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Re: The "dream mmorpg"
Actually, I think that what Abalieno describes IS possible. Just not as a pure, "individualistic" mmorpg. You would have to combine an individualistic play level with a strategic one. In other words: somehow mix a game like Rome Total War with a multiplayer rpg.
"Strategic-level" players would build and command the armies...individualistic players could act as heroes, spies, battlemages or whatever. Perhaps there also could be an intermediate "tactical" level of players, as unit commanders. The bulk of the fighters, however, would have to be NPC ones, either in player-controlled units or a mix of player-controlled and AI-controlled units.
Some games already combine strategic and individualistic rpg elements, like RTW (very slightly, though, but inching ever a little closer, as Medieval Total War II will have more "individualistic" looking and acting soldiers) and Spellforce I and II (which combines action RPG and RTS elements). Age of Conan apparently will allow players to command units of NPC soldiers.
What Abalieno describes is probably far in the future, but he may be right. I certainly hope so, and I will love to play it!
...and so will many mmorpg players I know. Not all, but many.
As for the "zerg" tactics, two things: First, collectives of players are impossible to organize for anything more complex than this, unless you deal with a group of relatively mature people who have known each other for some time and trust each other (in this respect, disciplined raiding guilds are probably the groups best capable of this under current conditions, and I suspect the more effective PvP "combat teams" in WoW have such a background).
But those conditions will be relatively rare. Second: the "zergy" tactics look suspiciously like tactics followed in battles between primitive tribes in New Guinea (individual attacks and retreats, facing each other off, massive but confused charges, scattering retreats, regrouping, final retreat and dissolution). Perhaps we are seeing a very "primal" pattern here?
Even if the game's combat mechanics would allow actual player battle formations, they would probably rarely be used because of the absence of the social and political conditions that in real world history led to the evolution of tactics and strategy (need for physical survival, imposition of discipline by the group or a higher authority, methods of training, etc.). So, unless the "heart" of warfare in virtual worlds is shaped by strategic- and tactical- level players and their NPC troops, PvP will probably remain dominated by zerg tactics.