And this final observation of what might have been is where "significant" comes in. The first draft of this piece had me writing "suggestive" in that slot, and neither word is quite right. What I mean is this: MMOGs have, more than any other game I have encountered, suggested ways in which gaming might progress. They're disappointing in all kinds of new and unusual ways, but that's because they offer us an amazing insight into what could be. The fact is: We're really still in the most basic infancy of this technology, and no one has really figured out how to make it work to its fullest. World of Warcraft might seem incredibly polished and immensely successful, but it is also one of the keenest demonstrations of where the boundaries currently lie and how we might be able to go beyond them. Warcraft's kill-quest-loot model is an aged and limited concept, which has escaped extinction for far too long. Likewise, EVE Online and City of Heroes are each flawed in their own ways, but they nevertheless provide maps into possible gaming futures.
EVE demonstrates that you don't need a rigid level structure for a roleplaying world to make sense. The false and counterintuitive hand-me-down from Dungeons & Dragons, the linear hierarchy of leveling up, does not have to be how online games are structured. The fact they almost all use this concept is because it is a shortcut. It's very easy to set up and equally easy for players to understand. But EVE has thrown all this out and suggested a few ways in which skills can still develop over time, but don't alienate people through leveling.
Partly, this is down to the time-based training system (you click and wait, rather than grind through quests until you level up), where simple skills take a few minutes to train and complex skills can take months. But it is also down to the way in which combat occurs. Level-based systems mean that high-level and low-level characters must not be allowed to fight, whereas EVE relies instead on complex group mechanics. Learn a couple of basic abilities, and you'll contribute as much to the battles as a top-end character. EVE suggests that what an MMOG needs is not a vertical structure, but a horizontal one. Characters get better at certain things, yes, but more importantly, they get better at more things.
There's another, very different lesson to be learned from Second Life. The great "build your own" world experiment has shown that player-created content probably needs a game built around it to make the most of it. In fact, it's rather telling that the areas in Second Life that get some of the highest traffic are those in which a game has been built. Sure, there's all that stuff about the 3-D web and the like, but for us to want to spend lots of time making things, it would be nice if the "thing" had a definite purpose. In Second Life, about the most creating something could do is raise some virtual cash or furnish a polygonal villa. That's not game enough for most of us, and Second Life's potential, as a leisure process, becomes truncated.
Player-created content needs to be integrated into a world in some other way, a way that means that co-operation and competition have some distinct goals. EVE's player-owned structures suggest a way to do this, by granting sovereignty and allowing players to exploit game-resources to their own ends. The problem for EVE, of course, is the structures and game-mechanics that have been built up over the years are so poorly integrated, only a tiny number of people have the patience to get anything out of them.
