hello, all mmorpgs overuse the same formula gather 5 people, go to dungeon, kill boss, phat loot. Aren't you bored of same pattern ? rewards come only from dungeons, simple quests give inferior loot.

Ideas:

1) Player roles: the game assigns roles and personalities on the players, they have to follow.
for example a player could be converted into a raid boss after being cursed, by the villain.
It is optional objective: The player can choose to resist his role. Another quest example spy on the adventurers pretending to be one of them and then betray them when the time comes, wiping the party.

Problems:

a) Known role: people will be prepared of what will happen and take counter-measures.
b) Trolls : Another player may pretend to be a traitor because he is a troll. Wiping his party for the lolz.
c) The player can go afk / log out.

2) move away from combat: provide alternative group activities other than killing monsters in a dungeon. Some mmorpgs have mini-game quests that are group oriented but are fun, for instance fighting with mounts in wow or mini tank fights or bombing villages while flying.

c) The player can go afk / log out.[/quote]
Or the player can go on a rampage in the game world since being converted into a raid boss ups your stats, or do the exact opposite: wait to be killed and not attack anyone. The biggest problem here is that a player can't be forced to do something she doesn't want: that makes the game less enjoyable and since the player isn't obligated to play your game, she will leave if you put her in a position where she cannot enjoy the game. Cursing the player into becoming a raid boss makes things enjoyable only for the heroes who came to kill the boss, for the player playing the boss it's boring.

It seems that the current designers of mmorpgs have never played a true multiplier game.

The only reason players play mmorpg is for power. When they reach the level or item cap they just quit.
And why shouldn't they, when there is nothing else to do.

Cooperation with others is only on a selfish level, everyone cares only about himself, only about his loot. This is not an attribute innate to humans but one that is imposed by the game.

a) you dont have gear, you are noob, bye kick.

b) you arent XXX OP class, you are a noob, kick bye.

c) you aren't playing wow nonstop every day like a freak? kick, bye from our guild. We only cared about loot in the first place, you are a burden to carry around, we dont need you, why waste 4 bytes of extra disk space in our guild when it has limited space.

There is no real social interaction. Look at the chat people have there, it is 100% related to the dungeon they play, no off-topic, no getting to know the others. If we take these games (WOW included) and replace human players with bots nothing will change, the player will have the same gaming experience. Therefore all mmorpgs currently are 100% singleplayer. Ok there is pvp that allows players to compete with its other, it is ok but that is a limited form of social interaction, I WANT MORE !!!

Now lets take a look at a TRUE multiplier game, sonic shuffle.

a) loot not associated with fights/dungeons, but comes for free without really asking from total time played.

b) 150 different minigames, that dont last long 2-5 minutes on average. Therefore a player getting "bored" and not enjoying the game is not a possible outcome, since he will adapt to the fact that the game is full of these "minigames".

c) about the curse mutation player: its similar as the minigame where sonic becomes a giant and chases others (1shots everyone he catches). Only here the others can fight back, and change the outcome.

What Sonic shuffle could have done MORE:

a) its not an rpg, it could have added stats, levels to allow players to fill more powerfull.

b) content limited to premade static content from developers, this is ok but the content is limited. The correct way would be players and guilds to have the ability to create new maps, minigames and have 100% access to all developer tools.

What you have described is strikingly similar to sandbox MMORPGs, the most well-known is EvE but there are plenty of others around. The main difference is that the players choose what they wish to do and are not specifically tasked by the game to do so.

I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to get across in the second post but you make some pretty huge assumptions. There are a myriad of reasons that people play MMORPGs, only a portion of the player base plays for the loot and even then it may only be one of many reasons that a player plays. It is not fact that players quite at item or level cap, in fact reach either is theoretically impossible on an MMORPG that is still being worked upon.

Most kinds of cooperation are in some way based around each participants selfish wants/needs and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It is very much innate to human behaviour and it is most definitely not imposed by the game.

The chats often revolve around the current dungeon because that is what those people have in common, as time goes on those people may talk about other things as they get to know each other. Yes there are times when people don't interact but that is indicative of some design decisions in certain MMORPGs, it is not a problem experienced by all MMORPGs. Replacing everyone with Bots would result is a drastically different situation and it does not mean the game is a "100% singleplayer".