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The Trouble with MMORPGs
jasoncart writes "The trouble with MMORPGs is a humorous account of one gamer's struggle to find and assume his place in the rapidly evolving societies which form a part of the online RPG explosion. Ultimately, it is also a lament for the loss of direction that is the scourge of the genre."
is that pretty all of them seem to use the same engine. the "Keep paying us after you bought the game" engine. I've beta tested Earth & Beyond, which was pretty cool until the beta ran up and they asked me to pay them for the rest of my life. I played Anarchy Online for a while until they asked me to pay for the game until the end of the world(s). I'd probably actually go out and play a MMORPG or two if I could just buy the game once.
the other problem I have with MMORPGs is that they are so dependant on working with other people. There are even quests that you can't go on without having a certain number of people in your party. There is no soloing. none at all. well, unless you want to be that level five guy who always gets PKed.
and the worlds are hardly versatile at all. If it's a game like Anarchy Online where there're two warring factions that supposedly hate eachother etc etc etc, well, you see people from either side partying up and going off adventuring all the time. and while the news posts say that one side destroyed some facility or other of the other side, well, nobody actually does. It's all made up by the guys writing the news posts.
so...yeah, if somebody could just fix the games so they were more like an actual RPG (preferably with a real-time combat system so you don't have click on an enemy, go get breakfast, come back, heal, click on another enemy...) and less like monopoly (where everything's already bought up so you keep paying them as long as you play) then they might be good games.