Massively In Need of Improvement

GameSpot has tossed up a new article entitled “Massively In Need of Improvement,” in which they discuss many reasons why current MMORPGs aren’t living up to gamers’ expectations and what should be done to fix the problem. Here’s a taste:

In current MMORPGs there are only three things to do: Fight, think about fighting, and prepare to fight. Every trade is focused on enhancing combat, and every skill is applicable to combat in some way. This is bad. The option to play an entire character’s life without having to ever pick up a sword should not only be possible, but it should be enticing! Be a barkeep, be a shop owner, be a craftsman, be a politician, be a writer, be a cartographer. In the perfect MMORPG, very little would need to be coded to allow for these possibilities, as the basic gameplay would be robust enough to allow for them. Consider, if you will, a game in which there is paper that can be duplicated at an appropriate expense and that can be filled with whatever a skilled scribe can “type.” Blammo! With no effort, you’ve just created dozens of industries. Players may become poets, they may begin to write and print newspapers about the juiciest hunting spots or the latest happenings in the largest guilds, etc. Heroes (because heroes can exist in a game with permadeath) could gain enormous fame. An entire printing and distribution sector has just been added to the economy, along with just one very real incentive to play a nonviolent character.