David "Puuk" Foletto Does MMORPGs

[GameBanshee News]

Former Black Isle employee Damien "Puuk" Foletto has written an article for Winterwind Studios that discusses several MMORPGs' strengths and downfalls. In fact, he even offers ways to improve them:

The first thing I want to see put into MMORPG's are in-depth instance missions. Not just missions that give the player another outlet for level grinding, but meaningful, interactive, story driven instance missions that have an influence on a larger, overall story arch. Oh, and plopping down a non-descript structure in the middle of nowhere and populating the perimeter with baddies that any passing bozo can shoot is not my idea of an instance mission. I want to get a private mission where there is more than one way to solve the main mission quest. I want there to be multiple objectives, with some of those objectives as optional. I want in-mission, friendly NPC's to recognize my (or my team's) efforts and praise me and offer me gifts. I want my successfully completed mission to have an actual affect on the game's main, ongoing storyline, even if it is in a very small capacity (being realistic, here) - perhaps by weakening the affected bad guy's presence in the world by some small measure. And I don't want to have to jump through hoops to get the "privilege" of doing an outlandishly hard instance mission when I reach level "something-teen." I want instance mission opportunities at each and every level. And I want choices when given the opportunity of choosing missions. Let me choose not only what kind of mission to do (main mission quest), but also let me choose the reward. I'm fine with nice, surprise, random drops, but let me choose my main reward so I'm not let down at the end of the mission because I was rewarded with the "Amazing Flimmer of Extraordinary Uselessness!" Lastly, I want to feel heroically bad-ass in my instance missions (or any mission, for that matter). I don't want to do anything that resembles a bunny hunt. I want to feel like my character is actually a hero who can do heroic things right out of the gate. I can be a loser killing rats and bunnies in real life, let me be a hero in my virtual life.