MMO: What am I looking for?

I have been meaning to post something for the last several days. Everyone is away, and I really didn't think I would have had any trouble posting about some of the tools that I have been trying to use at home and work to try to keep better track of where I am spending my time, and potentially wasting it. This isn't that post. This is about a few of the things where I know I have been wasting my time. I tried watching TV again this week. For the most part, I did not find anything worth watching. I understand that we are into the summer rerun season, but being I really didn't watch any of it the first time around, there should have been something compelling or at least interesting. Nada. I did watch a couple of movies via Netflix. I tend to intentionally weirder titles when Natalie's not here. Mostly this is done to not have to deal with only having 4 movies at a time from Netflix and there being things that she wants to watch in queue behind oddball things that I just happen to pull out of thin air using some really obscure movies selection process that I do not think even I understand completely enough to understand how it works. The two movies that made it through that selection were "Sex and Death 101" and "Chaos Theory". Neither were what I expected them to be. Both were actually better as the quirky character stories they were. But I'm not really in the mood to write reviews, so lets move along. I also spent some time dealing with the question of if I want to spend any more time in any of the available Massively Multiplayer Online Games. I really have not gotten into anything since Myst Online was canceled. And I still do not really know how I feel about the recent announcement that Myst Online may be coming back in another form via Cyanworlds's MORE project--Myst Online: Restoration Experiment. I don't know yet. I'm still thinking about what this means. When MORE starts, it is going to be a very different game from what was hosted by GameTap. At this point, we know that there will not be any new content from Cyan, initially or possibly ever. I understand this. The question is how quickly can the community develop content for the game? How much of that content will be compelling? How much of that will tell its stories? I have done some thinking about why MOUL did not meet my expectations. I have also been looking at a few other games trying to see if they do things any better. MOUL did not meet my expectations because it couldn't. It just flat out couldn't. It was a combination of the state of the community, the state of Cyan and the methodology of presentation. And there is more. Some of these issues I did not realize until I did start into other games. A while back I tried Matrix Online. The experiment was a failure. While I knew people who were playing, I unfortunately picked a time when they were either not able or willing to get into MxO and introduce me to the community. And this is a community where one either needs to decide to play alone or get an introduction. That may not be true, but it is my experience. There were some things I did like about MxO. The very flexible skill system was something I think more games should have. That skill system allowed anyone who felt like investing the time to build a single character down any and all of the available paths. And that made it impossible to build an unplayable character, or completely dead ended a character due to a bad choice on build out. And I liked the setting of the Matrix movies. It is just a shame that the community seemed to have reached a point where it setteled. And the game itself has not seemed to evolve. As a new character, I should have entered the game and quickly found myself involved in the current state of the game, not where it was 2 years ago. With the community seemingly stagnated, I had no interest in continuing past the demo. I did pickup GuildWars, but that just doesn't feel compelling. All of the missions just feel way too cookiecutter. And I have some issues with how the community feels distracted. I guess this has to do with the fact that most of the game occurs away from the noob areas. I also am a little bothered that at level 20 a player either stops or moves into the dedicated PVP environment. I also recently tried EverQuest II (EQ2). People at work play it. People at work seem a little addicted to it. I really just don't feel like I'm getting into it. The noob area is fine, but the missions are obviously cookie cutter. I haven't had much experience with the community, as the people I know cannot get their existing characters into the noob area. I also find that character creation a bit too complicated. I think there may be too many races and classes and they are put together in difficult to understand ways. And having started 4 different characters, there just doesn't seem to be much along the lines of trying to get players into the history or story of the setting. Considering there really isn't an external frame of reference, this is an issue for me. The question I still need to answer is what AM I looking for? I really want a compelling story. I also want to know that the story is potentially going to be different for each character, or at least have more than just a succeed and failed outcomes. It would be nice if the various missions had decision points in them that allow characters to experience one of several potential outcomes, some successful, so not so much. I would also to see that extend into the main branch of the game. And in a PvP environment, should one be appropriate to the setting, have dynamically generated missions that put players against one another. Let me explain that one a bit. Let's assume that we are in a game with groups or factions that are enemies. And that there are places in the game where these groups have to interact with one another. As players from one side take missions or quests in this area, have players from the other side be offered missions and quests to counter, interfere or just plain be the spanner thrown into the gearbox of the mission for the opposing players. I would also like to see sets or arcs of missions and quests where there is real staged conflict between members of opposing factions. I would see this as better than a bunch of cookie cutter missions that absolutely everyone playing the game gets to play later. As you can see, I am having a hard time finding a game that matches how I want to play. I guess I'll stop here, for now.

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