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I was extremely excited to play Dungeons & Dragons Online and joined with many of my friends who were geographically dispersed. The biggest challenge was the lag. Because each instance of the game was run separately on each computer, playing with my wife against hordes of kobolds was impossible, lagging the game so hard that it looked like a photo collage. Eventually she gave up playing and I soldiered on alone.

The problem, as evidenced by the introduction of the solo option, was that it was difficult to find a willing party of enough players, specifically of the right combination of classes. Adventuring was fun when it happened, but finding a party was hard. As a bard, I tried to fill multiple roles, but role specialization made it difficult to find a combination of party members. By emphasizing party roles, it was imperative that the party combination be just right—in other MMORPGs, this isn’t as much of an issue because soloing is possible. By discouraging soloing, party optimization and coherence is critical but not always feasible.

I would say Turbine’s D&D online was probably the closest to emulating the tabletop experience. It did make the attempt to have more engaging adventures and I applaud them for trying, but I think history will look on their efforts as mostly failing to capture the spirit of the game from which it is derived. The result was a game unappealing to the MMORPG gamer and frustratingly limited compared to the source material for the table top gamer [Joseph Tresca 2010].

When my friends stopped playing, there was no longer a guarantee of finding a party. For a player who didn’t have friends, Dungeons & Dragons Online became impractical. I let my subscription lapse and didn’t look back.

Narrative

While tabletop role-playing games ventured farther astray from their basic simulation roots, Greg Costikyan posited that massive multiplayers went in the opposite direction, becoming almost completely devoid of story (2007:9). This deficiency is twofold. The amount of processing power to customize the world to create a cohesive story for all players is prohibitive due to the massive number of players on the game. And a story of sorts is already being told through social networks and interaction; in essence, the players make their own story by adventuring in each other’s company. It’s possible that this deficiency is lessening as MMORPGs become more advanced. A player of Asheron’s Call (AC) had a different experience:

I found AC to be the most similar to tabletop D&D, since it was one of the first MMORPG’s to have a constantly evolving storyline through monthly updates from the developers. That kept the game from being stale, and afforded the players opportunities to participate in quests that advanced the storyline. The developers were very good, in my opinion, at responding to player feedback in the way that a good GM would steer the story to keep the players interested. In the early years, there were some elements in the game mechanics that would augment your role-playing style if you weren’t interested solely in climbing the power ladder. I spent more effort to have the most complete trophy collection than I did trying to gain levels [Jellig 2010].

It’s interesting to note that the MMORPG genre continues to be dominated by fantasy games (94 percent, according to Woodcock). MMORPGs ferociously defend their copyrights, a challenge muddled by the question of ownership in virtual spaces that are largely defined by the community which inhabits them. EverQuest, for example, hews closely to Tolkien’s original vision of orcs, elves, halflings, and animated trees (Taylor 2006: 143). Unfortunately, even The Lord of the Rings MMORPG experience was found lacking:

While I enjoyed the updated graphics, I was disappointed in the quest system. I felt there was too much “hand-holding,” where you would spend most of your time running back and forth between NPCs who clearly told you what the next step was, leaving nothing for you to figure out as