BioWare on MMOG Design

In an article titled Why men in tights work for MMO games, BioWare combat designer Damion Schubert talks about why common MMOG design elements are...well, common:

From there, Schubert moved on to talk about the industry clichés that haven't seen much innovation and gave his reasons as to why the status quo has worked thus far. First and foremost, he talked about the combat-heavy focus of most MMO games.

"Combat presents an active problem," Schubert said, "a problem that you are solving pretty much in real time. You're given information, and you have to do something with that."