FPS masquerading as RPG

Writing the following response to a blog post on Scott Jennings' site, I came to feel that this is the most cohesive and coherent statement I've probably ever put together regarding on-line worlds. I think it is a holistic observation.

I highly recommend reading the entire post and especially Brian Green's comments.

What follows is my response to Brian's response to Scott's post. I think it fits in with the theme of this blog regardless of the original context:

Brian Green nails it perfectly. Most of the problems and complaining I'm hearing from everyone else is about some particular sub-problem of the core issues.

Most of the on-line MMORPGs seem only barely to be related to RPGs and more akin to MMOFPSs. The structure of the game has changed to more accurately fit the model expected by kids with no real socialization skills (they don't have them because once they find the on-line world they only socialize there where socialization is of the "removed and anonymous" sort). Those kids start out playing FPS's and migrate to the on-line communities looking for "something more". When they find out the game doesn't revolve around them they complain (not having developed the socialization skills required to walk into a role-play situation and not expect it to revolve around "me".)

In the "old days", they were pushed into meeting other players and communicating in more meaningful (less me-centric) ways. This naturally caused some friction that I'm afraid many developers mistook for "we'll lose money". They mistakenly tried to fix the problem through accomodating the path of least resistance and in so doing have built in a shallowness to their games that translates to shallow player relationships and shallow players.

Working on inter-personal systems as solutions to the core problems is hard. It's really hard, and getting it wrong can be a death-knell that leaves a lot of people with very hurt feelings. I'm guessing this is why many developers avoid it altogether. Perhaps they were burned before.

This doesn't mean that it isn't the answer, though. Many of you agree (if I read your comments correctly), but I don't see anyone really championing the cause. Even mentioning it seems to incurr ire in some forums.

Has the industry given up trying to create communities and simply abandoned the concept in favor of creating MMFPS?