Um, yes. And as a single-player game with an "avatar" walking around, it's no different from the old Ultimas or Avernum series or any of the old-school RPGs.
And unlike MMOs, the avatar in the Microprose game doesn't "level up" or have stats, whereas most MMOs (I would say all, but I'm certainly not familiar with them all) do. That's pretty much the point of an MMO as I tried to mention earlier; the player takes on the persona of someone in that environment/world and acts accordingly and has stats to increase.
I thought the defining feature of an MMO was that it was massive multiplayer online, not specifically the presence of a level-up system. Why is it that leveling up must be the point of an MMO? I don't see that as a constraint. Seems like an MMO without a level-up system could be fine.
Puzzle Quest? A game more than 10 years old? I don't think that's a very good example... and again, it's a single-player Strategy/Match-3/RPG. Envisioning it as an MMO pretty much is the same idea: you are the "character" and you cast spells (which is represented in the single player game as making matches to charge up them up).
This seems to be another in the same line of objection, so maybe in that sense it's not a very good example. On the other hand, it's a more recent and more popular version of the same concept I'm talking about. Yes, it is single-player. Well, what if it weren't? What if you made a game that was like Puzzle Quest, but in which players traveled in the same world and could team up with each other or fight against each other? Puzzle Quest even has a level up system, if that's the sticking point.
Honestly, I was thinking of the original Puzzle Quest because that was the one I played, but the game has had multiple versions, including one that came out last year.
On an amusing, but not importantly related note, I saw some comment about this announcement of a Magic MMO that was something like, "Now they just need to go back in time 10 years to when MMO games were still popular." I wouldn't go that far myself, but it was a little funny anyway.
Again, I'm not discounting what you are saying and what you are envisioning as there hasn't been any details on the gameplay (that I know of; I didn't check recently). I'm just saying that *I* think it's highly unlikely that it will be that
Oh, I'm with you there. I'm more envisioning what I would like to see, not what I think they'll actually do. I think an updated version of the same concept as the old game would be cool, multiplayer or otherwise. But if it's Everquest Planeswalker Edition or whatever, then I'm out. The connection to an established, successful card game would be the most immediate and recognizable feature of a Magic MMO, and I think they'd be fools not to tie than in at a fundamental level, whatever form the game takes. But I fully anticipate disappointment on this one.