Big questions about MMOs

Comments are down at TerraNova, but I tried posting this in response to Tim Burke’s post entitled ‘Old School’, in which he asks,

1) What, if anything, has actually changed about virtual worlds in their design or implementation since 1999? Since 2003?
2) Are there any genuinely new scholarly or substantive questions or issues in the study of virtual worlds since 1999? Since 2003?
3) Why are so many issues that were already well understood by early MUD designers so recurrent and intractable, seemingly?
4) What has actually been forgotten from earlier eras of virtual world design? What designs, architectures, ideas, questions, problems, are now “historical”?
5) What kind of cultural (or tangible economic) capital within the community of people interested in virtual worlds do “old school” credentials actually entitle you to? When should the wider community listen more closely to people who’ve experienced that history in some form? When is historical experience a limitation rather than an asset, tying us to a concept of eternal recurrence?

1) Instancing is a major new trend that was never really explored in the text mud days. There has always been talk about “embedded experiences” but the idea of literally replicating single-player to limited multiplayer games wasn’t one that had currency.

There is also the rise of micropayments, and the design changes that that implies.

Everything else I can think of is basically the same.

2) I think there’s lots of them, and just glancing over many of the questions raised by the folks here, by PlayOn, by Nick at the Daedalus Project, by Project Massive, etc, shows that.

3) Because a) a lot of folks don’t WANT to solve them (why change classes and levels? they work, right?); b) because they are difficult problems of human nature.

4) I know I’ve mentioned some of these before, but some that spring to mind are the collection game a la MUD1 and Abers, the entire MUSH province which is largely unexplored today in graphical worlds, most of the MOO province, and most of the windmills I keep tilting at that people think I’m crazy for tackling. What happened to intermud protocol? There’s issues of player governance and democracy, there’s user creativity, there’s the entire impositional narrative branch… lots and lots.

5) Isn’t this question the same in any field?