Has anyone noticed that some ideas seemed married to the MMO genre for no discernable reason?

Let’s take the flogged equine, permadeath. Has anyone noticed that no one is asking for this on other genres? Can you even imagine, for example, playing Doom 3 or God of War with Permadeath on?

We used to, of course. Back in the days of Pac-Man and Space Invaders, your game ended after 3 lives. Then someone comes up with ‘Insert a quarter to continue’, and we haven’t looked back since. Now, single-player developers are bitched out if they don’t drop save points enough, and many argue that we should be beyond that whole save point thing, and just allow players to save anywhere they want.

I can’t even imagine what would happen to God of War if they had the old arcade-y ‘3 lives’ solution. For one thing, the game would have been a lot less challenging — you can’t have fights where the player is insanely overmatched or puzzles where one false move kills you if the player only has 3 lives. The game would have to be shorter so it was beatable by anyone but the most hardcore. Shorter, more boring games, with the added frustration that one episode of the stupid tosses away your precious time. Sign me up!

But with MMOs, the idea keeps coming up. What’s the difference that brings the idea to the fore?
1) The social aspect. Clearly, when looking for differences between MMOs and other games, you have to start with this one. Many fans of permadeath cite ‘bragging rites’ as one of the key reasons for permadeath. This, of course, assumes that your permadeath solution hasn’t been designed in such a way that it doesn’t make every non-hardcore player quit in frustration.
2) Boredom. Probably a more likely candidate, most people see (correctly) that the Grind is the largest flaw of the current crop of MMOs. They’re bored, and they look at permadeath as a solution which adds tension to the game. Even if true, I think the real thing to fix is the Grind. But then that’s just me.

Original comments thread here.