My thoughts exactly: "The players should generate the story as they go...This means breaking down some of the mechanics we are used to and allowing players to actually change the worlds they inhabit, instead of being forced to spin their wheels by fighting monsters that will simply respawn in five minutes or an hour. Some may object to this as being a “niche” feeling, but this niche has room for everyone. If executed properly, a player-generated story-based MMORPG solves a lot of the problems we have today with much less developer, writer, and designer time needed." - Rob Shillingsburg

The emphasis on quests, items, and character development, as opposed to dynamic story generation, seems to come from computer RPGs, not new to MMORPGs, and I think it's because it's impractical to have much story development from a small number of people. So the story is written in advance and everyone experiences roughly the same story. MMORPGs do open up the possibility of having large numbers of people generate a story together. But this post compares pen and paper RPGs to MMORPGs without looking much at where MMORPGs came from — the computer RPGs that have the same characteristics. - Amit Patel