Sometimes I really do wonder if I could ever find an MMO that would truly please me, that would really capture my ideal, and would engross me for years on end. I’ve played an awful lot of MMOs out there, partly because none of them have ever really captured me like that, even though I find many of them to be very solid, good, fun games. Yet, I think that what I want from an MMO is infinitely too contradictory for me to ever get something ideal.
What do I mean by contradictory? Well, here are just a few examples:
I want large, open, living, breathing worlds that lets me set my own goals.
But I guess I don’t. I like having some sort of a goal to work towards, as much as I’d really like to say that the journey is what I find fun. And, really, I think that is a very truthful statement, but without some sort of a goal, I seem to be unwilling to go out and have fun for the sake of having fun. Yet, if I’m allowed to choose my own goals, I have a very difficult time doing so. That’s why I never enjoyed Star Wars Galaxies much, because I could never figure out what I wanted to do.
I want players to be the ones that I’m working with and against to change the world, and share a dynamic setting that is far from dull and static.
But I guess not. EVE Online is a fantastic game that I highly recommend, and as much as I love the basic idea of the game, it has real issues for me. One of the biggest is the ‘atmosphere’ of the game. It is set in cold, harsh, uncompromising, and uncaring space: exactly like the game itself. Even when I am teamed up with with other players, there is always the fear of betrayal, and there is always the constant undefined conflicts. While it is very interesting, I know deep down I prefer a more cooperative environment.
Playing off both of those combined, I would like to see PvP that is more realistic and open, instead of artificial scenarios.
But I know that isn’t true. On some intellectual level, yes, I love the idea of open PvP. Yet, similar to the reasons above, I prefer a more cooperative environment. More importantly, it is extremely rare for any open world PvP fight to be anything remotely fair. I prefer my fights to be fair and fun, and not one-sided.
I want to have a high level of interactivity and dependency on other players.
But I guess not to the extent I use to think, at the very least. I like soloing often enough, simply because I like to play much more casually these days. I love grouping all the same, but I actually have never cared for raids. Yet, if I’m mostly concerned with playing in small (although frequently changing) groups of people, I almost question why I play MMOs to begin with. Ultimately, I guess what I mostly want is to have some sort of meta-game-esque thing that I’m working on with other players. For example, building a city in Star Wars Galaxies was pretty cool.
I would like to see MMOs incorporate more story into them.
Which… yeah, that one is pretty much true. Yet, it seems like most MMOs that try to do that do it very wrong. I don’t want to be the lone hero – because I know that a few thousand other people also just rescued the princess and defeated the big-bad-dude. Ultimately, I want a story that makes me feel like I am among the heroes, and the other heroes are the players – and I don’t want to feel like every accomplishment I make in the game is what everyone else has done as well, as near-impossible a it is to avoid that. Basically, I don’t want to be the lone hero, but I don’t want to be just some other random person.
Ultimately…
I want a game that is a themepark, so it can give me some sort of a goal, but is also an open world, and gives me the freedom to go out and do what I want. It should have open and more realistic PvP, but PvP that isn’t one-sided and unfair. I want to be heavily tied into playing with other people and have what they do affect me in a way that makes me feel like I am playing a game with thousands of people instead of a single-player game – but I should be able to do things on my own as much as I want. I would like to see an MMO with a real story, but one that doesn’t revolve around just me. It should make me feel like I am participating in it with many people, and in a way that still makes me feel like I am impacting things.
So, basically, I want something similar to this:

All styles of games, be they sandbox, themepark, open pvp, battlegrounds, or whatever, they all have problems. I idealize open, sandbox worlds, but I’ve never played one that I actually liked. Again, I love EVE on an intellectual level, but I know it isn’t for me. I think themepark worlds are pretty dull and far from an ideal, but I’ve spent more time playing them than sandboxes, and I’ve enjoyed some of them quite a bit. However, I always get bored with them rather quickly.
I imagine I’m not all that alone in my desire for this game of great contradiction, but I also don’t think that it is really feasible to create something like it. The only contradictory part that I think could really be fixed is the story one, and maybe the player interaction one. Neither would be easy to do.






