It's always been obvious that any form of computer "role playing games" are going to be limited. That has been true all the way back to my early days playing Phantasie I,II and III on my Apple ][+, and it's still true today, for much the same reasons.
There's a few reasons for this, but in many ways, they start at the same point. They limit the ability of a player to "create and play a role."
In a pen-and-paper RPG, your character is largely up to you (with a certain amount of input from other players and the GM). You can choose pretty much everything: personal details, personality, powers, the whole works.
Now, think about a fairly traditional Japanese RPG. Final Fantasy VII is pretty familiar, so it's a good starting point. You got to choose none of those things. You were Cloud Strife. The entire realm of choice that a pnp game gives you was gone. There were few if any meaningful choices for the player to make in the game. The gameplay consisted of the mechanics of the gameplay (killing monsters, getting materia, such and so), and watching the story. It was a good story, and the gameplay was enjoyable, but even so, it really didn't qualify in any meaningful way as "role-playing".
Now, some of the more modern games give you a great deal more choice. Mass Effect makes you Shepherd, and you do get a certain amount of choice. You can choose your appearance, your gender and the like. Perhaps more importantly, you've got a great deal more input into the game, as your choices influence the gameplay, and the attitudes of your companions towards you. However, it's still limited. After all, you're still Shepherd. It's the role you are assigned, not the role that you choose.
Now, all of the above is obvious, and there's likely no real reason for me to even mention any of it. What about MMO's though? Don't they give more? That's where things begin to get interesting. They give much more, and at the same time, much less.
Now, in an MMO, your personality choice is far greater than any of the above games. Depending on the game, you can make an enormous series of choices. The process of creating a character in an MMO is potentially greater than anything short of a pnp game. Take City of Heroes. You have great ability to design a true superhero costume, a massive (and growing) list of powers to choose from, the ability to create a personality from scratch, the works.
Yet, at the same time, MMO's take a great deal away from you that a single player game is able to give you. Most importantly, it takes away the ability to make a difference. In both pnp and Solo RPG's, there is potential to have your characters actions reshape the world around them. The decisions you make have the ability to change things in various ways, some of them quite profound. In MMOs? Not nearly so much so.
One of the most telling aspects of this is something that MMO gamers have more or less learned to shrug and ignore. Since it's a shared world, your efforts effectively disappear in a matter of moments. For instance, there you are, a hero in Atlas Park, and see a little old lady getting mugged by a Hellion. You swoop in, and voila, the woman is saved. Hooray! Look back in 5 minutes, and there's the same Hellion mugging the same lady.
It's not just little things like that though. In SWTOR, I've been slowly pounding my way through the planet of Taris, and have been helping the Empire drive the Republic forces off the planet. I've just gotten the big victory, and our troops are victorious! Hooray! Oh, wait, I poke around in the areas where Republic troops spawn, and there's just as many, they aggro just as fast. (That doesn't even count seeing some other guy running around doing the exact same missions I am).
Because it is a shared world, there is no real permanance to your actions. The only way Taris will truly change is if the Devs decide to have an "event" where the entire planet is changed during a patch. (Which is certainly possible, but not for the immediate future I'm sure). You have to mentally suspend seeing all of those things.
So, in the end, you may advance your personal story, but your actions have no larger repurcussions.
This is all pretty obvious, but I'm as much putting this up to think all of this through (it's not like anyone is reading it anyway).
