the whole point of a massively multiplayer game is to build some sort of community, right? so all the stories we'd like to see are supposed to be acted out by the players.

I've heard this time and time again, most often from developers from a MMORPG. "Yeah, we're not putting in any content, because we want the players to create it!!!"
It sounds good in theory, I mean, hey let's every player be a DM! But, if you think about it, it's a very stupid idea.

The thing is, in order for a player to be able to do something in a computer game, he HAS to have something to interact with. Most MMORPGs right now don't have a handful of things to interact with, so what kind of content are players going to create?

I don't know a lot about AC2, but take SWG for example. The only mission one player can give to another is fetch something. I need 200 bones, get them for me, and I'll pay you 200 credits.
That gets old pretty quick.
There is no possibility for any other kind of player driven mission because the interaction doesn't exist.
What if one player wants another dead? In the Star Wars universe, you could hire a bounty hunter (who aren't more than assassins anyways) to find him and take care of it for you.
However, in SWG, that bounty hunter has no way to track any player. So how is he ever going to find his target?
And for that matter, since the target will simply get cloned, what's the whole point?

MMORPGs will ALWAYS fail as long as they don't take take heed of this. WITHOUT content or anything to interact with, there will NEVER be a story, and your game is nothing more than a chatroom with pretty graphics.
From the looks of it, Asheron's Call 2 is definitely in this area, and, quite frankly, I fail to see how SWG is any different.

15 dollars a month for some chatting? IRC is free, people..

Creston