By the way, contrary to your first sentence, I’ve been playing SWG on and off for two and a half years without engaging in any combat whatsoever. So it wouldn’t bother me if a game had poorly designed combat or no combat at all as long as the game was fun.

The thing with combat is, if you don’t get it right no one plays your game. And if there isn’t a ladder, people frequently quit when they get to the top of whatever ladder there is. Once the rewards stop flowing, they stop playing.

And who’s to say that the non-combat aspects of the game are any more fulfilling than the combat aspects of the game? (Community, I know, but that can be transferred). The non-combat aspects can be mined out as certainly as the combat / levelling aspects can be mined out, and it’s tougher to tack a ladder on to keep rewarding people even after they’ve gotten all the fun there is to be had out of whatever core mechanic you present.

If there’s nothing there, no matter how interesting combat is, and no matter how palatable the grind can be made, the game will still leave us empty.

While clearly I agree with the idea that there should be non-combat content, I suggest that City of Heroes shows that it is possible to have a popular MMO without any interesting out-of-combat content to speak of.

The thing is, MMORPG designers consistently fail to develop alternative content unconnected with combat or mastering that might make the game deeper. They concentrate on making the grind more interesting and making combat more exciting, but in the end the grind and the result of the grind is not why we’re here. What’s important is the game world and how much fun we can get out of it ‘outside’ the limits of the grind. If there’s nothing there, no matter how interesting combat is, and no matter how palatable the grind can be made, the game will still leave us empty.

This is why it’s so important for game designers to develop minigames and non-combat content. But at the moment game designers are moving away from that. Instead they are focusing in on combat more and more, as if there’s something there that can fill the vast creative void that is at the centre of most MMORPGs. The thing is, the people who make these games are looking in the wrong place. It’s not about combat. The more they look to combat to fill that void, the larger the void will become. Until they figure out that it’s all about the richness of the world and the depth of our options, MMORPGs will always have that feeling that they’re missing something.

The first game designer who realises the truth will be on the gravy train. But at the moment they all have a severe case of denial. It’s a truth that Raph used to know. I’m just not quite sure that he hasn’t forgotten it.

In SWG I did a considerable amount of Architect crafting, which I thought was wonderfully implimented. Now I like so many others always enjoyed the variation that could be had in furnishings. Specifically the paintings.
One thing I always thought would have been a decent game related type of content would have been to let players actually “paint” (out/in game using tools) (SWG related) these paintings import them into the game, submit them to the Bestine Curator, and allow for a “vote” on them somehow. A percentage of the sales for the schematic/painting from the curator could go to the origional artist account…..much like what PotBS is doing with thier ship flags and etc.

However I think that the tools that you create for “wish fulfillment” are going to be different than those you create specifically for art creation. For the former I think there is *some* room in MMORPG’s but for the latter I think we’ll see that MySpace/Blogs/iTunes/Pandora/etc. are going to be the types of technologies that best fulfill the needs of the audience. The more effort you put into creating complex/powerful tools for creation, the more the MMORPG framework will be limiting to your audience and the more likely they will be to skip out and just use their own tools and post the results on MySpace.