rdrakken is correct in both concept and facts. Thought the "pron" example is kinda thin (cause there isnt and actual plot as such, just a supporting framework. so lets let that one go for now...)

While everything can be stripped down to a few basic statements like...

"the protagonist is confronted by some kind of issue or situation which they must overcome" 

What that summary does not contain is the flavor or feeling that makes a story good or readable or watchable or playable or... interesting. For that you must have comnplexity of some sort in the plot of the story, some detail that makes it worth playing. it is the detail tht makes the difference, otherwise we would have quit telling stories to each other many years ago.

the issue the OP shared was the sameness of the quests and  the repetition of content without variation, the lack of different goals and objectives. or more specifically ones that create and interest and desire to complete.

Some folks like grinding the same raid, and are comfortable with knowing what they need to do.  thats good too. 

my example of what the op asked for is this... give me an mmo that lets me choose vanilla from 31 flavors, i will eventually try them all, and i might find a new favorite.  but i might just want to fall back on good old vanilla. 

better yet, let players create new combinations and even sundaes for me to try... thats the mmo for me.

 because the devs are looking at the game from one perspective. and when players get the opportunity to interact with the game world, interesting stuff will happen.  because they bring a new perspective and  the different details they bring may make "protagonist ovecomes obstacle" interesting. and yes someone will eventually find a way to create an achovy sundae, which i wont like... but i will try it, (yuck) and i might even stick around a game just so that i can be that guy... heck that is actually interesting.

Long live the anchovy sundae!

Originally posted by krazzee

Originally posted by rdrakken

Originally posted by tordurbar

There are finite number of things that can be done in an MMO rpg because, bottom line, all MMO rpg are stories i.e. literature. It is said that there are only 36 possible plots in literature. So too with an MMO rpg.

 What a farse. Polti broke down everything into its most base form using criteria that was arbitrarily narrow. The Comparative-lit group at Northern State broke it down into "motifs" listing over 40,000 motifs..."lowly heroine marries prince", "magic object alters characters life".

Perfect example about how you should NEVER listen to someone that lived over 100 years ago when it comes to literature...there was no Pizza delivery and thus no possible plot for "Pizza man delivers Pizza, scores with horny babe" to be written during his time...and this has been a plot for sooo many modern prons.

Oh you woefully understand what tordurbar meant, good sir. When you break it down, there are only so many possible plots in literature, in storytelling in general--regardless of the media or form it is presented in. To use your example,  "Pizza man delivers Pizza, scores with horny babe," is the same as the very standard and common "Hero must complete a task to gain the love/admiration/lovely, lovely lady lumps of his respectful gal." So to recap, tordurbar was talking about storytelling at it's most basic concept, which is what we know how to express. There is only so many variations of the same basic thing.

That strikes me as a bit of a reducto-ad-absurdiam arguement. If you really want to go that route, you could say that all literature boils down to but a SINGLE theme... "Stuff Happens" and everything is simply some variation of that.

To me it all boils down to the abandonment of group content.

You make a game 80% single player content, and it suddenly all has to be unique and easy enough for everyone, meaning you need 10x more content and even then they will still blow through it way too fast.

I remember days wasted in group areas, and now those same group areas (nerfed into oblivion) take 10 minutes.

Wow was onto something with places like BRD ... I don't know the particulars but if you look at how the mountain looks to have been designed, it all flows together into a vast group centric zone. Personally while I would prefer non-instanced games .. this as a concept seems like it would have been a good one. But .. wow has since become something very different. Something far more linear and scripted and each new content patch is easily soloable in a week or two and each new raid zone easily skirted with badges and a few raids.

Instant gratification has changed the genre in (for me) some pretty horrible ways. All I can do is dream of having a server side LFD tool in a game much more like EQ/vanilla wow. Finding people sucked .. yes .. but gutting the genre into an easy mode mess is not the direction I would have chosen.

Originally posted by tordurbar

I disagree with the OP. He is with the "I want something new" crowd that try every game and then quit and complain that it is just like all the others. The OP even admits to game hopping!

There are finite number of things that can be done in an MMO rpg because, bottom line, all MMO rpg are stories i.e. literature. It is said that there are only 36 possible plots in literature. So too with an MMO rpg.

I admire those game companies that try to be different CCP and ANet being two of them. Yet everyone points to WOW as being filled with boring quests and "same" content. I say bull feces. Have you ever been to Outland in WOW. Now there is something completely different. Rocks floating in the sky, magic oozing from the ground, an edge that you can fall off. It took guts for Blizzard to tear up the world in Cata. I have never heard of a game destroying and rebuilding content on such a scale. Look at the WOW environment - a mixture of science-fiction and fantasy with a little humor and horror thrown in. The only reason that the quests are boring is that you (or at least I) have been doing them for 7 years. Yet this "boring" game held my interest for all that time.

Like too many Americans (sorry to generalize here - and I am an American) if something is NEW it is cool. Sure Tera combat was different, RIFT rifts were neat and GW2 has a whole bunch of things that are not WOW-like. But, are they really different? You are still pressing buttons in Tera and GW2 just faster and in a different order.

I would have more respect for the OP and similar posters if they gave me some examples of how to be different. QQ for the sake of "sameness" is more boring than any of the things that they complain about. Tell me how you go beyond the 36 plots and you would have a sympathetic ear.

That part I highlighted in green...you say "bull feces" to the part of WoW having boring quests and same content, then your prime example against that is nothing more then environmental graphics and land layout. There are multiple other MMOs that have advanced environment graphics, floating pieces of land that you can fall off of, etc...putting a different coat of paint on the same piece of hardware doesn't make it new. So I say "bull feces" to your "bull feces". WoW IS boring and has the same content; that's why I stopped playing it many years ago.