Bre Melvin has wrote an article on GenGame that MMO's need to escape the bounds of pre-established conventions.
More information.Too often have I been tempted by the allure of a cinematic trailer for a game, and this is especially true for fantasy MMORPGs since these trailers are essentially high-end eye-candy. But let’s face it, while they’re fun for everyone and especially rewarding for pre-exisiting fans of the game, they are unrepresentative of the gameplay (or even the cutscenes in many cases), since these cinematics feel more like movies than dungeon crawlers.
For me personally, the problem is that when I see these cinematics without any knowledge of the gameplay, I start to imagine what type of game I’d like these trailers to represent solely based on the presented visuals, and these types games more often than not simply do not exist. The end conclusion is that when these MMOs are finally released, despite my interest in their aesthetics, I have no interest in the actual games. However, it’s rare that these desired aesthetics ever crop up anywhere beyond the MMORPG sphere. There is a big a glaring reason for this, and it’s one the game industry as a whole needs to move beyond.
The trouble begins with our definition of MMOs and MMORPGs.