Dude, I totally agree.
I mean I'm probably missing the mark totally here, but why on earth do people find World of Warcraft so appealing?
It's the Warcraft universe, so ya know you're usual bastard child of LOTR and Warhammer.. with omg exactly the same formula that is in every other damn mmorpg out there. Seriously why is that so great?
One thing I've always dispised in all RPGs online/offline is the fact that no matter what you do, you've got to "grind" for absolutely ages to feel like you've achieved anything.
You can't just play it for the fun of playing, no you've got to constantly grind a single task in order to level it. It's not as if this aspect of RPGs is even particularly enjoyable, atleast not to me. I find having to go off and randomly battle several enemies just to level my character something boring, because either you get killed in second by something much higher level... or you end up having far too easy a time with something far below. In either case your only reward usually is experience.
Something I enjoy about Eve is you can just get on with the freeform universe in anyway you choose. Storyline missions aren't really story based but fairly random, oh and the best part. I want to learn a skill, I don't have to be in the game to do it!!
All of the skills you can learn, are entirely time-based for when you can learn it.
So it's not a case of "If I mine this asteroid for 3hrs I'll finally reach level 2 mining", instead you get a small mining enhancement from leaving it say a few hours to learn level 2. The higher your attributes (which can be enhanced by either taking the time to learn learning skills, or by purchasing plug-in augmentations) then the quicker you can learn skills that rely on them.
This means you can focus less, on what you need to do to do for hours to learn something and just get on with what you want to do.
There are focuses on all sorts of game aspects too.
Don't get me wrong though, at the heart it's still mostly about either fighting or mining. Yet there are the other aspects, like corporations, trading, politics, wars for territory or glory, etc.. and each of these aspects you can either sit there happily on the surface of or really go in-depth and learn all the nuances.
Hell just decking out your ship, not just your character can take a few minutes if you don't care much past adding a specific way of fighting/mining/trading.. or hours if you go into what skills will enhance what aspects of your ship useage, weapons, power-grids, etc.
It is a very traditional RPG, and the setting while in space; really doesn't stray far from the dungeons&dragons dice rolling system. The execution of it though, just makes you feel you have that control no matter how deep you want to go.
Which is fun
This said it's no elite, unfortunately.
Tabula Rasa is really cool mind, in that it is more real-time. Basically it's a 3rd person shooter like Gears of War, only you have a really cool rpg element where you have to evolve your characters through the conflicts in the fairly open world. It plays like an action game, but is still an rpg. That's fairly cool too.
Something I'm looking forward to, which unfortunately isn't an MMO; but is gonna be totally sweet is Mass Effect. Bioware, frankly are gods of RPG games. The enhancements they've made between Knights of the Old Republic to Mass Effect are immense.. just the interaction system alone makes it really amazing, let alone the real-time battling with enhancements that while yeah they have a fantasy element; have all be based on potencial futuristic science.
Basically put, everything they've put in there.. they researched to see if it would make sense atleast on a theoretical level if technology improved. Rather than just going "oh you can throw this guy because you have some mystical force", instead you get inertia dampners and singularity field generators. So you can really have some fun with the physics engine while all the while still having a bit of a believable aspect. The fact you can enhance and edit all of your kit is so sweet, and being able to use it again is like Eve based on learning to use a technology set rather than simply leveling your character.
I think this new wave of rpgs based less around the whole "oh I'm level 10 against a level 20" monster, and more around just learning skills to use items is quite cool. After all, it's nice to know that a monster won't win simply because it's ridiculously high-level... instead it's down to the skill of the player and how they use the technology available to them.
Again this is something that Eve does quite well for an mmo. You might not have the skill points a higher level player has, but there's still a chance that your ability to utilise the skills you know to better effect means there is a chance you can defeat them.
to me this makes an mmo more enjoyable, and believeable.
I like a dose of reality in my games.
Anyone here been following Left 4 Dead? It's not an MMO, but it has some basic rpg elements; where you're basically in a 4 people team against a horde of zombies and have to survive as long as you can in the city with waves of them constantly coming at you. The 4 survivors are all players, but other players can also play as "super zombies" or "boss zombies". To me that's fairly cool, a bit like Resident Evil Outbreak games.. only with other players that don't have retarded AI. There might be a persistant world as well where survivors have to try to meet up and escape the city.
That would be sweet, although that for the moment is just a rumour from people following the development rather than developers themselves. Still the whole concept is sweet and I think an MMORPG based around that setting would just freaking rock!!
