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You start up a new game, you create your character and decide what type of person he or she is. You are ready to step into the game world and be a part of what is happening there.

Then the introduction movie starts. A monotonous voice starts giving you a recap of the entire world history in two minutes. It is fast, it is without interesting detail, it is illustrated by randomly chosen war sequences that do not support the storytelling. Names are mentioned that you can't remember, alliances are made between races that you have not yet heard of, the gods give or take some magical artifact that is like the most important thing in the world.

The intro ends and you are asked to kill 5 wolves/worms/rabbits. You are in an area far away from more experienced players who could have taught you how to play, far away from the real action in the world, and unable to visit the city, because you don't know the way and you are too weak to get there without getting killed.

And then you keep killing wolves/worms/rabbits or similar, but with higher levels, as you move along in the game. You get to go to the city, but you never hear those names from the intro again, and you never learn anything more about the gods or their artifact. Because the story in the intro has nothing to do with playing the game.

If I were to make a MMOG, the intro would be about who the player is when he starts, where he is going to end up, what little information he does know about the powers of the world. He would be told that his mother always said "Never trust a human, they are evil and will kill you if you do not kill them first."

The rest he would learn while playing the game. Every quest NPC would add a little to the story, and in the library the books would actually contain useful information and stories that were fun to read. At low levels he would get a feel for the main conflicts in the world and start taking an interest. The low level quests would somehow be connected to the main story, although distantly. At low levels the stories would be about 2-3 famous people, gradually more names would be mentioned, but not so many that you would forget them as soon as you heard them. At higher levels the players would take part in the core of the main story. The answer to "Why do we kill this elite boss?" would not be "loot", but "We need to do it to save our people."

Ok, I will shut up now and keep on dreaming...

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