Shut your mouse!

...and start paying attention to narrative

So I've been playing FlyFF, a mmorpg game in the Korean anime-style that's been gaining in popularity.

It's fun, and the graphics are neat... but I'm starting to become bored with it because of the lack of plot. And what little plot is poorly translated -- like a dwarf who says 'That should shut his mouse!'

It's really sad, considering the rich narrative history of text-adventure games that were around in the 80's and spawned this genre. How did the early attempts at natural language processing for games (remember "light candle with torch" ?) devolve into the click-to-advance story interaction of today?

Going back even further -- all RPGs are based on Dungeons and Dragons, which was a complete storytelling experience. When I was a kid, we didn't play Dungeons and Dragons with all the cards and dice, we just sat around telling cool stories.

Well... hopefully, I'll be putting my hat in to change this.