Active zone structure for themepark MMOs

UknownAspect

More of an idea to start a discussion as I haven't seen this in a game yet.

Firstly it seems that all themepark game questing structure has to do with telling a story through inane quests.  Players have no input on how to accomplish the goals as the methods of "kill ten rats" are dictated to you.

But why can't the story of a zone exist through a persistent story without phasing?  

WAR's public quests are a good starting point.  Albeit very formulaic, scripted, and repetitive, the idea that there is a persistent event people can jump into and out of to experience the story of the area.  Why has an idea like this not been expanded to a zone wide event.  

After playing through WoW's first two 80+ zones, you can tell that the story telling is really fluid and cool, but for the most part you are acting alone, I might as well be playing Neverwinter Nights.  It's not even as good as Mass Effect, at least with that game, my actions mean more to the overarching story.  So why can't this be made into a larger scale?  

For example:

A zone consisting of a cityscape.  It starts as being completely controlled by some NPC enemy faction.  With such a large amount of people in an open zone, the player faction(s)  will be sent by quest givers, or an active event system, to take various points, but all the while, they are under siege by NPC forces, and if some control points are left completely undefended, NPCs could take them back over*.  After more people take different points by using whatever tactics they allow, new events/bosses/storylines could open up (and close).  

 

I thoroughly believe a system like this could create an exciting game with everchanging experiences and increase the replayability factor by a hundred.  I'm so tired of the monotonous grinds associated with MMOs these days.  And with sandboxes, the best stuff doesn't come until you are deep in the game (Sandboxes are awesome, don't get me wrong).

I believe it is time that themepark style games reinvent themselves, and I'm hoping Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR will push the envelope on this idea.

What does the rest of the MMORPG.com community think?  Am I crazy to want something like this?  Is this an inevitable evolution of the genre?

 

*incredible run on sentence.

Meowhead

It sort of sounds like you're describing the ideal behind what AreneNet says they're wanting to do with Dynamic Events...

UknownAspect

Bump, because although Guild Wars 2 seems like a good MMO, I would like to know why this isn't in all sorts of MMOs, easily adaptable to older MMOs through special zones or whatnot.  

Or perhaps, why do people like this or not like this?  Is it bad to have gameplay not so predictable for pve?  Is a concept like this strictly for pvp?  Is the AI really so hard to program to perform these actions?