That One Thing.

Alright guys, so I figured I'd start up a thread while cruising around trying to find an mmo suitable for me / my play style and I am a little bit curious.

As I wandered around looking for mmos, I started asking myself a lot of "what I want" out of mmos, and the more I thought about it, the more the phrase "aww it doesn't have this" or "aww it's missing that" popped into my mind.

That being said, what's the one thing you miss about MMOs that seems to have been shuffled out of the mainstream environment of MMORPGs by today's standards?

For me, It would have to be plot-negation.

I mean, back when I started playing mmos, your characters weren't some super mighty hero from beyond the stars. They were simple average joe shmoes that most NPCs didn't think twice about. And that fit very well for the scene as it was me and a million other joe shmoes all arriving in this new place, this new world, exploring, advancing, estimating our opponents. This was the way it should be. Most of the best MMOs in history have started you off with little-to-no handholding and simply sent you off on your own.

However, somewhere along the line, it seems that developers got super lazy, or perhaps the designers got lazy. Instead of being a joe shmoe type of scenario, suddenly no matter which MMORPG we pick up nowadays, we are "the golden boy". Every NPC adorns us and wishes to be part of our epic quest to save the world from the brink of oblivion for the 2148913021th time.

It gets even worse when the developers try to hide it with clever ruse and ploys like "oh you're the new recruit huh? you don't look that very tough to me, alright let's see what you got!" or the ever present, "huh, I thought the hero of legend was supposed to be bigger, are you really sure you're the hero of legend?".

The concept of MMORPGs is, was, forever shall be, split up into 4 basic idealisms, being adventure, exploration, combat, and socialism. Yet, somewhere along the way, they completely destroyed exploration and focused solely on adventure and socialism. Even the combat systems nowadays feel week compared to their predecessors.  Why? PLOT!

Back in the golden era of MMORPGs, the concept of plot was not only there to give advancement and exploration to the character, but it also helped shape the world of "what was possible" and "what we wanted". Yet, with the complete lack of PLOT nowadays in most MMORPGs, there is simply no need for any exploration and advancement is kept to a dull (0/15 dead bunnies).

so, what's that one thing you've been urging to see make a return in mmo history?