I would love one too, but how would it scale? Current MMORPGs aren't really fun (in my estimation), they're just about "numbers bouncing off one another". The problem with any RPG, never mind one of the MMO variety, is that there comes a point where catering to the individual becomes impossible. You can't allow players to exercise their creative juices because, well, everyone wants to be a hero, everyone wants to be the centre of attention. That's human nature.

The result? People swinging swords at stuff until it breaks. I've never understood the fascination, and I doubt I ever will.

Comedy! Yes everybody wants to be a hero, but a simpsons MMORPG could use comedy. It could fro example have a day where you get a big stick and whack snakes over the head, for experiance. Hallowene could see you attacked by zombies, and shooting them with a shotgun, or aliens invading, and having to defend the town with a stick with a nail in it. You could truely make a game that brings people together, no racism or unfunny violence. Day to day could be like the Sims, Earning money and such, with the bonus of space missions, buying a car, or going to school. I think that if well implimented, it would work brilliently. The trouble is simpsons games make money anyway, so almost any game under that license would be a cheap cash in, and not a work of art.

They could call it Habitat: The Simpsons.

yeah, bring back habitat. At least you'd know you were hanging out with cool people! makes all the difference.

Maniac mansion would be a good MMORPG, set in the universe of (fantastical) films about high school kids.

Oh man, I was just sitting here watching King of the Hill too. Now I'm almost bummed.

The problem with the MMORPG is that you play a role, but not a game.

There are baddies, yes, but there is no "hero." No over arching story.

Even the simplest table top has that.

Without the story to keep you hooked, you'll eventually hit the highest level, have everything, and be left unfulfilled.

I'd like to see the MMO concept extend to other things... but I'm not sure how it would work.

For one, I'd think I'd like to see an MMORPG that wasn't purely medeval.
(I always thought Archanon would have been better as an MMO.)

I think there are a good deal of things that could be explored that aren't, because no one wants to make a leap.

Yes, there's City of Heroes.... but I'd like to see something beyond that. It seemed like a copout to the question of "Who can be the hero of the MMO?" to say: Everyone.

Or somesuch nonsense.

For the last couple of days I've been trying to think of the setting for a simple Flash game I want to try developing, and it's a toss-up between 'spaceships and planets' and 'swords and magic'. There isn't really much alternative.

Oh, right... and there's 'war', both modern and medieval (sans magic).

I was going to try to write about the reasons there is such a limited range of settings for games, but there are probably a hundred articles that talk about this sort of thing more eloquently and knowledgably than I could on the internet already, if I could be bothered looking for them, and in any case you're all intelligent literary gaming people so who has anything new to learn from me?

I'd suggest you try Uru ( http://uru.us.ubi.com/ ), but enough people are apparently content with the current state of MMOs such that it never had a chance.  It was (planned) to be a story-driven puzzle-based MMO, something fairly unique in the MMO genre at present.

Unfortunately, the other options (Second Life, There, etc.) seem to be so far in the opposite direction from the sword-bash MMOs that they all tend to be just giant multiplayer sandboxes.  A Tale in the Desert leans heavily towards this as well, with some of the limitations of the level-based systems thrown in.

I've been figuring we've got another year or two before someone successfully breaks out of the current mold, but conditions are always changing.  I think the ever-rising popularity of sophisticated gaming on consoles may be holding things back for the moment while the game producers are trying to rectify the disparity between possibilities and profits.

I think a Futurama MMORPG would be pretty interesting.

I second that suggestion.

I second that emotion...

Suggestion

I think you mean "I second that motion".

No, no... "I second that emotion' was a Futurama episode title...

Smokey Robinson & the Miracles!

Don't worry about semantics, let me worry about blank.

Ok..the Simpsons idea is great, but on the general MMORPG issue, I think that dropping the first M would be a good idea... In a not-so-massive game world the few players would be able to get the attention and story -arc required for a decent gaming experience...

Still a Simpsons MMORPG would be great. A South Park one grater....

I sure understand, that you want to stop killing in your desire to become a hero. Instead of starting a discussion what a hero actually is (gues it is discussed somewhere to great lengths) I guess its just the basic issue of a win - lose situation. If you are the hero, someone else is the loser, may he be dead or alive.
In my opinion, the ultimate Goal of roleplaying is not being a hero. It is just a way to get "there" - to the good playing. Which is playing out characters and characteristics of different people(s), making them colourful and alive. Agreed, current mmorpgs are not really good to achieve that goal, in WoW (which I play at the moment) one needs lots of fantasy und text to actually roleplay.

On the other hand, if you want to stop killing it might be a good idea, not to start at Homers powerplant...

(Sorry for any mistakes, english is a foreign language for me)

have they still not let you into the beta of  Hello Kitty World (http://www.sanriotown.com/onlinegame/index.php ) yet?!?

Bastards!

I thought about the Maniac Mansion MMORPG, and I would like the idea if you could start at a center place, hook up with other players, and start a new game together. Gamestyles would include scifi, horror, ninjas, pirates, etc. And every time you could chose one of the styles and start a new "game" or instance, which would be an advenure-game-ish scenario, which you should solve together, but with self-generating, everytime-new scenarios. Like the maps in Diablo.

Yes, I would love that.

Yeah, I like that idea.  Not so much the Maniac Mansion part, but the exploring with a small group of people.  As a previous poster mentioned, the biggest problem with MMORPG is the first M.

The most fun I had in WoW was raiding an "instance" with a small group of people.  You get too many people in the world and they start to be come indistinguishable from NPC's.  I would much rather be in a small world, and better yet a private world where only my real-life friends where.

Real-Life?  Huh?  Look it up.

When I played Ultima Online (way back when), two of my friends had accounts on the same server.

It was much more fun hanging out with them in the game than it was working through it solo.

I can't see getting into WoW without having at least one or two friends in there.

The problem with PC gaming is that on the whole it's an all or nothing thing in terms of multi-play.

Either you have a large scale multi-play that's got many people, a shooting spree with no story (CS, CS:S, ect.) or you've got a solo game, usually with some sort of story.

It's been a long time since I've seen any sort of multi player co-op on the PC. (At the moment all I can think of is Duke Nukem and Doom in this respect.)

On the whole, the PC game is something that the gamer is forced to expieriance alone... or pay a whole bunch of money to spend time with strangers, who are also spending a whole bunch of money.

I think that it would be interesting to put together a game where a small group of players has to depend on each other's actions to achieve the story.

Like for example if you took a GTA game, but instead of only being one criminal, you and your friends are your own crime syndacate. There could even be A and B parts to missions, 2 distinct things that have to be done in different areas at the same time to achieve the desired result. (This was the first example that came to mind.

Might be interesting to think about a MORPG (note the missing first M) of the Simpsons where each "instance" of Springfield was populated by only 10 or 20 other "real" people, maybe by invitation only if desired).   That would allow the smaller group to band together for common goals and give each person more a chance to be a "hero".

Ton's of other problems with that model, but I hope designers start exploring something different soon.

Yes, I really do think that limiting the # of people per server would help greatly.

I haven't played any of the more recent MMOs, but back when I played UO, there was a big problem with urban sprawl.

I'm not sure if other games let you buy houses and castles, but this was a major thing in UO.

Well, there were so many people that just HAD to have houses right next to the cities that around every popular city there was a ring of houses that you'd have to weave through if you wanted to hunt or chop wood.

It lost its feel of realism because of the huge player growth.

Kind of like small communities in a large town?

How about something like if WoW were divided-up into areas/countries/regions? With restrictions/rules?

Or a simulation, like maps, where only private friends can enter on something like "The Sims"?

One of the best multiplayer experiences I've ever had was playing through a campaign in Xwing Vs TIE fighter with 5 other guys in the same room.  We had a story to follow through, as well as clear and distinct roles that required major cooperation.

Nobody cared about getting the most kills, the highest stats etc - everyone wanted to 'beat' the story, and everyone had an absolute blast.

Combine that type of game with a massive ongoing war that allowed us to participate in small distinct battles, and I think you'd draw a nice line between the two extremes you mentioned.  You could face off against different (evenly matched) squadrons anytime you wanted, occasionally combining several squadrons for large missions.

On the other hand, I think the Neverwinter Nights style of invidual game servers would work just as well - it wouldn't bother me if I only played with people I knew...

I wonder if I'd be able to get a job as the Springfield Isotopes team mascot.

I still think the concept of MMORPG's is inherently flawed. The driving idea of the MMORPG is always to distinguish yourself from other people (because here people can actually see you and you can interact with them, so who you are and what you look like counts more heavily than in singleplayer games), yet the design is such that you will always be driven into cookie-cutter roles and appearances. There are numerous examples that back this up: from the gear and weaponry (you will always have the 'ultimate' set or weapon that everyone will use) to the fact that the game must deliver an equal experience to everyone, and thus everything gets equalled out and everyone is equally uninteresting and indistinguishable.

It sure is nice to get to live next to Homer, but what about all the other hundred thousand peeps who want to live there? Certain [Korean] MMORPG's allow people to assume more unique roles, but the result is an unbalanced game: one guy gets to be the king of the world, cutting off that experience of other players.

MMORPG's always defeat themselves.

Everyone wants to be the greatest hero on the planet.

Everyone wants to be the "Chosen One"... and why shouldn't they? They are in every other type of game that they play?

The problem is that you can't have a story in which every character is the protagonist.

Maybe if people tried to role play it would be different, because it would add an external individuality that isn't in the game.

I don't remember what else I was going to say, but I think it was mostly to agree with the cookie-cutter world. Eventually you're going to expieriance everything in the game, and it'll have nothing to keep you in your seat.

I'm not sure thats true of all players, or games like 'Call of Duty' wouldn't be so popular.  A lot of people just want to feel like they're part of something bigger, rather than the hero that saves the world.  

The fun in a game like 'Call of Duty' is in laying down cover fire for your squad, or being rescued by your teammate whilst reloading in the sights of a nazi.  It feels realistic (even if its not).  

I can't help thinking many of the wannabe 'heroes' are probably the ones ruining it for others, since their sole source of fun in the game is aquiring the most gold, the most kills, or the most fame.  I just want to do something exciting with a bunch of friends.

Wow(I mean Woooow, note WoW), an mmorpg like that would be something that even I would play.

No more "Knights of the old mystic forest of forbidden unicorns" -mmorpg's!

Simpsons: Hit and Run was a pretty good way to walk through Springfield. It was their GTA3 clone... and it was also (in my opinion) much better... but I'm a fan of bright colours and humour.

Something like that could be given multiplayer pretty easily - though it probably wouldn't be 'massive'.

It seems to me the logical development is Ron's idea above, the MORPG.  Why not let players run their own servers, like they do with Counterstrike?  Then you let in your friends and play through the scenarios together.  And modders could build new scenarios and release them, with suggested number of players, etc.

Neverwinter Nights

the idea of the MORPG, makes me think of Battle.net for diablo, and diablo 2, both games had player limits and the ability to make the game private. I had many enjoyable experiences playing online with my brother and a few friends. I dont play diablo 2 anymore though, killing fiends gets sorta boring.
Ill just stick to Animal Crossing, even if Ron wont come to my town :p .

Off topic slightly, but how exactly does one find peoples towns to visit?  I'm about to pick up Animal Crossing for my girlfriend (anything to get her interested in coding) and don't really know whats going to be involved.  

Anyone care to fill me in?

you need to have each others friend codes, you cant search for a town to go to. To a certain extent its a real bummer because after a while your townmates threaten to move if you dont have a friend come into town via wifi. For me this is a problem as none of my real life friends have a DS, and anyone in my real life town who might have one is probably way to young for me to talk to. This leaves you with animal crossing forums and such (not nintendo n-sider forums, as they dont allow you to share your friend code), but this can be sort of risky, as you dont know the person you just gave your friend code to in any way shape or form. who knows they might come in and chop down all your trees or something. But dont let my Wi-Fi gripes throw you on the game itself, Animal Crossing DS is an excellent game, worthy of purchase, especially if you are bored with killing stuff.

Thanks for the info!

I bought the game on the way home from work last night.  From the bit I watched it looked very nicely polished and cute (maybe a little too much so).

As far as swapping friend codes with the wrong people, could you not just switch off your DS as soon as they started messing around?

Yeah I guess you could. Id be a little iffy about it though as i know my WiFi got messed up teporarily when mario kart froze while playing on-line once. I hope you have fun with this almost painfully cute, yet enjoyable game. Im usually stoked about any new game that comes out for DS (save a few, but i did buy spiderman 2), I love the new approach it takes to playing games. I dont know about anyone else but, to me, the standard excessively buttoned gamepads ar just, sorta, getting old. I like what Nintedo is trying to do with gaming, and think that its time for them to show us all why they have been major innovators in console design (analog sticks, dancepads, little robots that throw things at the tv :p ). Viva la Revolution!

Thanks - my girlfriend is playing it at the moment, but is a bit confused as to what she's actually meant to do.  Having come from adventure games with a clear goal, or a racing game where you have to win etc, I think wandering around is a bit too open for her at the moment.  She has dressed the character in a silly blue hat though...


I'm the same.  Packaging a Playstation in a handheld doesn't interest me in the slightest.  The type of game I want to play lounging in front of an X-Box with a few mates is different to what I want to pick up for 10 minutes as I wait for a bus.

At a glance, the Nintendo DS seems to be receiving more than its fair share of original games (the surgical game using the stylus for example), which is a Very Good Thing.

As far as i can tell the goal of animal crossing is to make money, catch things, pay off your house(s) and fill them with stuff. You can also compose town tunes (i have a Monkey Island theme :) ) i dont think you can acually beat the game but you can get credits if you go to the coffee shop(in museum) on saturday and listen to K.K. play guitar. In regards to handhelds themselve, i agree with your opinion of the PSP (also due to boycott, i got a T[E2] palm instead so i could play MI handheld) plus there are actually a few adventures on DS (trace memory, Phoenix Wright) and it seems that the genre is completely non-existant on PSP (although if they release the broken sword or discworld games on PSP this view might change). I think that the simplicity of play on GBA is the reason that i has out-sold both the DS and the PSP in the last year, You can pick it up, play zelda for 15 minutes and then save and go finish cooking supper.

Once I get a 2nd unencrypted wifi set up at the house, I'll visit everyone who's emailed me about visiting their town.  

Give me a week or so.  I'm not ignoring you.  I'm just being rude.

right on. I look forward to hearing from you
rock on Ron

what would u actaully do in a simspons mmorpg  though?

mmorpgs are dull enough at the best of times, you'd have to have something to do.  And how do you get thousands of people into mo's just because homer's walked in, etc etc?

i'm surprised no one has mentioned a Pirate MMO or MO game, yeah even a MONKEY ISLAND one! :P

But seriously, I know there are a couple of pirate MMO's coming out which is cool, but from what i've read about them, they are really aiming low in the atmosphere and fun factor, because they are trying to make it as realistic as possible (based on pirate history).

With a monkey island-like universe on the other hand you could go nuts. Imagine having to assemble a crue of other fellow players and then trying to find the cash, by any means possible, to buy a ship. Then you use the ship to sail to mysterious islands where treasure hunting would occur. yeah you could have a few enemies thrown in, but the game would be more about atmosphere (something many games lack).

You would have interesting and funny characters do deal with ala MI and you could also have great puzzles (suited for MMO gameplay) for numerous things like finding pieces of a map that would then reveal an island (and island that wasnt there before) which would then lead you to the island where more puzzles occur, all that while having ship battles of some scale (not too serious but fun!).

Or you could just go down to the Scumm bar and auction off ur new three-headed monkey for some grog. Maybe forge treasure maps and sell them as originals to unsuspecting players, spit contests, grave digging!,

The possibilities are endless...wouldnt you agree Ron and the rest?

Heres a fun and unique little MMORPG ive stumbled across. Its a Pirate themed online puzzle game. Quite fun and original.

http://www.puzzlepirates.com/

If any of you decide to check it out you can find me on the Cobolt ocean under the name Threepwood. (I look almost exactly like Guybrush from MI2... his best look in my opinion.)

A Monkey Island MMORPG would rock. I can see "Insult swordfighting" for real. Maybe other players could vote for whose retort was the funniest. It would be a great spectator sport.

i'm still surprised nobody (including ron and sid meier) has thought of this. And don't tell me that pitching this idea to publishers wouldn't make some of them wet their panties - especially with the frightening pace at which mmo's are becoming the new 'it' in the games industry.

It doesnt have to be Monkey Island (although that would add even more depth but considering LucasArts is spending whatever talent they have making more and more StarWars based games I doubt it - geez all those cool franchises and the best they could do is a semi-sloppy MI4 and cancel and lose the Sam n Max game which hopefully has fallen in the right hands now...), just as long as its a cool piratey universe that doesnt take itself too seriously but at the same time can bring all that atmosphere of the era into the game.

I am not an *M*MORPG player (tried City of Heroes for a bit, but found the most fun came in designing the spandex suits and flying to sight-see ... go figure).  I do play a lot of single-player computer games, and have occasionally played cooperative and deathmatch online games with a couple friends.

It seems to me that Real Life (tm) has a solution to the "everybody is a hero" problem: people self-organize into towns, cities (small & big), and countries.  For those who desire fame, it can be attained at various levels: big-fish-in-small-pond (hero in a small town), small-fish-in-big-city, or for those truly outstanding or ambitious, big-fish-in-big-country.

Do *M*MORPGs have any concept of this?  It would seem trivial (to me) to organize online (e.g. WoW) communities into different sizes (town, small city, big city).  Hero stats could be posted for each community, allowing for hero fish of many sizes.  Players could form new communities (which adhere to in-game rules), and membership to each sub-community (town) would require the new player to bring some skill.  Towns could have elected leaders (or even dictators ... after all this is fantasy.)  Towns could be visited by any player, but "living" in them would be restricted to those in the sub-community.  Most importantly, towns could have halls which posted those who were most heroic (Xbox 360 Live apparently has more complex scoreboards ... this could be mapped to the town).  To me this seems different from forming sub-communities around raiding parties or guilds, but maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about.

Even better, towns could have "sports teams" and compete in bash-up games (with no real player death).

Is anything like this going on?  Is seems like this too-many-heroes problem should be solvable in*M*MORPGs.  (I do like the idea of a MORPG, though.)

I've played a few mmogs that allow for these kinds of things... Tale in the Desert was to some degree.. Eve Online very much so... Most of the 'fun' in the later game is in putting together large organisations and ruling sections of space. If you're willing to put in enough time, your player actions will have a huge impact on the gameworld as a whole.

And therein lies the problem. If I play a game that will, through whatever mechanic, allow me to rise to some kind of exhalted status in the community, you can be damn sure that I'll be competing against hordes of people who have no issue with spending 23 hours a day playing the game to the exclusion of everything else in life. I'd love to jump into a game and be a bastion of a local community, but I'm not about to give up my entire life for the cause.

Design a game when I can achieve this in hour long chunks, and you'll have me.

How about enforcing those hour long chunks?  Thats always been the biggest issue I've had with the likes of WoW.  How the heck can I compete with the 15yo kids that can spend 20 hours a day in the game world?  

The other way around it I can think of is to remove any inherent advantage in spending time in the game world, perhaps by giving all players a daily 'allowance'.  No matter how long you spend playing, you'll only get as much cash to spend as the next guy.  Let the games rewards come from the satisfaction of solving puzzles, exploring wilderness etc.  

The other upshot of this is no more tedious jobs to earn enough money/levels to compete.  The last thing I want to do in my spare time is an hour of tedious fishing/hunting rabbits just to make some gold.

Then again, I'm not looking for a game to provide me with a power trip...

At the moment I'm playing a charming free browser-based MMORPG called Kingdom of Loathing (http://www.kingdomofloathing.com) which gives you a set amount of adventure points per day. This means that you simply can't go on more than, in this case, 40 adventures a day. It's a great way to equal things out, though only feasible on the internet with this specific type of game I gather.

There was a multiplayer game that run on UNIX machines that I used to play back in the  80's called Empire (not to be confused the the PC game).  Each player was allocated X Bureaucratic Time Units (BTU's) each (real life) day.  If you didn't use them, they accumulated.  This meant that players that played every hour would run out of "moves".  Players that didn't play for a long time had a nice stash of BTU's to spend, but often missed important events.  There was a nice sweet spot of 5 or 6 moves a day.

Interestingly enough, the designer of Empire was Peter Langston, the original head of Lucasfilm Games.

The problem is that people are spending money to play the games. It's a service. People would be irritated if their service was limited.

What if I couldn't play all week because of Real Life (tm) but had a weekend free and wanted to play for a 5 hour stretch?

In the case of people who can't play often, this alotment might actually lessen the amount of time they could actually gain points.

I LOVE the idea of the game mimicing real life.

I think it'd be great to have a small town system. (It would be really cool if you could build an army and try for conquest.)

Usually MMOs have places that players are "safe" to some extent.

I'd like to see player run towns with players keeping the peace.

My favorite part about MMORPGs is when everyone treats you like crap and ignores you. You could lay there bleeding to death and they wouldn't bat an eye. It's like New York with EXP and pointy hats.

In real life, if you need to know how to do something, good luck asking random strangers. They'll just gang rape you and steal your sneakers. That's why search engines were invented. Google never stole anyone's sneakers.

I'm not going to play another MMORPG until they come with a search engine embedded within the game. Come to think of it, a Hichiker's Guide to the Galaxy MMORPG would be perfect for this. New players could set out armed with a copy of the Guide (and a fresh towel.)

That would be awesome.

I've never played a MMORPG before, but I've seen EverQuest and a few others being played and to tell the truth, they looked rather dull. But if some smart cookie developed a Hitchhikers one that didn't cost me an arm and a leg per month (Hmm... two months of play...) then I'd be on there quicker than you could be ejected from an airlock into space.
Monkey Island would be seriously cool too.
Btw, this is my first post and I'd just like to say; Ron, you are a GOD for Monkey Island... I can't count the hours of my life that have been whisked away to a better place by that series.

A H2G2 mmog wouldn't have to cost an arm and a leg. But your arm might disappear while your party member would, quite improbably, turn into a penguin.

Maybe something like... Morrowind, were you could be a hero if you wanted to, or just bum around joining groups, doing jobs pretty much like WoW i guess but hosting your own server with people you know and would rather game with rather then a bunch of people going ' LOLZ j00 g0tz 0wn3d n00b!!11 kikikikikik m4d 5k1llz'

Having a 'search' in it would be alot more user-friendly so you wouldent have to go around asking people that dont want anything to do with you about a simple action

They should make a MMORPG of that "the Sims" spin-off: "Singles".

The possibility of people dating on-line with their virtual characters... Forget your friends, your family, your pets, your school, your job and all the other reasons for leading a healthy out-doors social life!

And society recieves another uppercut!... brilliant

"Andsocietyisdownfromthatstunninguppercutfrommoraldecay.Therefereeisstartingthetencounticantbelievethisinonlythefirstrounditlookslikeaknockoutformoraldecay!" "9... 10... KNOCKOUT!!!" "WellthatsitKenitlookslikewehaveanewworldchampion." "ItsuredoesJoe.Whatadevistatinglossforsociety.Wellberightbackafterthesewordsfromoursponsor."
"THE SINGLES ONLINE! FORGET YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR FAMILY, YOUR LIFE! IT'S THE FIRST VIRTUAL DATING SERVICE WHERE YOU CAN SEE THE PERSON YOU'RE DATING... personsreallifeappearancemaydifferfromthatseeninthegame."

.... tasteless... i know...

There was a Sims: Online. It bombed - Hard. As it turns out, housewives don't like paying $ monthly for some hardcore, online gaming. Any MM game that is focused toward casual play, can not be pay to play. What you describe can already be played - It's called Myspace.

:<

I have a serous question for you Ron so you will see that I have dropped the "PissedOff" from my name for now.  I know that you are quite the programmer, I happen to be one myself but obviously not as accomplished as you. Often when I am playing computer games I go through, in my head, the coding that it would take to make what I am seeing on the screen to happen. My question: Does this happen to you?

That is just fucking rude man!

Though I have not read the current edition so far but somehow I agree with your point of view. What we can do except hoping for something good in future.

Many of the games that people are looking fore already exists. Pirate mmorg? www.burningsea.com . play with only a few people? Guild Wars.
No the real problem lies in the fact that all these games have certain goals of leveling your character. ONLY that are rewarded. The game EVE could be summarized: Get gold - get bigger spaceship - get even more gold - get an even bigger ship.
This is the first problem that should be adressed if mmos shall be different in the future.
When I played UO on a private server the most memorable moments where not the slaying of monsters but the social events I did all the other time. The leveling and skill gaining is simply just an excuse to be there in the first place. I ´d rather have 3 friends over to my house where we tell stories, do silly things like having a party drinking virtual beer (!) or do SOMETHING ELSE than slaying monsters.
On this small server I played there where generally about 300 people on at peak times. This was a fine numer since you kinda had an idea of all the major players. There where kind of celebrities, or people of which everyone else knew. This part I liked. I liked the bartering on the official barter channel. I liked the fact that you could dress up in silly clothes, bake a cake and have a grand party if you wanted to.
The other mmos I´ve played since have had none or little of this. They don´t inspire people to do something else than slaying and gaining combat levels. This must be adressed. Give people the tools to do something different and they will use them. The goals of the game must be re-thinked and defined.
Try and sit down grab a piece of paper and write down what kind of things YOU would like to do in a game other than combat. What would be FUN to do with your friends? What do we usually do in real life when we are together? How can we mimick this in this alternative universe in a fun manner? Real life is the inspiration of where our ideas come from in the first place. The Sims is popular for a reason. People can very easily relate to something similar in their own lives with this game...and then manipulate this alternative universe in whatever way the want (well sort of). Thats fun, because you can relate to it.
Now get cracking on some new ideas, and no swords please!

As for the overreliance on combat, that's not a problem specific to MMORPGs. That's simply what games have become and it seems to be very difficult for game designers to break out of it. As a game mechanic, combat has now been so well "researched",  they just don't know how to do anything else.

Other than that, I think one of the main problem with MMORPGs is that they're not built to be fun, they're built to be ADDICTIVE. For some, they're the same thing, for others (like me) they're not. If your business model is to keep players playing for as long as possible you want things that are repeatable as much as possible. Having quests with the story and puzzles that have the same level of detail of Monkey Island doesn't fit in there, as you'll typically only do that once. It's not worth these companies' time to invest in developing them (or so they think). Of course, the other problem is that these type of quests are typically a single-player activity anyway (though that doesn't necessarily need to be the case).

Ron, at the london meet up last year, you said (to the best of my recollection)  that in the initial design of SMI, melee town was supposed to have lots of NPCs gossiping and going about their business in a realistic way, but it was too hard to shoehorn this into SCUMM.

I'd like to ask anyone if they know of any MMOGs that use this idea and extend as a core gameplay mechanic? I was tinkering with the idea of designing (and just designing, really, starting a working games business is not on the cards for me) a MMOG that doesn't use any standard leveling techniques, but where the basic advancement mechanism is that of gaining influence over NPCs using gossiping and helping/lying about/etc. the NPCs and the other players.

The setting for this could be basically anything, a big corporate office, a tropical island, whatever, but the point is that a player gets rewarded for their time spent not by assigning arbitrary numbers to things, but through the development of specific character relationships. If a player has been in the game world for long enough, lots of NPCs are on their side... although equally they will have had a chance to make lots more enemies ...

EVE sounds a bit like this, except the key for me is the complexity of the AI in the NPCs,  so that they make a bigger difference to the progression of the game events, and thus are more likely to attract attention from the players.

Hey cool, I didn't know Ron Gilbert had a website...

Wellcome to de darkest corner...

I know this doesn't belong here but, who's looking forward to play the wonderful Ankh?

Personally, I think MMORPG's like WoW or Everquest is like getting scrotum hairs trapped in the stiching of your pants. They tend to be painfully long, with a story to it and an ending, then I'd start playing.

I know,this is off-topic,and maybe ron has been asked similar questions a thousand times,but Ron,i'm dying to know,what you think about "pirates of the caribbean" and if you know,wether the filmmakers were inspired by MI

Actually, didn't the ending of Monkey Island 2 have something to do with a themepark?

MMORPGs genres I'd pay to play:

"Old West".  Sixguns, gambling, dens of ill repute. Etc.  Probably would catch flack if shooting "injuns" was involved, however.

Something pirate related.  Yarrrr..    

Fallout MMORPG.  I'd pay 4x the going rate to play that one.  Post-apocalyptic ftw.  Seems so natural...

Neuromancer/cyberpunk.  It's been done, but it's been done poorly.

Now if they really want to rake in the bucks, master the concept of micropayments for "fluff" vanity gear.  Yeah you still have to earn the uber weapon, but if you want a pink stetson, let them pay for it in real dollars.

Make it cool enough, and they will.

But I think at least part of the joy in todays biggest multiplayer games is that even though you don't know everyone in the game, you still feel you are part of the community.

And as pathethic it may sound many of us feel pride and honour when ones name gets known to alot of people (you have a lot of exp, equip, frags, wins, belong to a clan, whatever). And it's that wanky feeling that keeps many people playing these games.

Ever played diablo (2) with a couple of your friends? It's fun for a while but then you start wanting more challenge, more people to trade with, and eventually you just quit or start playing the battlenet.

What I'm trying to say is that if you were to drop out the first M, you'd have to think of something that keeps players playing. Otherwise we're looking for a short lived game.

But by all means Ron, experiment your ideas if you get the chance :) . I'd certainly buy them.

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