Adam :
Davide, surely you’ve heard of Questhelper. It actually does something close to what you’re sarcastically talking about. And it was so popular that its author was able to make a full-time job out of it just through donations.
That’s the real lesson of WoW. People say they want immersion and good lore and everything else. But most people don’t actually care about what they say they care about. Most want to level as fast as possible and get shiny purples. And the game company cynical enough to realize this is making a fortune.

All too true I’m afraid.

You could say the same thing about any playerbase for any game(MMORPG or not). Most people want the easy way out. Not necessarily all, but most.

To make PvE any more exciting than it is currently, you’d have to make it more challenging.

I’ve seen the average WoW player’s reaction to ‘challenge’, chances are they’d lose most of their subscribers.

I’d love to see a MMORPG without a silly fog-of-war-map and markers for everything, but instead interested players would use a cartographer skill and maybe even craft maps and sell them. I definitively remove name and level indicators – this has to be the most stupid thing in all MMORPGs.

What happened to the perception questions and rolls from the pen & paper RPGs?

Players just run from camp to camp, do quests or AoE power leveling, if they’re stuck they don’t even bother reading the quest text, but spam global chat channels (they need to be removed too, the whole socializing excuse is bullshit, you can socialize when you meet someone or go to a place in the virtual world where it’s possible, e.g. a pub) instead and ask for help.

I am not sure why a dragon would do it, but the day I play an MMORPG where a dragon is in disguise as a rat in a starter area, I’ll shit my pants out of excitement and subscribe that MMORPG for a year instantly for many epic squirts to come.

The whole quest effusions of Kaplan result from ultra boring PvE – I wish someome would make an MMORPG more pen & paper RPG stylish. Is it only me suffering from nostalgia? Would anyone else be interested in this?

As for cut-scenes, etc., I agree that it makes you stop the first time around. The voiceovers in AoC were pretty neat, but they got tiresome. The mini-presentations in WotLK were just eye-roll worthy. Every time the Lich King showed up to blather on during a quest, I just yelled, “OZZY IS COOLER!” to entertain people nearby. With text, I can choose to read it when I want; I really like LotRO’s quest log because I can go back and read up on quest text even if I was in a rush the first time.

And, Gx1080 nailed why Green Hills of Stranglethorn failed: inventory space. Even with my twinks I buy the pages ASAP so I’m not carrying bags half full of the stupid pages.

Ever say “I want phat lewtz” to the boss in Plane of Growth in EQ? If not give it a whirl

It seems like everything he says now correlates directly to the cesspit you see on the official forums. Too shallow/illiterate/lazy to read anything without lots of big pictures? Check. Obsession with finishing everything so you can get to the loot/end-game/next big thing? Check. Don’t want to explore or think and need to be lead through everything by the nose? Check.

Hell, since when did you let moronic terms like ‘TL;DR’ start to influence design decisions? What’s our next big design influence meme from the forums? lolbuttsex? Srs bizns?

I think Wrath is a great example of something designed for a vocal community which doesn’t actually know what it wants and whines every time it gets it.

Vajarra :
Jeff: The movies are fun too, the first time. But to use Wrathgate as an example — by the time my third alt went through, I just hit the escape key. I don’t need or want to watch it again.

I think Blizz made some major progress in storytelling for MMO’s with the cut scenes and the areas that change as you progress through them. It’s hardly fair to expect that story to be fun and unique your 2nd or 3rd time through.

Mass Effect will get a little old the 2nd or third time through too.