Making Sense of the Argument: "It's Like an MMO!"

Yes, this is a common subject in the infamous Edition Wars.  No, I'm not trying to throw flames in that fire.  I'm merely going to examine the argument, hopefully in a logical, organized, and objective fashion, because to be honest I've never been able to wrap my head around this criticism (of 4E).  Hopefully writing it all out will help.

What Makes an MMO an MMO?
The first thing that needs defining is MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game).  Next, we need to ask:  What is the core of the MMO experience?  This one's tough for me, because I've never been able to get into MMOs.  I love The Guild to death, and I did try a free trial of WoW a few years back so I'm not flying totally blind here.  The experience of actually playing just leaves me dry, though.  While that may be a subjective point, the "why" of it is not.  Here's a list of MMO "characteristics" (subject to refinement), with the reasoning for my subjective opinion at the top.

1. Your actions, and the plot, are inherently restricted.  There isn't a GM at the helm to adjudicate the crazy "off-rails" stuff you attempt.  All of your options are coded in.
2. Character-building is a mini-game.  It's all about your character's stats and what spells/powers/whatever you choose.  It has to be, because there's no incentive to create backstories, motivations, etc.
3. The goal of the game is advancement.  Why do you fight things?  To get to the next level.  To get better stats.
4. A subset of the previous point, there's an equipment treadmill.  You need to keep getting better and better treasure.  Accumulating this treasure is part of point 3 above.
5. Zooming from the individual scale, we reach the "multiplayer" component.  Party building is a big deal.  Everyone has a job, and the group is designed by recruiting characters of a certain role.  They are expected to perform that role on raids.  Generally speaking, you've got DPS (damage per round, the heavy hitters), tanks (the guys who can take hits), healers, crowd control, and potentially buffers/debuffers (arguably a sub-set of crowd control and/or a side job for the healer).

That sounds good for now.

Remember Your History!
So this is a point that bears mentioning early on, and deserves its own subheading, and should be kept in mind throughout this whole exercise.  MMOs are a derivative of fantasy tabletop RPGs.  D&D came first.  An argument can be made, therefore, that the whole topic of this post is moot.  It is MMOs that are like D&D, not the other way around!

While I personally find a lot of truth in that statement, I'll add in some grey area for good measure.  MMOs are an offshoot of D&D.  The very existence of editions means that the game is constantly evolving, and MMOs are one of the forms that it's taken.  Many of the advancements made in MMOs naturally serve to tailor the experience to the electronic medium.  Therefore, iterations of a tabletop game like D&D can certainly incorporate elements from MMOs.  Tabletop games borrow ideas from each other all the time, and this is no different.

4E = MMO!
This is where the arguments started, as far as I know.  Others have covered this better than I plan to.  For my purposes, I'll simply refer back to my initial list of MMO characteristics.

1. Your actions, and the plot, are inherently restricted.  There isn't a GM at the helm to adjudicate the crazy "off-rails" stuff you attempt.  All of your options are coded in.  There is no edition of any tabletop RPG that this will be largely true for.  But there will always be a little truth here, because a game has rules.  Rules define and restrict to a degree.  This isn't free-form storytelling.  For 4E in particular, players often instinctively turn to the options presented on their cards (or power stat blocks).  I've heard of this "picking powers from a list" being likened to "pressing buttons," but if that's true then the same can be said for any game with a list of options.  Perhaps it plays more true in 4E when players stick to the cards, which are very efficient at mechanically defining exactly what happens.  Still, the option for improvising is inherently present, and advice from the DMG (including the infamous page 42) combined with VERY transparent math allows DMs to adjudicate fairly.  The key is to make things equivalent to an option from a power.  I get the sense that many 4E DMs don't do this well enough.  Work on it.  The game's already pretty low-prep from the DM side of things.
2. Character-building is a mini-game.  It's all about your character's stats and what spells/powers/whatever you choose.  It has to be, because there's no incentive to create backstories, motivations, etc.  Characters will exist in the DM's world, and if the players want a roleplaying experience then characters will certainly be more than just stats.  That said, the tactical nature of 4E combat does encourage playing around with different combinations of options and making sure you have the proper tools.  Conversely, the dynamic nature of 4E's tactical combat means that the specifics of the decisions you make matter.  You can get creative with whatever tools you have, especially working with fellow PCs, to make any combination interesting.  There's a lot of room for creativity here, MUCH more so than an MMO or even previous editions of D&D.
3. The goal of the game is advancement.  Why do you fight things?  To get to the next level.  To get better stats.  This is going to vary by group, just as it always has.  With 4E specifically, the power gap between poorly built and optimized characters is smaller than it has been in the past.  Classes are designed with parity in mind, so your choices in-game matter more than your raw numbers.  The fact that you have access to the core abilities of the class starting at level 1 also suggests that advancement isn't the focus.
4. A subset of the previous point, there's an equipment treadmill.  You need to keep getting better and better treasure.  Accumulating this treasure is part of point 3 above.  The equipment treadmill is one of my biggest criticisms of 4E.  Magic items are expected for advancement, and I find that restrictive as a DM and a player.  Fortunately, the DMG2 offers Inherent Bonuses, so this "problem" could be patched for groups that prefer a different style. 
5. Zooming from the individual scale, we reach the "multiplayer" component.  Party building is a big deal.  Everyone has a job, and the group is designed by recruiting characters of a certain role.  They are expected to perform that role on raids.  Generally speaking, you've got DPS (damage per round, the heavy hitters), tanks (the guys who can take hits), healers, crowd control, and potentially buffers/debuffers (arguably a sub-set of crowd control and/or a side job for the healer).  Here's where 4E gets the most flak, and it's primarily because the roles are very well-defined.  But the thing is, all classes have 1-3 secondary roles so gaps can be filled, making party composition LESS important.  Everyone is fairly sturdy (no Wizards with d4 HP!) and have access to defensive options so the tank isn't "needed."  Everyone can deal damage, even while doing other things such as healing, so DPR isn't "required."  The tactical nature of combat gives everyone access to status effects so you can get by without a controller.  Finally, not only do you not need a Cleric because there are other classes in the leader role, but you don't even really need a healer thanks to the healing surge mechanic, second wind, and fairly common access to self-healing or off-healing abilities.  Different group compositions will definitely play differently (a group of strikers will favor fast, swingy, guerrilla type combats whereas a group of defenders might win through attrition, and a group with a lot of control ability might shut down the enemy to near-uselessness).  You don't really have to consciously build the party; you can make it work regardless of what everyone brings to the table.  That said, it's always nice to know what your party will lack so that you can plan to shore up those shortcomings with your own character.

3.0/3.5/3.75 (Pathfinder) = MMO?
This might come out of left field for some, but hear me out.  It began when I was wrapping up my last 13th Age session.  The group (minus me), which normally plays Pathfinder almost exclusively, all agreed that a party should ALWAYS have a Cleric.  One of the players is especially put off by Recoveries (Healing Surges) because he doesn't want everyone to self-heal; he wants the Cleric to do the healing.  So I'll go over the MMO list with 3.x to see what similarities the two exhibit.

Yeah, I know I said I didn't buy into the "[insert TTRPG] = MMO" argument, and that I didn't want to throw flames into the edition war fire, but I figure if I'm examining 4E for similarities to MMOs I should give 3.x the same treatment (it being the edition that 4E is most commonly compared with, at least in my moderately extensive exposure to the subject on the internet). 

1. Your actions, and the plot, are inherently restricted.  There isn't a GM at the helm to adjudicate the crazy "off-rails" stuff you attempt.  All of your options are coded in.  Again, players will have a substantial amount of freedom since a DM is at the helm.  But how do the rules of 3.x differ from the rules of 4E with regard to restricting options?  Well, for one improvisation itself is restricted more harshly thanks to a greater leaning toward the "rules as physics" approach.  While playing, I was often told (in very different words, of course) "you don't have a button for that."  Sure, I could attempt to trip, bull rush, whatever untrained, but it was so tactically inferior that the options might not even have existed.  By contrast, 4E powers give you a million ways to trip people, most of which involve attack + prone.  Transparent mechanics allow DMs to make fair rulings (with the possibility of "rulings over rules" being the biggest strength of tabletop RPGs, after all).  In 3.x the rules are written in a way that basically says "you can't unless x" (x being the improved trip line of feats).  Now, you may be saying that a good DM will create a good experience regardless.  This is true.  But with the tools as presented (there's not even an equivalent of a page 42), 3.x makes it more difficult for players to be creative outside of what is already written on their character sheet, and it makes it much more difficult for GMs to adjudicate it when they try.  Restrictions are more MMO-like, even if the system has less of a "push these buttons" feel.  That was by no means the full picture, but merely an alternative point of view that I haven't seen expressed before.
   
2. Character-building is a mini-game.  It's all about your character's stats and what spells/powers/whatever you choose.  It has to be, because there's no incentive to create backstories, motivations, etc.  With 90% of a martial character's choices being "I full attack," the numbers, feats, etc. used to build the character mean that numbers take just as much precedence as in MMOs.  Unless the DM has made some tweaks, and is really good at making rulings that are roughly equivalent to existing options (tough with the system as presented, but possible).  Again though, a story-driven experience is certainly supported as with any TTRPG.  For spellcasters, the emphasis is placed on having the right tools prepared moreso than making the right choices with what you've chosen.  A difference of style, and notably spell selection is NOT necessarily tied to character creation or leveling (i.e. divine casters have access to the whole list, arcane characters can find new spellbooks/scrolls).  So, uneven resemblance to an MMO?
   
3. The goal of the game is advancement.  Why do you fight things?  To get to the next level.  To get better stats.  Again, depends on the group.  There's no question that 3.x rewards system mastery though, so even if "advancing" isn't a primary goal the characters numbers/feats/skill ranks likely weigh more heavily on the player's mind.  Combined with more "crunchy" rules, 3.x encourages mechanical thinking more than narrative thinking.  I would argue that this is similar to the thinking of an MMO player, but not having extensively played MMOs I can't say for certain.  The biggest similarity between 3.x and an MMO on this front, however, is the tendency for many classes in 3.x to get core abilities at higher levels (thus making advancement a very important thing in the minds of the players).  Wild Shape at 5th level, feats representing distinct new "powers," spellcasting for Paladins and Rangers, etc.  
   
4. A subset of the previous point, there's an equipment treadmill.  You need to keep getting better and better treasure.  Accumulating this treasure is part of point 3 above.  Both 3.x and 4E are bad about requiring equipment for advancement.  With less clear guidelines for encounter building (the CR system is a mess that doesn't always work) it's theoretically tougher for DMs to predictably scale down encounters to account for low magic, but this won't be a problem for experienced DMs.  Newbies might find it problematic, though.  Also, while it's easy enough to implement 4E's system for Inherent Bonuses, as far as I know the option isn't presented in any of the 3.x rulebooks.  Which doesn't mean it's not there, since it's been a while since I've played and I've read very little of the Pathfinder books. 
   
5. Zooming from the individual scale, we reach the "multiplayer" component.  Party building is a big deal.  Everyone has a job, and the group is designed by recruiting characters of a certain role.  They are expected to perform that role on raids.  Generally speaking, you've got DPS (damage per round, the heavy hitters), tanks (the guys who can take hits), healers, crowd control, and potentially buffers/debuffers (arguably a sub-set of crowd control and/or a side job for the healer).  Now we come back to the point that I made at the opening of this section.  Everyone needs a Cleric is the argument that my group made, and if you're playing with the rules as intended that's possibly somewhat accurate.  In practice, a wand of [insert level-appropriate Cure spell here] is really all you need.  Bad game design?  I'd argue yes.  But like an MMO?  It depends on how your group handles the Cleric vs Wand issue.  Regarding other roles, the biggest point that separates 3.x from 4E (and presumably MMOs, though again my experience is very low) is the absence of a true "tank."  3.x characters can be built to take hits, but it's very difficult for them to encourage enemies to attack themselves instead of their squishier allies.  You can play the mobility denial with threatening reach (and enough feats), but there's no marks/defender auras/etc. that punish enemies for attacking the squishies once the distance is closed.  "Tanks" are not sticky or retributive, and are only rarely capable of mobility denial (with the right build).

Conclusions - What All of This Means
Well, I'm honestly back to the "it's a silly argument" stance.  Maybe writing this all out solidified that, though.  The more pertinent argument is good game design vs bad game design, and catering to X style as opposed to Y style.  MMOs are designed to function within an electronic environment, and their design reflects that.  The most important differentiating aspects of TTRPGs are present regardless simply because the DM says so.  I'd argue that 4E gives DMs better tools to adjudicate rulings on the fly, but my experience has been that 3.x DMs and players tend to be very loyal to that system, and are more than content to operate within its confines, viewing its rules as an implied "reality."  In other words, it tends to make rules lawyers happy (though admittedly I've seen 4E be rules-lawyered to death, notably on the Character Optimization threads of the WotC forums).  Which honestly, while it usually goes hand-in-hand with a mechanically-minded thought process like an MMO, is simultaneously nothing like an MMO, which cannot apply its rules to unconventional circumstances (or any circumstances out of combat, at least in my experience). 

The fact that people equate 4E with MMOs is a real phenomenon so it can't be discounted, but I think the more important question to ask is "why?"  To say it "feels" like an MMO isn't enough, because what an MMO feels like to me is sitting in front of a computer by myself, being constrained by the game's programming, which isn't the case for TTRPGs.  Parallels to MMOs can certainly be drawn regardless of edition, but it requires a certain mindset.  An expectation that the experience will be MMO-like. 

It would be much more prudent and constructive to examine the intent behind a specific rule or style that happens to be shared between a given MMO and TTRPG, and to ask what that rule or style accomplishes in those very different media.  Which is beyond the scope of this (already long) post.