110% agree on everything you said. Although undoubtably one can see the MMO as the progression of the classic single player CRPG, the story-driven approach is completely incomptatible with an MMO, at least if some degree of consistency and credibility or realism is to be maintained.

  World story: Yes, World Lore: Yes, World history: Yes, but No to a predetermined story of the player character

It is a real pity for the genre that techologically and technically, it has advanced so much and hoas passed through several 'generations', and that conceptually it has stayed back in 1990. MMOs really need to break free from their single-player roots and the moment that will happens the genre will move into the next age... sounds overly romantic, doensn't it?

I think it is also a problem with the predominant class/level system.  Designers are forced to create boss level creatures for each level in their desire to make everyone the hero.  The story line in an MMO self destructs when the boss creature reappears for the next person in line.

I completely agree that MMO's are going to need far more depth than they have now to survive.

This is one of the reasons that Asherons Call has such a huge base of players who still remember the game (if not play it still)

While not feeling like the game was based around you per se, you were made to feel like you were part of the story, your actionsaffected the ongoing story arc and your character had a history in the game in relation to the world around him.

MMO's that the average player has access to now are static and pretty lifeless. WoW for example has no real progression or story that the average player even notices let alone feels part of.

 I hear what you are saying, but in my opinion, the majority of today's MMORPG community are very selfish. They only think or care about themselves and what they can do to help them progress. That is the real poison for MMOs in my opinion. Everybody wants to be the hero. I do not believe any of these players would be satisfied playing as a peon to a faction, or just another face in the army. There is no loyalty and very little comaradarie left in many MMORPG communities these days. Most players do not care about the world or the other players, they just want the next item upgrade, or skill up, or whatever carrot is at the end of the string. And they will lie, cheat, and steal (even from their "friends") to get it.

The thing I found most shocking in your article was that this just occurred to you this morning.  Don't you ever read these forums?  I've seen this sort of thing brought up repeatedly on this site.

I don't mean to give you a hard time but I mean...really?  Just this morning?

I think lotro has done a great job of story telling, its a story most of us know, but converting that story to something that is fun and playable is different, I think they kept the core story and lore pretty well, can't be verbatum the books but good enough for me.

I enjoy rich story driven games, and like it in my mmo, It will be intresting to see how Bioware's SWTOR, works out heavy story as well as fully voiced over..

I think what is poison in todays mmo's is the instant gratification players, that yell in the forums they want it now, and don't want to have to play to get it.

The problem is the player/NPC ratio.  When there are more players runing around than NPCs, there's a problem.  Think about Dalaran in WoW.  It's flooded with thousands of players and maybe 100 NPCs.  With that ratio, it's impossible to be a precious snowflake.  In a traditional fantasy story, the only hero is the main character and a handful of companions.  This can be done in a single player game.  In an MMO, you could instance the entire world (which removes the MM), or have enough content such that there are enough starting villages to have almost one per player, for example.  The scope of such a virtual world would ensure that each player had a unique experience - if the same quests weren't copied from one town to another.

You would have to have AI designing a large part of such a world, because it would be too expensive to have humans do it all.  We'll get there one day.

Age of Conan comes close to this with its Destiny quest line.  Each quest builds on the previous and is only playable by YOU.  A single player instance solely designed for you and you alone.

The Old Republic claims it will do something even more, but I am dubious that even Bioware can pull off a tailor made story in a mmo as well as they do in games like KOTOR and Mass Effect.

The "phasing" tech that Blizzard used in Wrath is a step in the right direction.  By completing certain quests, my actions have "changed" the environment to my point of view.