To Oluf's original message: MMOs are made mostly for the money, as you say, but you also can't expect a good story from a team of programmers and artists. Reading the story of MxO, I was really impressed, until you remember that you would have to log on every day for a month to get the bit of story one person could summarize in a sentence. Writing is a much faster activity than the art or programming sides are, so what winds up happening is a new section of story is written, and to go along with it, and because you can't wholly rewrite the game, a new pack of content is released, albeit a few months after the original story idea was created. This is why single player games work better for story telling, because the game is based around the story, and you can play through it at your own pace, whereas MMO plots have to paced out and spoon fed to the players over many months.
Now, onto what I think. I'm truly surprised there have not been more developers out there to releasing online role playing platforms. What do I mean? Years ago I played HLRPG. Say what? That's Half-Life RPG. Sounds ridiculous, and to be honest it was. But it was also incredible fun to RP from a first person perspective, and to play out dramatic hostage scenarios or vicious corporate take overs was great. The best part about these scenes were, unlike what you would think, everyone did a pretty equal share of talking and shooting. So it was actually a lot of fun, even though some fairly juvenile/anime style plots got played out (Ninjas vs. Werewolves in a darkly lit Starbucks knock-off in the middle of the night?! Player models could be seen by most everyone, even when they were ridiculous).
A few years later, Neverwinter Nights came out. Now, let it be said. I am not a fan of the BioWare/Black Isle CRPG system. It's too slow paced for me, and far too removed from making real tactical decisions or affecting the combat in any tactile way. It's more like watching a movie of the same combat animations for four hours, because the developers didn't want to just up and make it turn based (it's the DnD system for chris' sake, = TURN BASED). Even if I'm not a fan, Neverwinter Nights definitely outdid Baldur's Gate for being less intensely boring, but more importantly it finally created a place for small scale RPing. 10-40 people on a single server, more on the big ones but those started to fall prey to the MMO symptom. With 10-40 people, and players largely returning on a regular basis to continue with their characters, there existed a small world where the player could feel the community, and, as much as a cliche as its become in the gaming world, they could feel the effects of their play on the community.
Now who remembers Seed in its final stages? How many would you say were regularly around? It wasn't really that many (unfortunately Seed's downfall), in fact it was right in the sweet spot for the game to be relevant to everyone involved. Because everyone knew each other? Why do you think office gossip is so damaging? Smaller networks feel effects deeper. It's pretty basic, but there aren't any new games lately that have followed this model. Weird huh?
A few weeks ago Feargus Urquhart, the lead at Obsidian Studios (we all know those guys), said that single player games have got to be more like MMOs in order to be competitive. Now, this is truly a developer with his head in his ass, but it just demonstrates that most of the industry reeeeally has no fucking clue what they're doing outside of following the money. Why?
I don't think anyone can really say, and I do have my own ideas, but in this post it should only be outlined quickly, and part of the problem is this: sentimentality towards a game is possibly the most taboo thing anyone can do in society. It is so tied with the stereotype that gamers are stinking middle aged fat men living in their parents' basement, that developers will do most anything to not be associated with it. The industry does need to have a professional image in order to be legitimate, but almost entirely because of that lingering stereotype, the industry also has to cripple itself in the process. I'll probably have to pick up on this later, but for now I've said what I need to.
