Michelle has tried to convince me to give Tabula Rasa a try. She was in the beta and she had some nice things to say about it, but my reaction is still: "If I'm going to play a shooter, I'd probably prefer an FPS."

I doubt I'm the only person with this mentality. Ever since the Doom days (Wolfenstein even), we've been blessed with high quality shooters. The FPS genre still dominates and it's been seriously refined, plus they've been multiplayer since practically day one.

Stargate Worlds looks interesting, but it's also a shooter.

Even if you compare casters in most MMORPGs, it's the AoEs that make those classes popular.

I don't think an FPS makes a good MMORPG because having your character on the screen is such a strong tangible factor. I'd guess the designers at both Tabula Rasa and Stargate Worlds would agree with me there, they both have third-person shooter designs. The thing is, they're directly competing with what's arguably the biggest genre there is.

Thankfully we have plenty of great FPS games to choose from, but that's a problem for shooter MMOs, isn't it?