Okay, I've actually ranted about this subject repeatedly, so you could say I've got a well-prepared rant for this. Here goes!
Note: Numerous times, instead of saying "MMORPG" I will actually type out 'momorperger'. Why, do you ask, because it contains more letters than MMORPG and thus would be counter-intuitive? Because it sounds funny read out loud and I'm paying tribute to Zero Punctuation. Also, momorpergers don't deserve to be called by their given proper name.
Before I go any further, let me put out the foundation of this rant:
The Momorperger Gameplay Model
In momorpergers, a lot more emphasis is placed on equipment drops. Most of the really great crap you can't buy in stores. You have to rely on monster drops for it. And these drops typically occur 1% of the time. For every 100 monsters you kill, one MIGHT drop the thing you're looking for. Sometimes this is even LESS.
Also, level-ups. They're very very important if you want to see everything and do everything in the game. Typically, the cap here is set high. Very high. At least Level 60. Not including add-ons that add to this cap. They also take for-freakin-ever to get. The average person spends 1.5-2 YEARS to get to the highest level.
There's a reason why these things which are so important to the MMO experience are scaled to make you spend as much time as possible to achieve them.
Money.
To reiterate, the developers of MMOs want you to play the game as long as possible. So they purposely scale the level-ups so it takes the average person 1.5-2 YEARS to get to maximum level. And they also made the great equipment extremely rare to drop to make you play as long as possible
Now, assume the average momorperger these days is $15 a month. Also assume it costs $40-50 to buy the software you need to get on in the first place, not including any extra add-ons currently out if you're getting into the game late. That means if a person toughs it out to the last level, the company is assured to get $220 from a one-year player (which is FAST) or up to $400 for a two year player. And that's not factoring in that you have to kill certain monsters that might not be conducive to levelling up if you have to get a specific piece of equipment from them. Also note, rarely will you stop playing once you get to the end of leveling up. Because once you reach the highest level, you'll have of course "unlocked" the actual fun parts of the game which will no doubt keep you coming back for longer. Which means more money, of course!
There are "free" momorpergers out there, too. But these follow the same "extra long grind" formula. Because they want you to be tempted to buy the items that you actually have to pay real money to get (that cannot be bought with in-game money) to make this leveling easier.
Now that the Momorperger Gameplay model is out of the way, let's move onto the actual gameplay.
Okay. First off, the classes. In a much better game, not based on money you pay for the privilege of playing, Neverwinter Nights, you can put together any combination of 3 of the 20 or so classes to come up with the character you want as long as they fit the prerequisites of all 3 classes and add up to the total of 40 levels.
In momorpergers? One. One class. Only one game I've ever seen allows a multiclass, but your second class is always stunted compared to your first. Sometimes you play an inferior class to get up to a 'promotion' class. This does not count as multi-classing.
Going back to NWN, which, might I add, has lots of "persistant world" servers which are strikingly similar to MMO worlds (if you really like that kind of thing, anyway), even if you stick exclusively with one class, the choices you make can set it apart from others of the same class. With skills and feats, and occasionally spell choice, the same class can turn out very very differently.
In momorpergers, one class pretty much gives you one build. And that's it. You can play around with your stats, and this can occasionally offer some variation, but that's about it. You're pretty much made to go along with a single skill set regardless.
Because class builds are so... rigid... in the average MMO, there are only really four distinct roles one can fill in a party.
1) The Tank - For any High-HP, High Armor class. They're typically a Melee class and, contrary to what one would think, they inflict only medium damage, with perhaps a Damage ability they can use every once in a while to deliver big damage. Mostly, though, they're supposed to sit there and take the heat.
2) The Damage Fiend (I forget the exact term for this used in the game) - These guys can really deal out the damage, but they can't actually take it. Occasionally, a class like this will have a high enough evasion to be a tank in a pinch, but nothing near like what a tank can do. Generally, they hit the target until the target decides to turn on them, then run away and hope the target goes back to attacking the tank.
3) The Healer - These guys just sit back and heal and buff. They are actually given weapons, but they are laughable at using them, no matter how impressive they look, and if you try to use them in a party situation, even to tide yourself over until someone actually needs healing, people will scream at you for being a noob and tell you to go back and heal.
4) The Nuke - Spellcasters, usually. They sit back and deliver big-time damage until their MP runs out, then they scream like a woman. Occasionally, the target gets smart and tries to go after the Nuke, who then screams like a woman and runs away until the party annoy the target enough to make it pay attention to them again.
All classes follow these basic roles to a fault. Soloing? Haha. Funny. You get to a certain level by attacking small critters, then you're bound to a party for the rest of your life, that is, if you want to level at any decent rate.
In PVP, yeah, I suppose you can do the whole Rock Paper Scissors thing with the four roles against each other, and you might call that strategy. Except there isn't really a whole lot of room for variation here. You either have a combo that works, or you don't. So it's two parties made of roughly the same ratio of these roles. What ends up making the difference? Equipment and levels. Which goes right back to the MMO gameplay model.
And nevermind that getting to a point in the game where PVP is actually worth doing usually means getting to your highest level with your best equipment. Again, the MMO gameplay model.
Taking on the big boss monsters? Highest level, best equipment. These big boss monsters actually usually HAVE the best equipment, but the equipment you actually want only drops now and again. Which goes... you guessed it... back to the MMO gameplay model.
To reiterate again, THE ENTIRE GAME is modeled after getting money from the player. It's insidious.
And when you really get down to it? Persistant Worlds may sound like fun, a big world to explore and interact with and all, but what effect do you, a supposed hero, have on said world? NONE. NADDA. NOTHING. SILLY HERO, YOU SO STUPID.
Because the game has to be written to deliver the exact same experience to every character, no matter how many times you do all of those silly fetch quests and take on the big bad that's supposibly terrorizing the town, IT MEANS NOTHING. You can do the same quests indefinitely a lot of the time, and the quest-giver will be in just as much need as when you first started. Or maybe you can only do it once, and the quest-giver will be ever-so-grateful and sing you praises. Then he'll turn around and tell the person right next to you that the orcs are terrorizing his farm animals again, something you supposibly fixed for him for all time. In fact, if you marched out there yourself to his pasture, you'll see the very same orcs terrorising the very same farm animals, only this time you get zero recognition for killing them because you supposibly had already saved the animals for all time, and you get yelled at by the people who haven't done the quest yet for 'farming' the quest spawn. Forget the epic quests that an offline RPG would give you. You're doing nothing here. And everyone is scripted to treat your character the exact same way as the others. Sure there's alignment and class factors occasionally factored in, but that's about the extent of it.
And while we're at it, let's talk about the 'Roleplaying' bit. And how there is none to be found. "But Zorph, your character is a role, and you play it!" Well, that's basically true for any video game you play, except those people have set names and the other game characters treat him as something more than a generic cardboard cutout with a name and alignment stuck to it. You, on the other hand, if you want to honest to god play the role of a character, you have to turn to your fellow players. Who, upon receiving your played role, will treat you like the laughing stock of the game, call you a n00b, and go about their business saying such endearing phrases as "WM LFG 20-30 PST". Sure, I suppose you could go play on one of those "Roleplaying Servers". But, well, none of your friends or anyone you'd ever meet in real life play on these servers, so what's the point? The "RP" part of "MMORPG" is one of the biggest misnomers you'll ever come to face.
Speaking of people, I can also mention the whole "the people who play these games are generally immature drama-spewing raving blowhard idiots" aspect of mmorpergers and how, for a huge part of my relationship with my now ex-girlfriend, I had to sit back and listen to how everyone in her endgame clan was a douche-bag but she can't go anywhere else because all her friends were there, or everyone else is worse, or whatever. Sure, you can also bring your own friends along to suffer through it with you, but there are other games to play and web environs to go to that don't require a large elaborate pay scheme overshadowing your every move, and those seem like better places to take your friends.
In conclusion, I've been drawn back to this 'genre' time and time again, thanks to cute female character models, something I see in the gameplay that may make things different, or the aforementioned "free momorperger" model, or a combo of the three above. Every time, I only end up just plain disappointed and bombing out after reaching around Level 25 in it, which is about the time where the novelty wears off and I suddenly realize I'm playing a momorperger dear god what the hell is wrong with me. Maybe some mythical momorperger exists out there which defies all the conventions I hate about the genre, but I have yet to find it. And probably never will.
