Raph has a thought-provoking post today. At its core is a question about synchronous vs. unsynchronous gameplay, and the expectation of exclusivity that most MMOs seem to want.

His general gist: MMOs appear to be the only social space that want your time exclusively. Bars don’t build their businesses, hoping that everyone is locked into that business model. He argues we’re closer to theme parks, once you’ve paid your entrance fee. He asks, “Why are we more like theme parks than the neighborhood bar?”

One possible answer: ‘massively multiplayer’ is the unique promise of the MMO genre. There are parts of the MMO promise that are very evocative. One of the strongest of those is large-scale synchronous gameplay: Raiding. Battlegrounds. City sieges in Shadowbane. Realm vs. Realm in Dark Age of Camelot.

The problem with these features is that they require a certain social critical mass to be playable at all – and that social critical mass must be simultaneous. If you don’t have 10 people, you can’t run Karazhan. If you don’t have 25, you can’t kill Gruul. If you don’t have 80, you can’t do Alterac Valley the way it was meant to be played.

MMOs do have queues for some features, like theme parks, but subtly, the problem is inverted – these queues exist for the opposite reason of theme parks – they form when there aren’t ENOUGH people to run.

MMOs that miss this critical mass are very lonely, depressing places. There are, in fact, rumors that Blizzard is considering server merges. WoW as a whole is doing fine, but by the luck of the draw, some servers don’t have a population large enough to support consistent play groups for even level 70 5-man instances. And when you are playing something called a ‘massively multiplayer game’, and it feels lonely, the irony is inescapable.

As for Raph’s bar vs. theme park mentality, I think MMOs are much closer to a dance club. Dance clubs have a lot of casual people who drop by (much like a bar). They also have a committed casual audience who go weekly. And they also have a core of customers who come 3 nights a week at least, who act as a core of the club’s clientele, the faces you see every time you go. Finally, they have a similar ‘critical mass’ problem – if a club does not create the aura that it is the ‘place to be’, that club will die.

Some may argue that this is bad. Possibly, but it’s possible that it just may be the way it is for both MMOs and dance clubs, It may be that these are just realities that must be addressed when building a stable community that has the unique promise of ‘massively multiplayer’ gameplay people hope for. As a side example, serially episodic television (shows meant to be watched in in a particular order, such as Lost) is bad for the television business in numerous ways: you can’t watch the shows in any order, which limits the ability to show reruns or syndicate traditionally, and it’s hard for new viewers to ‘get into’ the show. But if the producers had been unwilling to accept these limitations, we would not have gotten Lost, Heroes, Veronica Mars, Buffy – well, any show of the last 10 years I actually like.

I’m biased. I make MMOs because I’m intrigued by the potential of what massively multiplayer can bring. When I start hearing people muse about how the future of MMOs are web browser capable MySpace-like endeavors where people aren’t necessarily even playing at the same time – I gotta admit, I actually see that future as kind of bleak.