I have never played EVE Online, but I absolutely adore the stories it enables its players to tell, and the human interactions that result.
On that front, I think that EVE Online is the only true "MMORPG"– i.e. one where the players directly affect the economy, the wars, the alliances, the supply and demand, and so on.
I'm disappointed that we don't see more games taking from EVE, but confident that that's where the future of online entertainment is headed.
I'm disappointed that we don't see more games taking from EVE
Well, it doesn't surprise me. A "true MMORPG" as you are picturing it is a strong natural monopoly. Nobody wants to live a second life in five different games, and the more people you have the more sophisticated the economics etc become.
Not everyone wants to play EVE. There could be plenty of people that would be interested in some fantasy mash-up of WoW and Ultima Online, for example.
What exactly are you picturing as such a mash-up? The critical element of EVE that makes it what it is isn't the economy: it's the ability to take ownership of land by force. That's what creates emergent politics. AFAIK, neither UO or WoW have this. The only fantasy game that has considered this was Shadowbane, but they had a bad release.
Wurm online has this. The reason why you probably have never heard of it is that it is too realistic. It takes days to build a house for example. The creator of minecraft used to work on it, I found out later.
On that front, I think that EVE Online is the only true "MMORPG"– i.e. one where the players directly affect the economy, the wars, the alliances, the supply and demand, and so on.
I'm disappointed that we don't see more games taking from EVE, but confident that that's where the future of online entertainment is headed.