A way to make an FPS MMORPG work?

I wonder, has this topic been done to death yet? For many of us sundry MMOers, there exists a mythical land which one can often read or listen to us opine about. A land much like any other, full of scantily-clad shield maidens and snarling manticore. A land of mystery and danger. A land where one goes about their business clicking the mouse button and aiming rather than hitting tab and the keys 1-9.

The First Person Shooter Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. That's a mouthful. There have already been stabs at it, but largely it remains an Avalon for some of us. Without going into details of the various arguments for an against, I just want to share an idea I recently had.

First, context: I have been working on an off on my Pot Farming mod for Colonization and have been putting more time than I should into a couple other strategy games like Settlers 6, and the browser games Ikariam and Nile Online. If you have read back a few posts you will know all about it.

I am an RPG, and therefore to some degree, an MMORPG enthusiast. I have been rather disenchanted with the genre as a whole lately, however. Mainly after the WAR release. I like WAR, I just don't giving-$15/month-and-my-precious-time love it. With the exception of a few games like DDO (a truly different experience and a gem for it) and LOTRO (which has the "all who wander are not lost" ethic going to help mitigate any potential raid-fueled loot race), I am pretty much disenchanted with the entire genre.

Basically: I hate raiding and I am sorry if it offends anyone but PVP is a massive joke. I hate to be the one to say it, but if you want to PVP, play Counter Strike.

So what to do? How to rectify these conflicting emotions and disparate feelings? By daydreaming of an FPS (i.e. "real" twitch-based PVP) with all the ephemera of an RPG set in a massive world.

Probably the most often argument against such a game is that as soon as you introduce RPG elements, you lose twitch. And without RPG elements it won't be an RPG. Or something like that - essentially an FPS offers a technically even playing field and by introducing attributes and skills you destroy that. But without character building you won't have an RPG and more importantly you won't have any players.

This argument is very good, and I wholly subscribe to it. So rather than continue to butt heads against this wall, what other concept can we come up with?

Well, as I have been very much in resource/building strategy games, it has got me thinking about crafting in MMOs. Like I said, I like RPGs and Fortuente cannot live on strategy games alone. So I have focused my efforts into finding the ultimate crafting MMORPG.

I wanted to try Istaria (aka Horizons) which has a good reputation for crafting, but it doesn't work on Vista at the moment. Even more annoying is that it forces you into using Internet Explorer to launch the game. I suppose that is because superfluous stand-alone launchers and support for Vista are not important. Deleted.

Right now I am on a trial for Star Wars Galaxies (gasp!). I have to say, it is my first experience with the NGE and it is ... ghetto, for lack of a better expression. And that encompasses from the crappy clip-art interface to the thrown together hodge-podge classes. But I will endure it until the end as there is still some of that old magic lurking beneath and the crafting system is still quite good as crafting systems go. I might even sub for a while.

What does all this meandering mean? Going over countless forum posts for the best crafting MMO combined with my constant mental chatter debating ideas and strategies for Grow Tycoon, caused me to have a minor epiphany of sorts ... the PERFECT FPSMMORPG. According to me, at least.

First, lets shorten that damn title. What works? How about First Person Multiplayer Role Playing Game - FPMRPG. That works for now.

So in my idealized FPMRPG there are no combat skills what-so-ever. No Strength or Dexterity, no such thing as weapon specializations or talent trees. Nada, zilch - it's (mostly) all twitch, baby. But then if that is the case, where does the RPG come into play?

Ahhh, you notice I said no "combat" skills. In my Avalon there would still be hundreds - thousands - even of skills to train and use, but they would all be focused around crafting. It would be a game for a curious type of MMO gamer, the crafting PVPer.

Before when I said combat is mostly (not 100%) twitch-based, I said that because in this world there would still be some degree of itemization. A magic sword might make you swing faster, and enchanted bow might expand your opponents' hit boxes slightly or an enchanted shield might wear out more slowly. There would certainly be healing and energy potions as well (although every FPS I can think of has something like that already).

Being a 100% crafting and resource-gathering economy, there will be no repair of items, only salvage for new ones. Crafting would encompass everything (kinda like SWG) from castles to ploughs to farming. Breeding animals would be part of the crafting. I am envisioning a crafter's paradise, here.

So what do you think? Would a combat-based FPS MMORPG actually work as an RPG without combat-based skills and stats? And assuming the crafting system made every other system since look like weak sauce could such a game actually find a niche to be successful in?