 revenue, at the current 2.5 million player mark (ish, North America), is 450 Million. So less than 6 months of JUST North American subs has covered their TOTAL EXPENSE for the past 4 years. Dont forget they have about another 9 million playes running around out there paying.

Don't be fooled that the sub fee is needed for "extreme" maintenance costs.

Subscriptions do not pay for development costs either. The box sales do.

If you mean to be taken seriously, you need to create an article that offers solutions, not just a bunch of fanboy whinging.

To Hawkeye Fierce: I have been playing Eve for 3 years. I must say, Eve really does have all of these problems in PvE. The key difference is most of the interesting bits of Eve are PvP in which most of these complaints do not apply. However, a lot of PvP situations involve button lock (or overview lock, same thing). Part of the problem is the range of combat; it's just hard to show lots of combat detail on every combatant in a 200km radius. I have hope that the UI overhauls will get around to increasing the utility of space view (like graphical velocity indicators, more visible damage graphics, and real EW effects) and decreasing the reliance on the overview sometime in the next year.

To Tom Chick: You should do a similar list for single player games. Honestly, ninety-nine percent of the stuff on the shelf nowadays holds no interest for me because of the prevalent game design tropes. Dragon's Lair for Dummies? That type of "game" is exactly why I haven't purchased a single player computer game in a long time. There still exist some games that don't require tooth-gnashingly large numbers of retries to get right but don't completely take the interactivity out of the interactive entertainment (Fantastic Contraption is a great example), but they're getting mighty thin on the ground.

Wouldn't your criticisms have more weight if you actually had some ideas about how to fix them, beyond, you know...just the one? And, if you don't really have any answers, aren't you just bitching?

Let me start by saying that I don't play MMOs. I tried Guild Wars, and hated the grind. I'm too cheap for WoW. I'm looking forward to seeing what some of the up and coming MMOs have to offer, especially Star Wars: The Old Republic, but I'm not holding my breath.

5) The problem: subscription fees

The solution: A one time fee, or a subscription. Not both. It is ridiculous to think that for me to get into WoW now, I would have to pay almost $100 for the games, and then have to pay $15 a month to play the game that I already payed for.

4) The problem: aggro

The solution: Don't make the enemy AI so obviously stupid. There is a real world precedent for the strongest one in the team to be a distraction, but at some point the enemy should figure out that they're being played.

3) The problem: button lock

The solution: Get rid of all the freakin' numbers already! You don't hear people in the military referring to anyone as an "E5 Soldier," they say "Sergeant." No one (well, outside of the geek community) says their health is down to 50%, they actually describe how they feel. And is it so much to ask for a minimalist approach to the HUD?

2) The problem: static worlds

The solution: Start with user generated content. I don't necessarily mean importing 3d models and textures, I just mean let the player actually build something. As far as the quests go, don't make them so easy. If it's something that people will have to team up to do, and takes them a very long time, then it's something they can be proud of. Especially if there was another group racing to do the same thing.

1) The problem: you can't play with the people you want to play with

The solution: Is this really a problem? Everyone I know that plays WoW is usually talking to their friends at work about the raid that they're going to do that night. In any case, the best way to make more advanced players want to group with new players is to have some sort of reward for it that can't be achieved any other way, just as teachers do in the real world.

Score one for that incisive analysis and criticism you and the other fuckballs were wanking over in that laughable symposium.

Web 2.0! It's about getting the comments section to prop up your half-assed musings!

EvE suffers all of these problems and then some

your just dulled by the fact you paying for the game like a zombie fanboi who doesnt wanna accept you feel for the hype like the nerd you are

i dont play mmorpgs because i am poor and mommy wont let me use her credit card (shes doesnt even have one omg when will she get a better job then burger king)

But as you can see I still gave my uneducated couch potatoe fixes to these problems in mmorpgs, (even though I fluked last weeks 8th grade spelling test) I felt My solutions to these 5 problems would not only change the real world and grant peace, but fix the undrusty of games I dont even own or play

What are people here whining that this article was pointless? Maybe I'm mistaken, but to me this is an entertainment site and not a news or review site.
And I was greatly entertained. ^^

EVE Online is the exception! Yes, monthly fee... otherwise.... amazing, non static, etc. Sad he had no experience/comments on this game. It is entirely different. I suggest checking it out folks! 14 day free trial! eveonline.com! I'm addicted

Excellent points Tom and replies.Enjoyed this read very much.

5) The problem: subscription fees

15 bucks a month is a problem? I used to spend x times that in 20 minutes at a bar. WoW and Eve-online are the cheapest vices I have ever had.

4) and 3) The problem: aggro and Button lock

You obviously don't raid at all and if you do your being carried. The mechanics have to be simple because the main point of what you are doing is COORDINATING MOVEMENT WITH 24 OTHER PEOPLE. In different parts of the world. With varying internet connections and Real Life distractions. Strafing sideways, moving in one direction while having your camera pointed in another direction jumping at the exact moment and all while keeping 24 people alive? My fingers are already contorted into disfigured knots.

Play the game at the next level and then tell me its simple.

2) The problem: static worlds

Get Wrath of the Lich King; it uses phasing technology to change the world as you progress. It's quite simply Awsome.

1) The problem: you can't play with the people you want to play with

I am sorry but there is no other way to say this: Stop sucking and people will play with you.

and 0) Stop writing stupid flame articles on subjects that you obviously don't know anything about.

Wow, that was clever. Using my screen name and trying to make me look dumb. Very original.

Here's a lesson for the whole internet:

If you can't say something nice...

5) Some MMOs especially after a few years really should be repackaged as stand alone multiplayer games that dont need a subscription or logging in. SWG and EQ 1 In particular, then you and your friends can camp play together, adventure together and relive the glory days anytime. To enter the more advanced content you either need to subscribe or buy the next box. This is after everyone has moved on several expansions already.

4) I still think aggro is weird actually. But cant think of any other way except to use some kind of stealth meter. If you stick to a shadow the shadow gives you a percentile chance to not be noticed, and all monsters in the area check once every few minutes. In broad daylight, well you deserve to get caught. I like playing clerics except when Im getting beaten up. Im perfectly happy to play support roles and not fight at all.

3) So true. Although theres often not much to see. Youll be looking at the nads of the Boss Monster, or watching the tanks backing him into a corner, not looking around at the lovely flowerbeds. I remember Raiding the Plane of Hate and never leaving the first room, because they would pull everything to us.

2) Static World are an issue but if the game had a Personal Nemesis or several of them that could help. I once played a cheap terrible medeival game that had the brilliant inclusion of allowing you to choose from several court ladies and attempt to over time woo her with jousts, gifts and conversation. She could be offended and ignore you or completely turn you down if you sucked, it was not a foregone conclusion that you could win her. Im still waiting for a game to have this option. A unique to you potential girlfriend/boyfriend. Between a consort, nemesis and some random quests that only you can do, SWG style, those go a long way.

1) Some MMOs have ways built in to Buddy System, but see #5.

#5 : I fail to see why a monthly subscription fee would be a problem, especially if more MMOs would offer free (limited time) trials. It's a problem newcomers to the industry have to solve for themselves, and most already got this idea.

#4 : Meh aggro. Not that much of an issue in EVE before, but it will be an issue in EVE after the new AI comes in. And I certainly hope that absolutely no form of aggro management will ever be implemented in EVE, with NPCs always going for the weakest point they can detect. So, um, not a problem.

#3 : Sort of a problem in most MMOs, especially EVE. But then again, I wouldn't really mind if we'd be playing in wireframe mode... or even text mode either, so... meh... not a problem for ME. For others, I guess. Not much you can do against it in EVE : Spreadsheets Online. Don't get me wrong, I love spreadsheets, yay.
One MMO that supposedly promises to fix that is Darkfall Online.

#2 : Oy, correct, big bad ugly issues. There's only SO many damsels in distress I can handle saving before I tell Zor (which one of them ?) that he can keep her (them?) for himself (themselves?) dammit now I broke my pronouns. The fact not even FW matters much, if at all, it's a dissapointment.
Infinity is a much-delayed MMO that promises to fix that, but I wouldn't expect much of a result in the near future.

#1 : So obviously not a problem for EVE.

Guild Wars has the solution to aggro:

Body Blocking. If I stand here, you can't. And it that's the only way to get over there, you can't go there. But if you shove me, I will slide away if I'm not resisting (afk) or don't have walls on my side.

Its officially not a true MMO, but other than a subscription fee it has every feature of an MMO... and now many MMOs don't have that... so... whatever...

Anyway, this massive, multiplayer, online game, has no aggro system. The melee toons have to blody block to keep mobs off of the ranged toons.

I've spent years playing monks in Guild Wars. That's the nearly no armor, no useful weapon, healing class. And the mob AI is designed to 'geek the healer first and hardest.'

We pull, and everything runs straight for me.

And suddenly the melee guys get in the way, make a wall, trip the archers, silence the casters, and so on... and... I live, get off my heals, and we continue.

Its kind of like when I play a cleric in table top DnD... :)

The "DM" in Guild Wars plays mean, but the game gives the characters the tools to fight back. We can block, the combat maps have obstructions we can hide behind, or use to form body walls, we can trip, disarm, silence, and so on...

But, so can the mobs. :)

City of Heroes - sidekicking.

Solves the problem of not being able to play with the people you want to play with.

When you group up but your levels don't match up, you can sidekick the lowbies, or the lowbies can do the opposite to the high levels. Your level gets set to one away from the other person, temporarily, and all your abilities and stats scale up or down to match.

Likewise XP scales to match. So if your level 11 toon joins a level 48 raid, you kill a level 50 boss, but you get XP as if that boss was level 13, while the level 48 raid member next to you gets XP as if that boss was level 50.

Loot also somewhat scales, but it's not fully perfect. Its meant to be, but there is a slight edge to being sidekicked, loot wise, and sometimes an edge to being dropped down (I can't remember the term for it). But that just servers to encourage people to use the system - resulting in making the game very alt friendly.

Kind of a known bug that turned into a feature when the results it had on the community became known.

Static Worlds can be fixed by using a random table to generate worlds.

Remember all those random dungeon tables in things like the D&D DMG back in the 1970s?

Take what we know know about world design, and apply that to an MMO.

Have a zone be populated by X mobs. A table is used to fill them. One dies, when the refresh heartbeat occurs the table is rolled on, and you roll coord's and drop the new mob there. It could be something completely different. All that's static is the total population.

Elite / special versions of mobs could be done in a similar manner. Either or both of:
1. A table of elites, and a global number of elites live on the server at any one time. One dies, roll on the table, and populate in a random spot.

2. A population total of elites live at any time. One dies, and the next hearbeat, roll for a zone, and populate a random normal monster somewhere, but then use a scaling forumla to change it into a special mob, and have it wear the very gear it will drop in order to give it a special appearance.

You could even work this out to building randomly made instances.

Even random world maps, random cities, and so on. Even random quests and storylines if your designers are brave enough... On server launch, the first player to log in literally creates the first zone as he walks through it, and so on. So that every server in your game is unique.

- But that might be stretching resources too far.

Back in the mid 90s, we had everything ready to launch a MUD on this theme, but things fell apart for other reasons.

We wanted to solve the static problem, we found one solution. We figured out how to keep it low on system resources (staged generation, heartbeats, we were thinking on the scale of running it on 1995-era commercial PCs using Unix and dialup after all), and how to get the generation to look internally consistent rather than the actual random.

I'm surprised that no one has used that or a better solution, not even in part.

Button lock: LOTRO's Warden class has solved it for the most part. The Warden has combos made up of 3 rudimentary attacks (Fist, Shield, Spear). Those 3 building blocks have no cooldown time. So you can just keep executing them and build to your combos. It's a really cool thing, and sure beats watching the button bar for cooldowns. I just map my 3 attacks to 1,2,3 keys and then I can watch the action instead of the buttons.
The other classes have short cooldowns for their main attacks, and there are enough different attacks that cooldown really isn't much of an issue.

Solving any problem efficiently starts with stating its components clearly. This post was a nice start at that much-needed process.

For what they're worth, I bloviate on some possible new directions at my own blog: http://flatfingers-theory.blogspot.com/2009/02/five-ways-mmorpgs-can-be-fixed.html .

In 2001 my cousin told me about a game he's been playing since Beta called EverQuest. He told me that it carries a monthly fee of about $10 per month and pressured me to at least try the trial. I finally did in January 2002.

I was immediately hooked and I played it for 6 years. I've spent hundreds of dollars on expansion packs (about 13 I think) and omg so much money for the monthly fees. The online fee gradually went from $10 a month to about $15 a month and so 2 years ago I paid for 2 years up front so the price dropped to about $8 something per month but a problem hit me, I got bored with it and I quit with a year remaining in my subscription. That was about $100 wasted (it was $200 for 2 years). I've tried getting back into the game, if nothing else to get my moneys worth but I just can't seem to want to play it anymore.

I much prefer playing with my PSP games that I pay for once then play with it whenever I want to. There are some MMORPG games that are free but I'm just not into it anymore. It's like the whole idea to me is dead.

I did enjoy it though and I wish that things were different but they aren't. I have friends who have been asking me for 2 years to quit playing EverQuest and come to WoW but I just don't want to. I can't get into it anymore for some reason.

Guild Wars solved all these problems years ago.

The #1 problem with MMOs is WOW's success: Everyone tries to copy it, and you just get the same problems repeated ad infinitum.

NAVYFIELD- somewhat fixes these problems

I think most MMOs are fine, and feel your complaining about completely logical and well thought out processes for controlling gameplay and players without creating the ultimately limmiting, "a player has already done this mission." Maybe if you actually looked at the full title of the genre MMO (RPG), then you would stop complaining and drown yourself in your shallow story-constipated action games.