[Barbarious]

I think that the MMORPG market is overdue for some real innovation.

WoW pioneered the streamline approach and they did a good job with their mixture of Dungeons, Instances and Open-World Questing. However all of that is fossils and bones now. It's old. It's the standard.

If anyone has played Valve' new little classic "Left 4 Dead" you can see the kinds of things that can and will be done with games.

To give you an idea: Left 4 Dead is a Zombie game for PC and Xbox 360 that features 4 linear campaigns where you play as 1 of 4 characters.

The game on the outside looks a lot like a very basic Zombie FPS style game. However there is something more there.

The game features a delightful AI component that Valve has affectionately named "The Director" and what he does is watch. The Director monitors the progress of the players in the campaign and tactically spawns special zombies with abilities, hordes of zombies pouring in through windows, etc.. etc... when the time is right and appropriate.

So you may play the campaign the first time around and wonder through a hallway full of rabid zombies, blasting and shooting.

The next day you play the same campaign and find the hallway completely empty but--- UH OH! The minute you get to the end of the Hallway the director pounces you with a screeching Hunter Zombie who rips at your face.

Or perhaps the director lulls you into a feeling of safety for a short while with a few scattered zombies before unleashing of flood of them upon you as you enter an open city-street.

This kind of dynamic gameplay has expanded Left 4 Dead's content by LEAPS AND BOUNDS. The basic campaigns which take 1-2 hours to complete each are given an insane amount of replayability by this feature alone.

Factor in the additional fact that the director will actually assess your team's skill and intelligence as you play and spawn weapons / items accordingly and you have yourself an insanely deep experience.

To give you an idea - the director will constantly try to bring as you close to the brink of failure as possible but only to that brink. If your team is composed of idiots with terrible aim he will spawn more med-packs for you and provide you ample explosives and gas-tanks to shoot.

If your team is going through the level like a damn street-sweeper and laughing as they escape wave after wave of zombified death with nothing but a scratch. The director will give you nothing. He'll even spawn a heaping handful of extra Zombies to really take your head out of the clouds.

So why mention this unrelated game?

Because I view this as proof that there is yet innovation to be had in video-games. Shit - to be perfectly honest this kind of technology could be applied to World of Warcraft dungeons. They're already instanced and kind of moronic as it is. This kind of technology would add an insane element of adventure and complexity to any MMO who finds it applicable to their game model.

Innovation is what the MMO industry is dying for.

And right now - WoW is doing everything in its power to stay far away from anything that isn't pink-soft-fluffy and user-friendly.