MMORPG and the future of gaming and why this isn’t it-yet

I have always been fascinated with the idea of MMORPGs. That is to say I think they are truly the future of gaming, but everything that I have seen so far is so poorly executed it really turns me off from the concept. A similar happens to me when I play the Grand Theft Auto series; the idea of going anywhere and doing anything is good- IN THEORY- but what comes out is generally a bunch of crap. I think the real issue is that in both situations, the developers are trying to take a linear storyline and plot points, and merge them with open ended game play. What occurs is a multitude of simple fetch quests made hard by only the limitations of controls and unpredictability. Do not get me wrong, they both can be a load of fun but until they have me doing more complicated things then killing 10 arbitrary trolls, goblins, gang-bangers, or whatever for no other reason then some pathetic back story then you can count me out. It is comparable to a poorly made action film, the good ones make you a believe there is a plausible reason for all the senseless killing. A bad one just whips it out of nowhere like a roundhouse kick to the face- I am looking at you Chuck Norris. If while I am playing a game I am asking myself why am I doing this? Why do I care? And why are these controls and mechanics so bad? It really detracts from the experience.

On the other side of the spectrum, many of my friends love these games, World of Warcraft comes to mind a game that I, for a brief period, played. I found it incredibly addictive, and I found it appealing that all those characters I saw running around were other people playing and not just random NPCs. In fact for the two weeks that I played the game I had trouble putting it down once I started. You are always an hour away from a new piece of armor, or weapon; one of your friends is always online wanting you to play, and it does give the incredible sense of accomplishment when you complete a quest. But for me there was something terribly wrong, I wasn’t having any fun. In between the accomplishment, and the satisfaction of getting a new piece of armor was like work-boring, repetitive work. Also, despite having logged over 20 hours ( the completion time of a standard game) I had yet to really scratch the surface of what the game was all about, making more of a time commitment then I really wanted, or could afford.

Eventually I see massively multiplayer games taking off. Heck maybe the next Second Life will be as popular as Facebook, but usability needs to greatly improve, and function needs to be expanded as well.