This is written as a result of this post over on Beyond the Black Gate, mostly so as not to clog up the comments page with something long and rambling.
I've played WOW and like Al on BtBG, ultimately got bored. In part that was due to 'having' to quest alone, but the lack of 'RPG' also took its toll. I say 'having' to quest alone because although I was in a guild and although I knew my guildies in the real world, they had more time to spend on the game and therefore levelled more quickly, outstripping the areas I was in and therefore leaving me behind. Cue frustration. What I lacked there was 4 other people who:
a) I knew well enough to want to game with
b) Who had the same kind of timetable as me.
c) Who could/would get together regularly (weekly?) to play for a few hours, talk crap on voice comms and have a few drinks (or whatever).
So basically a tabletop group, just for playing WOW with..
But that's not how WOW or the other MMOs are designed. They are really about what this (very interesting) google doc calls Fun vs Compulsion - much like Farmville, the subject of the doc. The goal of an MMO is to make money for the publisher. They do this by not only providing you with the world to play in and the immutable and often invisible rules of that world (the stats, game mechanics etc.. some of which are visible - e.g. character stats, and some of which aren't*, e.g. falling damage rules) but they also provide the stories, the quests, the NPCs and so on. Very little, probably less than 0.1% of an MMO is player generated - ignoring the crafting & economics of the game.
Blizzard is giving you the PHB, DMG, the Campaign World and all the Adventures bundled together for a monthly fee. Buy something like D&D on the other hand and you get the PHB and the DMG. Sure there are campaign world and adventures out there but you don't have to use them. You are free to create your own world, your own adventures, to mix and match - putting Aliens in a Star Wars setting, or taking something from Greyhawk and putting it in your homebrew world. You can also customise the rules. Ultimate Freedom.
How can something like WOW give you that? I remember Neverwinter Nights coming with a toolkit to allow you to build your own adventures. NWN isn't an MMO, more a multiplayer crpg and I think that's the closest any game has come to giving a group of gamers the ability to make their own adventures in a CRPG, but I don't think it really cuts the mustard.
I confess, I'm playing Lord of the Rings Online at the moment and I'm finding it every bit as frustrating as WOW. I don't like grouping up with random strangers because, well, I want to play with my mates. I am getting bored of the rings. The saving grace of the game for me is the world. It's fun to go to the Shire, to see Bag End, go and fight orcs on Weathertop and so on. But it's still not enough.
I want to be playing in a world that can react to any crazy thing I do, where I can come up with a plan and see it happen or go horribly wrong (depending on the dice rolls) and where I'm not forced into 'Mash Keyboard, Kill Monster' style interactions. MMOs are getting smarter, there's no doubt about that but as Al says:
"there is still a strong element of gaining levels, matching sets of magic items, the trendiest accoutrement and so on. And those guilds and craftsmanship sidebars are mostly inflexible."
I'd take the view that MMOs are all about gaining levels and collecting kit. It's the kit and the quests that the publisher is selling you and that's how they make their money. Oh, LOTRO by the way is a micropayment MMO. Huge chunks of it are completely free, but you have to purchase quest packs in order to progress into many areas of the gameworld and can pay anything from a few pence to £20 for the magic items and trendy accoutrements. Different model, still viable, and the basic point remains the same I think.
MMOs want your money. Your GM wants to give you fun.
Until someone comes up with an MMO that gives players as much freedom as a tabletop game I think there will always be paper rpgs, and I pray to all the divine beings I believe in, and some that I don't, that there will always *need* to be paper rpgs because sitting at a computer never beats being together (and I love my computer).
* At least without scientific investigation by players, which does happen.
