Better than life is not better

In responce

Personally I would hope we are tourists and the game world helps us to care or self reflect about the real world were in, right here, right now. Much like many books and movies might suck all our attention, but then we leave and take some of their wisdom (if they have any) into the real world.

But I think much like a moth’s ancient, legitimate instincts are screwed up by a flame, humans are story creatures – we get our attention sucked into stories. Because like the moth navigates by the stars, so we navigate by stories. And as humans we try to get all intense about mmorpgs due to an ancient and otherwise legitimate/otherwise functional desire to get into stories.

But they don’t end here, with mmorpgs. You don’t exit them and take any wisdom out into the real world. In the old ways, the story teller would get tired and you’d have to go back to real life, stronger. Here, the server is precisely like the terminator – it wont get tired, it wont stop.

This might be a racy comparison – but watching porn so as to then have much hotter sex in real life, that makes sense. But just getting more and more intense about a game world – it’s like just watching porn, and more porn and more and never actually doing anything in the real world.

MMORPGS which make us hotter about dealing with real life? Fantastic! Trying to make mmorpgs which make us get hotter about dealing more with mmorpgs, then more with mmorpgs, then more with mmorpgs?

No story? Or did you forget what you did?

MMO crunch asks is borderlands a mmog, and in doing so asks if there is a story
http://www.mmocrunch.com/2009/11/09/is-borderlands-a-mmog/

This is what I had to say in short:

In terms of story, I always look at gamers who expect to read a story in an interactive medium and think "Wha!?". It's an interactive medium - YOU make the story.

 
What I would grant is that these games, not at all right now, have any tools to record player actions and layout a story (or atleast a log of cool events). So it's easy to forget the story you just made.

Taking it further, the specific ways the program recorded events would shape the story made. Like if it puts more emphasis on rescuing someone than blowing up ten guys at once...well, then the emphasis would be on rescues. You would be making the story, but the 'bard' who is recording it would also influence how it's remembered.
 
But you just don't see any of this right now in games...or do you?
 
Remember all the stat pages of the games you've played? That record lots of stuff you've done. See, it's coming! Now gimme lots of money for just saying it first! lol!