If I may quote myself “The MMO genre is rife with its own set of tropes; recurring themes and motifs that have become established and ubiquitous. All of which are ideal material for a hastily produced, lazily conceived, recurring blog post”. This time round, I would like to discuss the following. The Hero, the Chosen One, the Übermensch. As that is the role that we so often are assigned in this genre. Developers broadly assume that most players want a power fantasy and precious little else is on offer. Hence we find ourselves in a story in which we are destined to do great deeds in a virtual world, whether we wish to or not. I can see the superficial appeal of such a conceit. Most of us are not such overachievers in real life. So a game in which we get to do stuff to the world, instead of the world doing stuff to us has an inherent allure. But like most MMO tropes, unless it is implemented with some panache and creativity, it quickly becomes a tiresome cliche.