In news that will come as a shock to no-one, the University of Sheffield and its lead researcher, Professor McGonagall, have today revealed that MMO gamers are never satisfied.

Having researched MMO players, their gaming preferences and habits for the last 25 years, Professor McGonagall and her team will finally publish their results this week. “Twenty-five years is a long time to study anything, but we felt there was value in it, in order to understand the market and how players react to the games they’re playing. We wanted to learn what would satisfy typical massively multiplayer gamers.”

Unsurprisingly and despite interviewing over 500,000 “hardcore” MMO players, (people Professor McGonagall refers to as Pearl) the consensus rarely altered: it wouldn’t matter how much content or freedom developers gave to players they’d always be unhappy with what they were given. “I’ve never in all my years of research seen anything like it, they’re just so miserable. It’d take witchcraft and wizardry just to find someone.”

Perhaps the most surprising thing is the amount of time Professor McGonagall and her team dedicated to the study. Did they really need so much time? “Honestly, no. We reached the point however where we just wanted to find one person who was satisfied. Out of more than half a million players, not one had much good to say. Those who did always quickly found something to complain about.”

What about the cost? A team of 100 researchers working full time for 25 years can’t have come cheap. “We’ve spent many millions of pounds that probably would have been better spent taking these players somewhere fun, like a water park or an adventure playground. It might have cheered them up.”

Professor McGonagall and her team are due to publish their survey results in full in the next few days. We’ll keep you posted.