What Stays? What's New? What Goes?

MMOs have lost a lot of appeal since their emergence in the early to mid 2000s. Let's call what's gone missing *The Cyberspace Factor*. The drawbacks of being MMOs have slowly erroded the fascination with the whole thing.

The common sentiment in the broader market seemingly being that MMOs haven't evolved, and are repetitive boring chorefests. Not worth paying a subscription for. Not even worth our time. Amongst the otherwise great waste of time that are videogames, MMOs have become the seemingly worst waste of time.

What do MMOs have to add to formula? What has to stay? And what has to get lost in the lands of yore and stay there? I guess the answers are in many ways personal ones, but some of it likely has to be universal, because something about MMOs in general definitely went missing.

What say you?

Here's some random thoughts in no particular order...

• Social mystery. Social interactions in MMOs have become predictable and stale. LFG Tank for XYZ anyone? Games like Dark Souls, DayZ, Rust hold some clues at how to bring the magic back. Most of it comes down to absolute lawlessness. When anything goes, meeting people is a mystery, even if it's mostly going to end in mayhem and murder. It just needs a whole lot of design encouraging other behavior than instant-murder.
• The themepark nature of the entertainment value has to be shifted to more emergent opportunities. Make your own fun has to be cultivated more. Players playing with each other, rather than gaming the game.
• Interactivity and immediacy and simulation. In most online games, interactivity is scaled down in comparison to non-MMO games. Everything feels more static. More staffage than cyber matter. What MMOs need is more reactive gameworlds. I hack at a treebranch with a sword? That treebranch breaks off. I shoot the tree with a fire arrow? That tree starts to burn. I guess Minecraft is the rolemodel here, and Everquest Next its logical evolution. Extreme granularity. Everything is interactive and useful. Everything matters. All is cyber matter.
• In many ways interactivity and immediacy and simulation is what's missing in combat too. Little touches like Guild Wars 2's evade roll show how much a touch of immediacy can liven up an otherwise rather static gameplay experience. More of that please.

In short. The social predictablilty has to go. Less themepark rides, more emergent opportunities.The overall interactivity has to be increased. Reactive and immediate gameworlds and combat systems. Less staffage more cyber matter.

Dunno man. Just felt like spitballin' about MMOs. What say you?