Is the future static or dynamic ?

shae

We're all used to seeing the various topics pop up in the pub right ? Upcoming MMO's, what are you most looking forward too, wow vs "everything", and on and on it goes.

But one of the things I'm always interested in hearing opinions on is something that has been my personal pet peeve from the MMO industry for a long time now, starting from when I first started playing SWG a couple of years ago.

That's static worlds over dynamic stories, or rather, should MMO's be made to evolve in story as well as complexity as times goes forward or should they be set in a stagnant time loop leaving players in a stream of consistency over change.

Whilst a case can certainly be made for both sides, I'll leave these as some examples.

Star Wars Galaxies, in it's conception was a wonderful idea, regardless of what many of you may think now. One of the biggest draws to me when I began playing the game way back then in beta was the hope and dream of living through the trials and tribulations of that story, of that world, the entire Star Wars saga so to speak.

Over time though, not only did players find out that the story was perpetually stuck in it's supposed time line of "between episode 4 and 5" and that massive liberties were being taken with that "cannon" but it wasn't going to move forward. That's it, no big battles for each planet, no rise and fall of the empire, no glorious return of the republic, just keep doing what your doing until you get bored.

I've faced the same dissappointment with other games recently, EQ2 being a big one for me. Here is a wonderful game, with lots of wonderful lore to pull from yet the story is static, players are stuck in an endless loop in time where nothing seems to move forward. Of course, my point here being that the same thing can be said about many games presently available.

Soooo, my questions to you the community are these. Why do you think this is such a popular format for mmo's, what the benefits and drawbacks are to both static and dynamic games ? Would you in the future like to see more dynamic games that adapt and move forward with players over time or are you perfectly happy with a static ever repeating time line ?