I think I have found the definitive answer to this. 

INTERFACE

MMOG focus majority portion of the combat or any type of interaction, on the reliance on interface. Lets see how much interface is used in a normal MMOG gameplay.

COMBAT - the absurd amount of hotkeys on a screen, do we really need 15 skills that performs almost the same thing with different damage values and attack animation? Then the idea of potion and buffs and blah blah blah that you will need to put in the hotkey bar to be successful in combat. When you are in combat, you usually aren't looking at the characer combat, but looking at the hotkey bar seeing if the skills are off cooldown, developers rely too much on interface to make combat to work. Combat isn't really that fun when all you do is look at a few bars at the bottom of your screen (or whatever you put them, I usually put them on the right side of my character, like the chain skills in Aion, so at least I'm looking close to the action) Also the damage number popping up next to the target, yes you can usually turn that off, but what is the point of this feature?

TARGETTING - sure the world in created in a 3D plane, but we select target via a 2D planefield.  We move the mouse in the XY plane. This isn't a huge problem, since you do look into the action, but the problem is that interface that traditional targetting generates, the target portrait. We often are caught at looking at the target's health bar than the actual taget itself. 

ADDON - a few game, notable WoW and Runes of Magic, have a heavy reliable of addons to make gameplay easier/bearable. Threatmeter, buffbars, healbot, etc etc etc, there are loads more, I only played the free trial of WoW and I have already heard of most of these addons, its simply depressing to know that developers do not have the compacity to create a reliable design or interface that players can use without the need of addons. (Note addons are different to mods in singeplayer games, addon design are much more limited in nature)

Quest log/General UI - wanted to condense few of the elements into one, in general UI, we have the chatbox, inventory, popup UI, some of them are very necessary to a game, but some are just plain redundant, or should I say, bad quest design. In MMORPG we are often handling multiple quest at once, redundant quests or side quest as most players like to call them, serves absolute no purpose in the game design, but are simply put there so that the game developers can consider that as 'content'. One thing in Dragon Age 2 that actually did well is the quest design, a lot of the secondary quest actually leads into the main quests or companion quest, so at least they serve a storytelling purpose, but kill 10 wolves so you can make a belt? No thanks, I don't mind killing 10 wolves, but the reason is so absurd I should just kill you instead - oh wait, I can't.

I would argue it's the dull gameplay where your playing like a robot, doing fetch quests until endgame to get any fun at which point there's no progression unless you put in a big amount of hours. I do like your hotkey argument, many people in wow used to have their entire screen just filled with mods because the hotkeys is all they look at when fighting instead of the actual fight.

My opinions:

1. Combat. Its acceptable first cause the hotkeys are usually debuffs or buffs. Then after a expansion, the UI is filled with more and more hotkeys. Its so annoying that im just quiting the game after it happens. But lol, many players do enjoy having CTRL+1, CTRL+2, CTRL+3, SHIFT+1 add infinity hotkeys if you take a look at the raiders. Sorry but its just crap, i loved Guild Wars playstyle, limited skills on tree, no qq, gtfo and quest with a group now.

2. For me its like Pokemon, i do actually look at the target, the warnings and the life bar itself.

3. Addons are needed but i hate them anyway. I hate having dpsmeter, treathmeter, UI messed crap all over the screen. I would just enjoy it if there was a small treath number next to the boss name. I dont know what i should say about DPS meters. I should like it but i hate it. "Dude hey look they are doing better DPS than you wtf" "DUDE i had to use debuffs to make them damage it!" "I dont care/kick" god damnit do i hate dps meter. The leaders often have no clue.

4. Quite funny, when WoW didnt have questhelper, most MMOs didnt have it. The day WoW added questhelper in game, many MMOs did the same. Lol?

Kingdom's point is valid since it is the interface that defines how the mechanics operate. Think of the UI has the tools you need to control/play the game. The problem is that EQ2 and WoW really did pollute the UI design concepts in gaming to the point that I doubt we'll ever see it go away. It's weird too, because other games do a better job of integrating the UI with the mechanics. Fallout 3 and New Vegas come to mind for hacking and lockpicking.

Well UI could get changed but that is not 'root' of a problem imho.

My opinion why current MMORPG's are dull and boring:

1. No activities beside combat.

2. Way too fast levelling.

3. Only solo things to do before hitting max level. No alternative line of quests and activities for groups.

4. Lack of reason to leave city after hitting max level. That is because you can teleport to instances from everywhere and because there is no reason to leave city ( only combat in instances to do).

5. Many players had all of the above for loong years in WoW and other games and they are offered exactly same thing in new productions.

6. Raids are hard and everything else way too easy.

7. Quest too simple. They have to be more complex. Quest tracker making it too obvious. Make quest tracker HELP not doing all 'thinking' for player by showing EXACT location where to go and do.

With so limited things to do no wonder it get's boring fast. It is obvious , yet we still get same thing over and over. Rift additions are actually nothing special it gets repetetive fast becasue it is just pure repetetive combat again.

There are many other things but I want to keep this post simple and not very long so I will stop now.

Edit: sorry edited a bit , added one point

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Originally posted by Sulaa
Well UI could get changed but that is not 'root' of a problem imho.
 
My opinion why current MMORPG's are dull and boring:
1. No activities beside combat.
2. Way too fast levelling.
3. Only solo things to do before hitting max level. No alternative line of quests and activities for groups.
4. Lack of reason to leave city after hitting max level. That is because you can teleport to instances from everywhere and because there is no reason to leave city ( only combat in instances to do).
5. Many players had all of the above for loong years in WoW and other games and they are offered exactly same thing in new productions.
6. Raids are hard and everything else way too easy.
With so limited things to do no wonder it get's boring fast. It is obvious , yet we still get same thing over and over. Rift additions are actually nothing special it gets repetetive fast becasue it is just pure repetetive combat again.
 
There are many other things but I want to keep this post simple and not very long so I will stop now.

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This!

The OP makes some points but misses the mark I think.

Lets look at them and find out!

COMBAT - Too many hot keys!

This is not really true. NWN1/2, BG1/2, Dragon Age1/2 all has heaps of hot keys but they are all considered fun games.

TARGETTING - Focuses on the portrait

Again, NWN1/2, BG1/2, Dragon Age1/2 all havea similar targetting mechanic but is fine. Heck, any game that is about 'fighting' has this. Street Fighter, Freespace, COD etc.

ADDON - Too many addons

Not really applicable since if the vanilla gameplay is fine this shouldn't be needed.

Quest log/General UI

Quest quality is something that is lacking in MMOs but I recall playing IceWind Dale which was little more than 'Go here and KILL EVERYTHING' throughout the entire game and had fun doing it.

The gameplay to MMOs are similar to your standard RPG.

Go here -> Talk to NPC -> Do 123.

But I had heaps of fun in NWN, IWD, DA:O/2 but not WoW.

Why?

Because I gave a damn about something on my computer screen and wanted to know what happened next. Story.

Fuck hotkeys, seriously.

The last thing i want to do when playing a game is emulating a piano session, why can't we have fluid action instead of this tired old semi-turnbased nonsense. We're not living in the 90's anymore people.

Ideally we should have a hudless interface where everything relevant is integrated in the gameworld somehow.

Originally posted by Thekandy

Fuck hotkeys, seriously.

The last thing i want to do when playing a game is emulating a piano session, why can't we have fluid action instead of this tired old semi-turnbased nonsense. We're not living in the 90's anymore people.

Ideally we should have a hudless interface where everything relevant is integrated in the gameworld somehow.

So a UI where there is no button?

Hmm..

Black and White?

Or....Kinect? o_O

Originally posted by jpnz

Originally posted by Thekandy

Fuck hotkeys, seriously.

The last thing i want to do when playing a game is emulating a piano session, why can't we have fluid action instead of this tired old semi-turnbased nonsense. We're not living in the 90's anymore people.

Ideally we should have a hudless interface where everything relevant is integrated in the gameworld somehow.

So a UI where there is no button?

Hmm..

Black and White?

Or....Kinect? o_O

Black & White is a good example, although that's a god-simulator.

Think along the lines of Bioshock, CoC: Dark Corners of the Earth, Dead Space and Arx Fatalis. HUDs like those or near at the very least is what we'd ideally end at.

Mind you, a few hotkeys to make your life easier is acceptable, but when your base gameplay depends on cycling through the same damn 15 hotkeys over and over just for one simple fight something is wrong.

Healthbars are easy to integrate into the 3D scene, and i really think games should do this instead of having them on the 2D interface (if we need healthbars at all). In FPS games like Quake you don't know the health of the enemy and I actually think that would work in a MMO too.

Originally posted by jpnz

 

ADDON - Too many addons

Not really applicable since if the vanilla gameplay is fine this shouldn't be needed.

 

 

Thats exactly his point, that there are so many addons that are considered necessary because the vanilla UI just isn't good enough.

Originally posted by jpnz

The OP makes some points but misses the mark I think.

Lets look at them and find out!

 

COMBAT - Too many hot keys!

This is not really true. NWN1/2, BG1/2, Dragon Age1/2 all has heaps of hot keys but they are all considered fun games.

Well I never played NWN or BG, but for Dragon Age, the amount of hot keys in DA is nothing compare to hotkeys used in WoW or what not, you don't need one whole for potions, you don't need one bar for food buffs or others. Dragon Age you only have max 4 types of potion, 1 or 2 buffs, 4-5 attacks. but then Dragon Age combat is not good because it was hotkey, but you can control 4 character at once, no MMO has done that. I'll say WoW has probaly 2-3 times the amount of hot keys of Dragon Age.

 

TARGETTING - Focuses on the portrait

Again, NWN1/2, BG1/2, Dragon Age1/2 all havea similar targetting mechanic but is fine. Heck, any game that is about 'fighting' has this. Street Fighter, Freespace, COD etc.

Nup, CoD actually doesn't have a bar that shows health, its hidden and are shown through red blood interface over your screen. Another problem to the argument, Street Fighter doesn't have a mana bar that you have to watch over as well. You are so focus on executing the combo, you probably don't need to watch the interface much. 

 

ADDON - Too many addons

Not really applicable since if the vanilla gameplay is fine this shouldn't be needed.

The problem is that there isn't a MMOG out there like that, the closest being guild wars. These days, so many MMOG relies on number for its combat, tank needs to hold this much aggro, dps needs to do this amount of damge to be viable, you need this much dodge, defence, accuracy, and what not. Simply, no MMO out there can be played without an abundant amount of UI elements. Sure, every game has hidden numbers and what not, but the game is design so that numbers does not directly equal to victory, using your example, street fighter, you need to execute the combo, dodge, timing. Or Starcraft, does the unit with the highest damage equate to winning the game? Nup. MMOG players are also like number crunchers, crunching every single last digit so that they can have the optimium result, knowing you can walk into the next fight and walk out alive, thats why gameplay is so boring, it is all static, nothing requires a response, you just use your optimised rotation, with a few stuns and interrupts and boom, you are almost guarantee to walk out alive.

 

Quest log/General UI

Quest quality is something that is lacking in MMOs but I recall playing IceWind Dale which was little more than 'Go here and KILL EVERYTHING' throughout the entire game and had fun doing it.

 

The gameplay to MMOs are similar to your standard RPG.

Go here -> Talk to NPC -> Do 123.

Well thats what quest is all about, but a good quest can hide that fact, bad ones clearly shows the direction.

But I had heaps of fun in NWN, IWD, DA:O/2 but not WoW.

Why?

Because I gave a damn about something on my computer screen and wanted to know what happened next. Story.

SWTOR should change that :) or GW2. I really do think voice over is whats missing in the story forumla. Just playing through any single player game without voiceover.....I want to vomit lol

The players.

Post deleted.

Originally posted by Escargon

Posted deleted

Well I'm just gonna delete mine too :P

woah you might as well change your name to DarthPvEhater lol

 

well look at it this, you enjoy ganking those players, having while making their life miserable, now they turn back and gank you permanently, shutting PvP from the PvP server, I say thats the greatest gank xD

But honestly, players who doesn't want PvP shouldn't roll on a PvP server, it makes no sense.

 I changed the text abit, i was kinda bashy. I regret that ofc. I dont want to jump on other players.

EDIT: I deleted my post.

The high level npcs in cities is the biggest r* gank ever done to the PvP players. I do miss the flood of QQ post by pve players whining about pvpers standing outside raid portals.

I thought Blizzard would just tell them to roll a PvE server but man i was wrong.

I do remember back in my server only ONE guild PvEd. They were extremely hated and mocked by every PvP players around. The PvP players did everything to make the PvE guild not procceed.

I wish you could erase what i wrote. I didnt mean to blame the PvErs who rolled PvE servers to PvE. Its not their fault. Its the PvErs on PvP servers total fault the world is left behind now. Sorry but its true.

Rofl oh do i miss the old good MMO days. I swear, IF you tried to fish at Barrens as alliance.. oh man.. if you dared doing that.. there would be a war zone after five minutes.

Go on, enjoy the dull world of PvE. Enjoy fishing in horde places as a alliance player. I can tell you that you might get killed. Lol no, not by PvP players but by the guards Blizzard added to prevent PvPing in PvP servers.

You might ask yourself: Whats the most fun?

Being immortal and feeling no pain with superpowers:

Going ten miles without anything happening. You can only kill boars.

Or: Going to an area filled with danger. With other immortals like you doing anything to blow you up. You fly up to the sky, load up, and fall down like a comet blowing everything up, fly up again where the other players are due to the impact and Matrix kicking them fivehundred times a second.

Thats it. The world is dead cause of no player activity. Because of no danger.

Maps are the problem, lol!

Personally, i hate games with crappy maps now a days, but way  way way back, when i first played Asheroon's Call, there was no map. I had no idea how big the world was, what was out there, how far the next town was.

I'll never forget that first time i ventured out to explore and made it to the next town, and then mistakenly bound there. All the mobs where then way to high. Everytime i tried to backt to my starting village i died and dropped more armor. Before I knew it, i was naked and begging for an escort as night settled in. I'll never forget that escorted run back  ... best hour or so of gamming in my life. I can't remember if we had a rador back then, but nasty scary mobs kept crawling out of everywhere, and i was only 1 or 2 hits from dead. My escort would try to engage and just kept screaming at me to not stop... run run run!!!! 

I think my heart reate must of been 180!

maybe it's only because it was my first mmorpg, or because i was only 20 ish at the time... but man! that was some funness :)

I also use to enjoy the social aspect of SWG (pre nge of course :)). Setting up a camp in the middle of nowhere would draw passing travels to come watch the dansers around the campfire... those were the days... :)

Originally posted by jonchicoine

Maps are the problem, lol!

 

Personally, i hate games with crappy maps now a days, but way  way way back, when i first played Asheroon's Call, there was no map. I had no idea how big the world was, what was out there, how far the next town was.

I'll never forget that first time i ventured out to explore and made it to the next town, and then mistakenly bound there. All the mobs where then way to high. Everytime i tried to backt to my starting village i died and dropped more armor. Before I knew it, i was naked and begging for an escort as night settled in. I'll never forget that escorted run back  ... best hour or so of gamming in my life. I can't remember if we had a rador back then, but nasty scary mobs kept crawling out of everywhere, and i was only 1 or 2 hits from dead. My escort would try to engage and just kept screaming at me to not stop... run run run!!!! 

I think my heart reate must of been 180!

maybe it's only because it was my first mmorpg, or because i was only 20 ish at the time... but man! that was some funness :)

 

I also use to enjoy the social aspect of SWG (pre nge of course :)). Setting up a camp in the middle of nowhere would draw passing travels to come watch the dansers around the campfire... those were the days... :)

 My first experience of Barrens in WoW: A big savanna with raptors and camps. I was like WTF? I thought the whole game would stay like that.

In my opinions, its not the map design, its the world that is fit for PvE players. Its the world with no danger at all. Its the world where there are no real enemies.

Originally posted by Escargon

Originally posted by jonchicoine

Maps are the problem, lol!

 

Personally, i hate games with crappy maps now a days, but way  way way back, when i first played Asheroon's Call, there was no map. I had no idea how big the world was, what was out there, how far the next town was.

I'll never forget that first time i ventured out to explore and made it to the next town, and then mistakenly bound there. All the mobs where then way to high. Everytime i tried to backt to my starting village i died and dropped more armor. Before I knew it, i was naked and begging for an escort as night settled in. I'll never forget that escorted run back  ... best hour or so of gamming in my life. I can't remember if we had a rador back then, but nasty scary mobs kept crawling out of everywhere, and i was only 1 or 2 hits from dead. My escort would try to engage and just kept screaming at me to not stop... run run run!!!! 

I think my heart reate must of been 180!

maybe it's only because it was my first mmorpg, or because i was only 20 ish at the time... but man! that was some funness :)

 

I also use to enjoy the social aspect of SWG (pre nge of course :)). Setting up a camp in the middle of nowhere would draw passing travels to come watch the dansers around the campfire... those were the days... :)

 My first experience of Barrens in WoW: A big savanna with raptors and camps. I was like WTF? I thought the whole game would stay like that.

In my opinions, its not the map design, its the world that is fit for PvE players. Its the world with no danger at all. Its the world where there are no real enemies.

Dude, you hate PvE players and how they singlehandedly (Not the developers of course) destroyed your precious e-bullying.

Now give it a rest, it's getting old.

Originally posted by Thekandy

Dude, you hate PvE players and how they singlehandedly (Not the developers of course) destroyed your precious e-bullying.

Now give it a rest, it's getting old.

 I deleted my post and wrote :

"I wish you could erase what i wrote. I didnt mean to blame the PvErs who rolled PvE servers to PvE. Its not their fault. Its the PvErs on PvP servers total fault the world is left behind now. Sorry but its true." in case you missed that.

As in this case, only moments when players attack me is the moments i stay alert and let my PvP spirit take over.

PvE players in PvP servers deserves to get "e-bullied" for not taking part of PvP server, sorry.

And its sadly because of the PvE players in PvP servers guards where added everywhere. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against PvE players playing on PvE servers.

I just want to point it out:

PvE servers back in WoW were boring for me atleast. The world didnt have any spirit, no danger at all, no heartpumping moments.

PvP servers was a "slaughterhouse." Tried to drink and eat in a PvP server a time ago? Forget it.

Take a look at WoW now. Is the PvP servers active worlds with lots of danger or is the world dull and "boring"? I was born as a PvPer, others as a PvEr. You might enjoy doing world events with npcs but i do love to ruin for other players by pvping.

I am going to give it a rest now anyway.

(Again i do not hate other players. But i wrote my post way too fast, i am again sorry for it and as respect i deleted it.)