What to reward in a MMORPG

One of the constant criticisms leveled against most current MMORPGs is that they only reward time spent in game. Your level and virtual wealth depend almost linearly on how many hours you spent playing. You can actually predict with some accuracy how many hours an average gamer needs to play to reach the level cap. But what else could a MMORPG reward? I think I can summarize it with three points: money, real time, and skill.

Money and real time are somewhat related, via monthly fees. Did you know that you can buy 1,000 WoW gold directly from Blizzard for $40? It works like this: You pay them $40 for a 3-month subscription, and every day you log on for the 10 minutes it takes to do the daily quest that gives 12 gold. At the end of the 3 months you have 1,000 gold. The daily quest is a typical real time reward, but as your monthly fee is also due in real time, you could also consider it as being a reward for money spent. Other real time rewards are the xp rest bonus of WoW and other games, EVE Online's skill gains in real time, or the harvesters in SWG.

You can also reward players for money spent directly, without linking it to time. That is usually called microtransactions, the game company sells to players game items on their website for cash. Very popular in Asia, very much disputed as a model in the Western world. Which is strange, given how much higher the GDP of the USA or Europe is compared to Asian countries. Apparently in many games that have microtransactions the most popular items to buy are buffs that double your xp gains for a certain time. So basically you can substitute money for time, spending more of the former to spend less of the latter. Although some people are very much opposed to that in principle, it has to be noted that while games like WoW don't offer time savings for cash directly, there is obviously a huge demand for it, which is what fuels the whole gold farming business. Buying gold in WoW from a third-party website also costs money and saves time in the game. But it isn't allowed by the EULA and ToS, and is considered as cheating by many people, plus is gives rise to many secondary negative effects like gold spam.

The holy grail of MMORPGs is rewarding players for skill. That doesn't really happen all that much in mass market MMOs. Game companies have an interest in allowing even the least skilled players to progress, because they don't want them to quit in frustration. There aren't many people around for who World of Warcraft is too difficult, if anyone is not reaching the level cap it is due to not wanting to spend all that time, not due to not being skilled enough. Group play and raid play requires more skill, which is one reason why it is more popular with the more dedicated gamers. Pure skill-based MMORPGs probably wouldn't sell all that well, because they exclude the less skilled from advancing.

So if you have any ideas how to make MMORPGs more skill-based, please comment!