Zhukov said:
1) The gameplay must suck mightily. It must be combat-based. It must revolve primarily around you and your enemy taking turns to automatically slap each other across the face, mostly just to pass the time while you wait for your ability cooldowns to run out.
A lot of games are moving beyond this combat mechanic. DCUO is, despite it's flaws, a pretty nice example with timer abilities coupled with basic beat-'em-up combat including comboes. As for combat-based, the overwhelming majority of mainstream games are combat-based, especially multiplayer games.
Zhukov said:
2) It must involve tedious amounts of grind for the sake of incremental stat increases. No exceptions. Ever.
Again, I think people are very slowly starting to pull away from this. Also, I think a lot of people mistake the problem. Rewarding people with incremental stat increases is fine (and a way to balance the game so more time in the game means a more powerful character, which most people want) so long as what you do to get them is
fun. You don't need to change the rewards, you need to change the grind.
Zhukov said:
3) It must have absolutely no interesting narrative content of any kind.
This one is really tough to overcome because interesting narrative typically changes the world of characters in significant ways, which is really hard to manage when you also want a huge number of people sharing roughly the same world. Some games manage this a little better by making locations change locally, so if you save the town YOU see it as saved whereas other people still see it as in trouble. But then you have a weird disconnect because why are those people looking for companions to save the town?
Zhukov said:
4) It must have really clunky character animation.
This one is just not true. Several MMOs have decent character animation. A lot of it is just that many of the most successful MMOs are quite a few years old now and expansion packs and updates can only do so much.
Zhukov said:
5) The setting must be as unoriginal as possible. Ideally a third-generation Tolkien rip-off. If you really want to push the envelope you can set it in space and rip off Star Trek instead.
Saying that it's a "Tolkien rip-off" is basically just saying "it's a fantasy setting". If you're involving generations of Tolkein rip-offs, then you're REALLY just saying it's a fantasy setting. As for Star Trek rip-offs, I think that's just what happens when you set out to make a semi-hard science fiction - it's not about copying Star Trek, it's about the fact that ANY universe in that particular region of the hard/soft sci-fi scale will necessarily be pretty similar in a lot of ways.
Zhukov said:
So come on games industry. How about a bit of variety here, eh? How about some games that take the good parts of an MMO (huge world, persistant servers, large player population etc) but scrape off the shitty parts. How about say... a parkour platforming game where one faction is based around evasion while the other is focused on pursuit, and perhaps a third based on enforcing the peace.
Doesn't that sound like it would work a LOT better for a conventional non-MMO multiplayer game? How does it make use of persistent worlds? How would your character improve? How would you keep it from getting boring if these roles are locked in? What would the narrative be? How would you present a compelling narrative without changing the world for other players?
Note that you CAN change the world for other players, but that means that only one person gets to do that quest unless it's on a timer (which would cheapen the impact). You can also go the "it's a two-way quest that changes the world, but can be changed back", but then it just becomes an obnoxious tug-of-war if there's anything valuable at stake and a pointless fight if there isn't.
Zhukov said:
Hey, it might even make good business sense too. Imagine being able to tap into the teeming hordes of CoD fans with a MMO-FPS based around near-future warfare.
Let me help you out with that one. [http://lmgtfy.com/?q=mmofps]
