Marketing Guy A: These MMPOGs are popular these days and have great profit ratios. The game mechanics are already out there; all we need to do is make the art and we're done! But that's so haaaaaard! How can we make things easier?
Marketing Guy B: Why don't we CHARGE the player base a monthly fee... and have THEM make the game for us too!?
Marketing Guy A: I LOVE MONEY!
Marketing Guy B: I'm going to kiss this big wad of money!
Marketing Guy C: Did someone say MONEY? Money fight! *throws a wad of money*

Wouldnt it be funny if all the player made quests ended up being exactly the same as the quest/grind that everyone loves to bitch about today?

Lobster FTW

When i look at other games with an active modding scene, im quite sure results would be way better than killtasks and grind.

Think of Neverwinter Nights. There are campaigns and persistant worlds out there better than the original game.

Perhaps such an solution is a possible way to fight grind in MMOs.
Where does the mindless grind in our usual MMOs come from? I think one of the problems is that players play through content almost indefinitely faster than its created.

For example WoW... lets say they need 6 months to create a "normal" dungeon. And how long does it take for the players to go through it? When its a difficult dungeon you need 1-2 weeks until you have the encounters right and kill the bosses. Usually its way faster. So you HAVE to build timesinks or your players quit.

Just think for a second it would be possible that WoW does this... and think that the same effort some people currently put in UI-Mods goes into new content, that would be an army of developers putting all of their heartblood in their products.
Sure, there would be legions of problems too (playtesting, bugs, imbalance, parting the good from the bad, what gear to give out and so on) but overall it could be great.

Id take that challenge... anyday.

Bingo. Show me a game with player-created content and I'll show you a hundred (if not a thousand) unfinished, failed, or just plain awful attempts at creating something worthwhile. Can some players create great things? Absolutely. But the signal to noise ratio is virtually infinitesimal. Can you imagine having to play WoW with every player-created mod? Or Oblivion? Or Half-life?

I think you have to go one of two ways with this: either let your players go crazy, in which case the amount of effort involved in policing player content would be so huge as to make it practically impossible, or rein in what people can do to such an extreme that it's not worth it for players to make Mod #4/15 again after 200 hundred other people already have.

If they can do it successfully, more power to them. I'll be mighty impressed. I'm not, however, holding my breath.

The player made content is not mandatory. But the option is there that it could be made public if its good enough and fits with the lore.

As long as they dangle that carrot, color me interested whether it actually happens or not.

I would also pose the fact that many professionals also play games. (you'd really be hard pressed to find a group of devs that didnt have a significant ratio playing WoW) So your user base isnt all newbs with delusions of grandeur.

I think that if games like WoW offered the creation tools that VWs like Second Life offer, we'd see some really amazing stuff. Maybe charge another $5/month to have access to the tools, everything that goes in must pass a review, the available loot tables would be tightly controlled, etc, etc, etc.

I'm thinking you could have some great content that way, but you'd have to hire someone to do the review. Maybe have a peer review first, I dunno.

whats that?? I didnt hear you over the 6 million people making noise in here.. speak up!