I think what happened is that the "rpg" in "mmorpg" disappeared.

People wanted to play the "killing monsters" game, not the "endless inventory management" game. This allowed developers to have player banks instead of player houses, which players generally found acceptable.

It required thinking. Thinking is outdated and so 1999.

Remember eating and drinking?

Remember picking a certain species for specific attributes to better min/max your class?

Remember corpse runs?

Remember planning with your friends how to get from a city to a dungeon across zones alive?

Remember having good standing with a npc faction but couldn't go to town because your friend in the group was KOS?

Get with it man, it's 2012. Wait in your city (lobby) for your que to pop and warp you to wherever you want to go. Then spam 1112311123 (or use a macro to fight for you)  for 15 mins and get the uber loot.

A large portion of the player base does not have the patience for trucking materials back and forth from place to place.

Look at the ruckus around bag space in many games or bank space or both.

MMOs are built around instant gratification and convenience more so than immersion and logic.

Most people really don't want to role play any more than they want to travel 15 minutes to any dungeon or instance. Impossibly large bag space and magical teleport mechanics are far more important than realism and challenge.

Watch these forums light up with complaints when any developer leaves out a convenience mechanic or two. The place looks like a fire works festival.

For those that do not have the time; I am sorry to hear that. Life just sucks sometimes. We all have our crosses to carry.

Because they can sell more bags in a cash shop, but selling strength would be considered p2w.

Originally posted by NorseGod

It required thinking. Thinking is outdated and so 1999.

Remember eating and drinking?

Remember picking a certain species for specific attributes to better min/max your class?

Remember corpse runs?

Remember planning with your friends how to get from a city to a dungeon across zones alive?

Remember having good standing with a npc faction but couldn't go to town because your friend in the group was KOS?

Get with it man, it's 2012. Wait in your city (lobby) for your que to pop and warp you to wherever you want to go. Then spam 1112311123 (or use a macro to fight for you)  for 15 mins and get the uber loot.

I would laugh at this if it wasn't so sadly true.

The Game killed off the realism aspect of RPGs.

I personally don't want my character's size to determine it's carry load but I'm open to the idea of item weight and odd shaped items (instead of everything as a identical size cube).

Fully agreed. Not  one RPG on the horizon has the above mentioned features.

(I know it was a figure of speech but please, on the next time, use the metric unit system. American units are useless elsewhere)

I'm one to agree with the OP, but I'm an old fuddy-duddy that looks at it in terms of a "check and balance" to gameplay, and not just "psh, it's 2012!". There is a reason they had encumberance, and it was usually because of player-looting, having to bring only the essentials you can carry, or some other factors to push the player to pick the loot that means something - and not all of it. Why do Fallout and Elder Scrolls games still have it? Should be obvious, regardless if you consider it a "hassle" or not. It's not needed in *every* game, though.

I will bring up a backwards example of it, though; Fallen Earth

It has it based on the Strength stat, which is only intrinsic to melee characters. Min/max crafters are *always* going to have low strength, and thusly the smallest inventory capacity. Counter-intuitive... and I've always suggested that the various crafts should be based on a complimentary stat-setup, like melee weaponsmiths to Str/Coor (you know, so MELEE guys would pick it up ffs), but all I got was insults from the player-base - who AGAIN - simply don't get it, but like to run their mouth either way.

Originally posted by lizardbones

People wanted to play the "killing monsters" game, not the "endless inventory management" game. This allowed developers to have player banks instead of player houses, which players generally found acceptable.

Then why did it go from Asherons Call of inventory management with killing 100 mobs at the same time to no inventory management and mostly not being able to take on 2 or more mobs at once? :p

I personally found encumberance to be one of the more moronic game systems. 

I love role playing and I am by no means one of the instant gratification crowd, but I am playing a game. I have no intention of playing a reality simulation. 

There are certain real life trappings I simply do not want to have to deal with. But to each his own. 

As a packrat, I hated leaving behind anything that isn't nailed down.  There's a part of me that would like to drive a cart up the front of a  dungeon, go in and clear it out, then click "loot dungeon" and spend the next hour sifting through the nails and furniture, cataloguing and indentifying it, filling out gaps in my coin collection. 

The way I see it, this is what the modern backpack assumes is happening in the background - it's just cutting out the back-and-forth running that I was going to do anyway and leaving out all the micromanagement of pack animals, wagons and ships. It focuses attention on actions rather than the mundane portering.

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Originally posted by redcloud16
I personally found encumberance to be one of the more moronic game systems. 

I love role playing and I am by no means one of the instant gratification crowd, but I am playing a game. I have no intention of playing a reality simulation. 

There are certain real life trappings I simply do not want to have to deal with. But to each his own. 

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I don't mind a reasonable blend of both worlds in my games. I like enough challenge and encumbrance to at least make my game play about some choices and challenges without reaching the point of frustration. At the same time though, I just don't understand why people spend their limited and valuable time playing a game if they find it too inconvenient to travel around from place to place or have to empty that Mary Popins carpet bag they have been toting around.

It seems that developers are taking the "game" out of the games in order to appeal to more people. It is what we are left with that is concerning me. More and more people are in agreement that there are too many games with bland features which is arguably due to the attempt at mass appeal. The MMO conundrum.

Not that important to me.  In fact its mostly annoying especially in most MMOs.  These aren't roguelikes you know, even the ones that include do it for entirely the wrong reasons and don't have a game design suited for it.

Go play Dragon's Dogma.

I know, I know, it's not an MMORPG, but it totally has weight rules AND smaller people can't carry nearly as much as big people.

You want a character who wears plate mail and carries around a giant heavy weapon and a ton of crap?  You're looking like a Russian weightlifter.  Even if you're female.

Originally posted by gravekeeper2

Fully agreed. Not  one RPG on the horizon has the above mentioned features.

(I know it was a figure of speech but please, on the next time, use the metric unit system. American units are useless elsewhere)

As I am someone who likes to accomidate everyone.  I will add the metric conversion for our friends on the other side of the pond. 

"Currently in most games you can have a 3 foot tall 45 pound toon that can carry as much as a 6 foot 235 pound character."

is now

"Currently in most games you can have a 9.144E-4 km tall 20411.656667 g  toon that can carry as much as a 0.001829 km 1.065942E8 mg character"

It just does not have the same ring, but I will keep this in mind for future posts :)

I love how the genre is now referred to as "MMOs" leaving the fact that you're taking on the role of a character (the RPG aspect) out. Encumberance is an invaluable aspect to any self-respecting mmorpg game out there, and frankly I don't like the cube slotted 'bags' current games give us. Think back to pre-AOS Ultima Online. Your character has easily 100 dex, right? Put on a piece of platemail and it drops to 50. THATS what I'm talking about. That needs to be in more games. I hate that computers are so widespread and that RPG games which used to be only real story tellers and adventure seeking people played are now played by everyone. Developers who aren't actually part of the game listen to these 'average every-day' people and our games become what they are now.

remember many many MUDs I used to play  had all this stuff.. had to /drink /eat all the time:P