People aren’t big on them because many of them are a lot of aimless wandering around with poor or nonexistent clues or direction. They are the hardest ones to do well, and the easiest ones to break.

However, the big challenge in MMOs is organising guilds and raid teams (I always think of it as a kind of elder game). Maybe that too will fade and we’ll all have teams of NPC minions to order around instead …

In fact I was going to write tomorrow about what the new LFG type tools might mean in terms of how we think about guilds in WoW. (Basically, if the guild is just a tool for finding groups then maybe what people need is a better tool rather than a better guild.)

@Dlangar posted a nice link how many people actually complete games, Call of Duty was leading with 70% players who completed the campaign on the XBOX, most other games were around 10-20%.

It is a bit too much to say they quit out of frustration because of the difficulty being too high. Maybe it was exactly the opposite, the game became too stale, was too easy and monotonous.

I think challenge should not be confused with frustration, compelling gameplay is what is wanted. I am absolutely happy if I can snipe a ton of mobs with a Ricochet-shot around the corner in Torchlight for instance, which is not hard to set up at all.

And this is the result of thinking that simulated, cinematic hero experiences are enough: Simple, piss easy and boring gameplay that is not only easy, but also very dull. This is not exciting at all.

Good level/area design is a form of art and challenge is definitely part of it.

Regarding Aion style vs Torchlight style: Aion is naughty, Torchlight is snuggly. It is also a cultural thing, east versus west. I do not really want to think about why asian designers envision females as naughty girls in lingerie and all that. A lot of westerners like it, too, after all.

I also mentioned it already on Twitter, I think your Spinks-Avatar (she is called “Captain Flynn” IIRC) on Twitter would perfectly fit into the world of Torchlight in place of the Vanquisher char model, dual wielding flintlocks. I think their graphics style has a lot of appeal and is somewhat similar to your own.

P.S.: Why must all rogue types since WoW have this ugly outlaw-style “duster” headgear. Even Guild Wars and LOTRO rangers have this duster instead of proper headgear. LOTRO rangers usually have a hooded cape on top of that.

Sure there is some real challenge at the cutting edge of raid content but MMOs have become all about pleasing the lowest common denominator.

Real challenge is anathema in modern game design because the game designer’s job is to entice as many people as possible to purchase and play the game. Alienating this wide and varied demographic is suicide.

In the case of a MMO, the only real effort required to succeed is to show up and knock down some cardboard mobs. True challenge has been replaced by false heroism.