Calling All Plot Devices!

"Everybody, everybody just wanna fall in love
Everybody, everybody just wanna play the lead, play the lead, play the lead"

Metric - Sick Muse


For the sake of argument, let's distinguish two kids of storytelling:
The first (and by far more popular) is empathetic and character-driven.
The second is so plot-driven as to efface characters.

Science Fiction frequently adopts this second philosophy, concerning itself with ideas, with world-building, and relegating characters (if any) to the status of needles on various dials, useful only in illustrating grander themes. I can't be the first to remark that even though Keanu Reeves' wooden emoting has condemned him as a second-rate actor in general, it made him an excellent SciFi protagonist. It's not all about him, so less of him is required. You can find this philosophy at its strongest in some future history novels like Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men or Asimov's first Foundation book. To whatever extent one might (generously) classify Star Wars as SF, much of the first movie's draw also hinged on panoramic scenes and one-shot characters quickly swept under the rug. It attempted to endear us to its characters and failed miserably for the most part through its faded old stock mooks and hero's journey. What really captivated viewers were the vagaries of the Force, the imagined feel of a lightsaber in one's hand and panoramic views of the alien-filled cantina or interstellar dogfights. We hero-worshiped Kirk or Picard much less than we imagined ourselves Trekking among the Stars.

To a large extent, though, depersonalized world-building also underscores the success of Tolkien's Middle-Earth. We remember Frodo and Gollum and all the others, sure, but Tolkien achieved more by rendering a fairytale world in itself tangible and immersive. Even after we reach the end of the War of the Ring, we remember Imladris and Khazad-Dum, Minas Morgul and Esgaroth. We wonder about the Iron Hills and the Beornings and imagine deep-sea diving for Numenorean artifacts. The Lord of the Rings is a beautiful story in itself, but it's The Silmarillion and Middle-Earth as a whole, the world around the characters, which allow us to imagine a thousand more tales with our own woven between them. Harry Potter is all about that annoying little attention whore with the dashing scar on his forehead. It appeals to narcissists. Frodo Baggins is about more than Frodo Baggins.

Dungeons and Dragons aped Tolkien's expansive prototypical modern escapist vision of a medieval fantasy world. When games became digitized, most of their creators (those old 1980s computer nerds) had been weaned on both D&D and LotR. Their creations reflected this, often through mind-numbing repetition of high fantasy tropes but sometimes managing to retain that wide focus of creating virtual worlds and not just individual adventures. As I never get tired of repeating, a good virtual world doesn't make you feel big about yourself; it makes you feel small and lost. Unfortunately by the time graphical MMOs became viable, online games were already struggling to expand their customer base to the mass market, and that meant marketing to stupidity. It meant marketing to those who fast-forwarded the LotR movies past Tolkien's maps to Liv Tyler's and Orlando Bloom's fan service.

Thus, we have yet to see a true MMO. Most claiming the title have instead been WoW-clones, catering entirely to individual self-aggrandizement through loot acquisition. Their interface offers a constant barrage of undeserved praise to the player for every single "kill ten rats" quest completion or achievement unlock. That same interface gives no announcements as to what's going on in the world at large, what towns have been conquered, what armies are gathering, what goods are in high demand... because we all know that nothing whatsoever is going on in the game world at large. Nothing ever changes. They are entirely focused on telling the tale of the player character, making the you in the chair fall in love with the you on screen. This rapidly grows farcical when you consider that all those microtransacted status symbols players struggle so hard to acquire will go unnoticed. All others around you are, after all, gazing enraptured at their own navels. A world of peacocks with no pea-hens. Congratulations, you looted the hat of +5nuisance. Now can you tell me the names of all the other players you've seen wearing one? Do you think they know yours? Wanna buy some Venusian real estate?

"You said 'look at me' and looked away"

A true persistent virtual world game, a true MMO, cannot thrive on a playerbase of such brain-dead genetic filth. To be part of a player-driven world is to acknowledge the necessity of your insignificance, the simple arithmetic that sharing a world with ten thousand others will mean having your importance diminished ten thousand fold. Any greater expectations must needs get dashed. Such a game needs to send the right message to the right customers. If it is to be centered on the over-arching story of the game world then it needs a new kind of storytelling, a future history of the world to be written by the players, not a biography. If most games exist only to build up and validate the player, then an MMO will have to reverse this expectation. The player must exist only to build up the game world. Validation must be contingent on one's impact on the interconnected web of other players.

Give players the means to build up their characters and personal possessions, sure. Give them personalized loot they can name, give them homesteads and bank accounts. But the game interface should always bring the player's attention back to the conflicts and crises of the world at large. Remind them at every turn that they are only pieces in a strategy game. Give them exchange rates to track for harvestable resources. Give them access to the political situation in their corner of the world and get them voting for governors. Let them know whenever a fort is taken or lost, whenever a star gate powers up or some world event is advanced. Display information not about infamous individuals, but about towns or starbases. Publicly display how much each settlement raked in as taxes, its most traded goods, its casualty rats, etc. Do away with the "LEVEL UP" pop-up ego-boosters or top kill leaderboards and instead keep everyone's attention riveted always on the larger contest of which they're a part. Congratulate them for taking part in a faction or clan victory, not for killing ten rats - unless the ten rats somehow further the greater good. If most games' focus is the character sheet, a true MMO's should be the world map. Everything should refer back to it.

As a last point, it can't be an accident that the games which come closest to such a player-driven world like EVE-Online or Planetside have also tended to at least make some minimal show of a Science Fiction setting. A fantasy world is top-down, driven by divine dictates and divine favor, by personal specialness. Science Fiction is a bottom up enterprise, a climb up a tech tree.

Such aesthetics prompt player expectations. Potential customers drawn in by the promise of being The Chosen One will rage-quit when they discover themselves to be mere redshirts. Or they'll demand the world be wrecked to fit their infantile neediness. The setting, interface, tutorials, everything which creates an impression on the player needs to create the right impression, that of losing oneself in a grandiose world and / or conflict. The customers you need to entice into a true MMO are those comfortable with the thought of being mere plot devices and not fated heroes. Don't market to Harry Potter fans. Market to Dune fans.