First things first, Transformers was an awesome, awesome movie. Go see it.
Final day of my crusade to take away your epics, I promise. Judging from some of the comments, I think people are having a tough time with the idea of items being LESS important. Remember that the original problem stems from items defining your character, almost completely. I’m not saying do away with items or even change them drastically. Quests should still have item rewards, mobs should still drop loot, and boss mobs should still be sought out for their loot. My point is that this should be one layer of your character. Character development during creation as well as during growth should also be a factor, and a far more important one than the current crop of MMOs allows.
For some reason, I can’t get the thought out of my head that this is all to blame on Diablo, and more so Diablo 2. Diablo brought the concept of ‘random loot drop’ to the masses, and made the idea of static items seem old in comparison. It was also almost exclusively focused around items in multiplayer. You would kill Diablo repeatedly hoping for a specific item of ungodly strength to drop.
Blizzard took those ideas out of Diablo and into WoW, and as WoW is for many their first MMO, I wonder what kinds of expectation have been set. Do the masses expect every game to feature randomly generated “sword of the bear” type items now? If Warhammer Online has major character creation choices to make, will the forums be filled with complaints that someone has gimped themselves, and they want a free reroll? How many years need to go by before we stop seeing threads about how “current fantasy themed MMO is basically a WoW clone”. While it’s without a doubt WoW has accelerated the growth of the MMO genre and made it mainstream, it will be interesting to see how strongly it pigeonholes future games to indeed be WoW+1.
Hardcore Casual 
i think that everybody waits the next big thing and LOTRO isnt it…
i would bet a lot of money that blizzard will do the next big mmorpg as well…
they know the way to create highly addictive games…
nice blog by the way keep up the good work…
I never played Diablo, but from your description I have to agree that WoW has some of that feel.
To take it a step further, I find that MMOs feel so different from single-player, story-centered CRPGs as to be almost a completely different animal. Their engine is similar (characters, stats, abilities, equipment; facing monsters, exploring dungeons, etc.), but MMOs devalue the story almost completely.
I remember the first time I played a non-UO MMO. I was astonished to be invited to a group with a friendly “let’s go kill boulderlings.” I thoroughly enjoyed the game for a long time, but it was all about leveling and gathering equipment.
WoW has done a lot to make levelling and equipment gathering more interesting and pleasurable. The almost infinite quest list gives meaning to the grind, and a sense of a populated world endures.
But despite the stories that are there, I never feel like I’m a part of them.
And whether or not everyone agrees that the importance of items is too great, I certainly agree that the bizarre way one acquires so much of it–random drops, sometimes achieved by repeatedly killing a particular target–is strange and borders on “unfun.”
Diablo, and Diablo 2 are both great games. You might want to look in a bargain bin and pick up D2 plus the expansion, still worth playing even with the dated graphics.
I think what makes MMOs different than other games is that in a MMO, doing something over and over with basically the same exact result is acceptable. Back when I raided in WoW, I must have done a complete clear of Molten Core close to 100 times, and only after run 50 or so did it start to be more work than fun, something I just did to help the guild and gear up other members.
If you are into story, I highly recommend LoTRO though, the quests are very well written, and you get an epic quest line that basically goes from level 1 to 50, following alongside the story of the books.