"You are the Chosen One! And so is everyone else!"

[morrigan]

I started playing EQ when I was like 9, I was a wee tiny babe and Luclin hadn't even come out yet. This started a lifelong love of games where I could interact with others in some form and participate in a giant world (and die, over and over and over and over again in Dark Soul's case). Twinsun's Odyssey and Boba'd Diablo 2 were great, but EQ was special.

MMOs today? Not so much really. So I want to talk about a slight gripe I have with modern MMOs.

Why are you the 'Chosen Hero' in almost every single one now? I don't quite understand why developers feel the need to do this. It's hard to be the Chosen One when there's a few hundred others running around talking to the same person at the same time to learn about their 'destiny' and to get their first quest. Elder Scrolls Online did it, Rift did it, that Star Wars MMO sort of did it but in a weird way.

Why can't we have you as some random adventurer dude again? Is there some weird marketing strategy behind it? If TESO didn't have the whole "Chosen Soulless Hero Dude" thing following you around I probably would have enjoyed playing it. If Star Wars didn't have you on this thin defined path playing as Darth Serkis while hundreds of others were also at the same time playing as Darth Serkis (and if they fixed the Miraluka headgear clipping problem) I would have enjoyed playing it.

So yes, basically, it'd be nice if everyone started off without this Grand Destiny. Let us build our own characters as we want to, we don't need a pre-written destiny for them.

Any opinions on this phenomenon or possible explanations?