RPGs should be less have less fun and engaging gameplay, combat, and loot systems and more hamfisted Pilgrim's Progressesque moral symbolism
One of the truly quirky things about MMORPGs that I've seen in my years of playing them is that the social groups that most people form and interact in have much more difficult moral and ethical "real life" challenges than the so-called great CRPGs of the late 1990s. I mean, take your average WoW raiding guild:
A) You are about to bail on the guild because you are going to server transfer. Do you blow your load of points and then bail, possibly denying one of your friends loot that may not drop again for months, or do you get what you want, and burn your bridges behind you. (seen this repeatedly).
B) Do you impersonate a shy woman, even to the point of altering your voice through software, for personal gain for years? (seen this)
C) Do you actively manipulate people in positions of relative power in your social circle to get ahead, knowingly screwing others over in the process? (generic description, happens all the time though).
Or, you can decide in a single-player game whether to flip a digit that makes your character, which interacts with no real people, gay or a porn star or what not.
Tell me which one has the richer set of potential consequences and ethical challenges for the player.
Heck, EvE Online is pretty much build from the ground up to create endgame content through player conflict arising from these sort of "drama" things.
