That’s how games like Guild Wars and Lord of the Rings Online can manage a scripted storyline with a progression better than say WoW does. They have a different focus and may not have the population of WoW but for players in search of epic story they accomplish that far better than other games in the arena.

And why should every player get the chance to experience the same thing? I guess I don’t subscribe to the equal opportunity concept when it comes to challenge. Think about building a community where people could be the ONE team that killed Onyxia and then other later players would see the aftereffect and could be left cleaning up the mess of the power ecology in the dragon’s wake.

It’s great theory at this point, and maybe someday we’ll get technology that can generate this form of MMO content at some point.. neural AI networks and such are still in their infancy when it comes to deductive and extrapolative content creation but one day it could be managed I believe.. we’re just not there yet and mostly because we’re as a rule obsessed with the presentation of games, not the game theory and gameplay at this stage.