I believe that there are a total of three problems with MMORPGs.

The first problem is budget, not everyone can afford to make an MMORPG, it costs money. This does not stop people from making so called MMORPGs in their Moms' basements, and when the result are typically laughable at best, the issue is self explanatory, it's not going away, noone has to play bad games. The solution is simple: Do your homework before you spend money.

The second problem is one most people have complained about to some degree: the Balance/Cookie Cutter issue. What I believe, and what I don't think most people who complain fail to realize is that this problem is the inherant result of thousands of people playing the same game.

Let me explain: computers do one thing, crunch numbers. We all know this. RPGs where at their core nothing but a numbers game long before they where set to electronics. D&D is at it's core nothing but rolling a dice to generate a number to plug into a variable of an equation which generates a result. Numbers. Again, we all know this. Here's what I'm getting at: anything you want to accomplish in an RPG, be it craft something for profit, kill a PvE boss, level up, grind faction, PvP, etc. is nothing but a math problem. Of course through a combonation of the game creators' artistry and our own imaginations, we're able to separate ourselves from this, but the fact remains.

Now, here's why this is an inherant problem in an MMORPG: In any game, on any server, what you have is thousands of people trying to solve the exact same (if you think about it, very few) math problems. Is this situation, someone is always eventually going to come up with the best solution, and there always will be a single "best" solution. Once this happens, everyone who can will mimic the solution and cry "Cookie Cutter", and everyone who can't will cry "Balance."

Second problem, I call this the Uncle Own issue, and people may not be as concienciously aware of this one. When SOE implemented NGE and put the nail in SWG's coffin one of the things they said they where trying to fix was that character where, "Uncle Own not Luke Skywalker." That sounds nice, because everyone wants to be Luke Skywalker, the problem is that in the Star Wars universe there are billions of Uncle Owens and one Luke Skywalker... that's what makes him Luke Skywalker. It's like in The Incredibles when Jason Lee is all like, "When everyone's special, noone is" or some such thing. "Too many chiefs, not enough indians" is another common phrase. But obviously noone wants to pay $15 month to be Uncle Owen so someone else can pay the same amount to be Luke Skywalker. It's the same as when you where 5 and playing Star Wars, GI Joe, He-Man, Super-Friends etc and got in fist fights over who got to be, only now it costs money.

Incidentally, for those of you who like to bitch incesantly about instancing: This is why you have instancing. It's to simulate an individual and/or small group expirience within an MMORPG, because noone ever wrote a fantasy novel about 5000 people sitting around waiting to kill the same dragon over and over, because that doesn't make any sence, and isn't very exciting. Basically the idea of instancing is that it simulates that everyone else is farting around the public areas, while your off saving the world (I.E. your Luke Skywalker, everyone else is Uncle Owen (or Biggs Darklighter at best). Does it work? Is it good/bad? I'm not saying, I'm just saying that's why it's done.

So those are my thoughts. I don't know what the solution is.