I am a bitter, jaded, and thoroughly disillusioned gamer. When I play a masterwork like Knights of the Old Republic, my shriveled little heart swells just a little, but there is always some unfortunate compromise that shrinks it right back down. In all of video games, there's one genre that stands out in my mind as being the paragon of unfortunate compromises--the massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Since their inception, MMORPGs have flaunted their patch-driven premise. They were new, they were exciting, and they gave us an idea of what the Internet could really do for gaming. The problem is that the MMORPG hasn't undergone any serious appreciable changes since its inception. Now that the newness has worn off, the cracks have begun to show.

Ultima Online, EverQuest, and Asheron's Call were the three games responsible for bringing massively multiplayer gameplay to the masses. For what they were, these games were fantastic achievements. What they should have done was pave the way for new MMORPGs similarly willing to take risks. What they should have done was spark a renaissance of innovation. What they did was create yet another set of genes from which countless games could be cloned. What should have been the first, shaky step down a long, long road has become a roadblock placed across it. So, what can be done? I propose four basic changes to the MMORPG formula that would breathe life into the stagnating field.