I used to play Anarchy Online because it was a lot of fun "socializing" and finding groups to grind dungeons together. The game itself is simple, in the sense that it's just grind and grind and grind some more, and in my 1-2 years of playing, I never once PVPed. In the end, it was just the experience of talking to people, running epic dungeons with intense PVE moments, and of course the prospect of finding good loot, that got me hooked to the game.

That was, however, in 2004, before the game went F2P and got infested with money-begging froobs (free noobs). I did have fun though, and even got promoted to Game Helper or whatever it was that they called GMs that helped players - I forget. Subsequently, I have played other MMOs like Age of Conan and EVE, but none ever got me hooked for long. AOC almost did, because I love how Howard's world is represented in the game, but the developers messed up some good potential that the game had, and I stopped when I realized I was just running through the same chores over and over again.

These days, the only MMO I play is Darkwind. Again, good loot is the main attraction, but the community is small and friendly, and everyone has basically played with one another at some point in the game. Unlike other MMOs however, killing in the game is immensely satisfying, more so if you have other players in combat with you; likewise PVP is also a lot of fun.

Don't you realize how silly that is though?

Mostly for sight-seeing, since MMOs usually have big worlds......
Sometimes for interesting character builds, but never actually play to higher level.....

I loved playing MMO's for their community. I was in a nice guild back in the old days of Maplestory. The game itself was terrible and filled with endless grinding. But I logged on every day just to slowly level up with guildmates.

And then there was Dream of Mirrors Online. It used to be impossible to level up without a full party. So you were forced to play and talk with random people for an hour or so. But now there are pets and items that make it easier to go the solo route. :<

Now I only play MMO's if a close friend will join me since modern MMO's are more focused on soloing. And even then, MMO's require a lot of time that I often don't have like I used too.

You're right about the time-sink thing but what you may not realize is these popular MMOs actually removed a big portion of the more painful treadmills a lot of them used to have. It used to be much worse.

That's no excuse really, just saying they're actually trending in the right direction as well, they just have a huge financial incentive to drag their feet as opposed to "normal" games which have the opposite incentive.


Now, to answer your question, I don't play many, but here's the ones I played:
Lineage 2: I ended up doing a meta-game in this one, basically trading in the central town on my alt was more fun than the actual game and eventually was all I did.

WOW: My ex got me to play, played it with much of her family and found a lot of friends, stuck around longer than I liked it due to friends. Went back for 6-8 months at her urging and played again for friends.

Warhammer Online: The PVP was awesome and you could pretty much level doing PVP, i.e. the shit you already wanted to be doing (if you were playing the game at all). When you were bored you could collect entries in their book of lore (or whatever they called it) which WOW copied (wisely) with the achievement book they added at the end of TBC.

DDO: Really it's due to the writing and the fact it's creative and not much of a timesink (as MMOs go). Taking long breaks doesn't fuck you over like it does in something like WOW. And when you want to solo, you can solo, all non-raid adventures have a solo mode now. You can even bring along a hireling healbot or something to make it easier if you need.

I've played a few more ones with my kiddo, but they're very kid focused and not very good. Kids do like them because they're more tuned into the whole quick reward thing and don't see through the sham the whole thing is. It's a careful balancing act though because they'll get pissed off and quit playing... but only for a little while. And since they don't pay for it (the parents do), they don't care if they have 5-6 going at once.
Lol, no, the story in WOW is trite and pretty terrible. The multiple dead end quest lines (maybe they've fixed them in Cata? More likely deleted) were terribly annoying too. I will admit there were a few gems in there (Van Cleefe was actually pretty good) but most of it stinks. You really need to play a MMO that hires actual writers if you think WOW writing is good. I'm partial to DDO for that but I think LotRO probably has good writing as well (can't vouch for it).

It works because good loot is a firm measure of your dedication as a player, and represents power, or e-peen. In a singleplayer game, it's less of an attraction, but throw your character into an online world, and you instantly become aware of hundreds of people around you, each looking out for the same thing - gear, equipment, loot. Even in Darkwind, owning rare cars is a measure of player skill (because only the most skilful players have a hope in looting Firetrucks, Ambulances etc from the more powerful NPC gangs).

Games have historically been about progression, otherwise they'd be boring. You wouldn't want to play Robotron without an indicator of your wave and score. Item looting offers another perspective to progression, but the issue with MMOs is that they focus too much on the acquisition of the loot, and too little on any other aspect that is can be an equal auxiliary. Gameplay, as can be loosely termed in this sense, then devolves into just finding better loot over and over again. It's why the richest, smartest players in EVE have runners to do the lower-level tasks such as mining, while they themselves go AFK - literally AFK until they come back just to check their Assets.

It's just surprising that someone smart enough to know that would get caught in the web I guess.

I honestly don't think that's what they're about for me. At least, not predominantly.

Naw. Good loot in the game is something else for me. It's not so much the "hey guise look at how much I've played!" factor. That's the reason why I've stopped playing mainstream MMOs, because there's nothing more to top end gear than just a few increases in stats, and maybe to look good. Good loot in Darkwind means my top tier gunners don't die easily, or I can participate in the higher-tier races. In fact, the developer discourages e-peen enlargement through grinding by giving players the option to provide custom skins and decals. Lousy loot cars worth $2000 can suddenly turn into $200000 hotrods; it's also always nice to get new cars, and there's always that hope to get new cars on your next run, but Darkwind manages to (somewhat) avoid the grind trap by encouraging players to take on a challenge that could easily kick them back from hero to zero. You'll know that it's a completely different tide when you become aware that whatever you've spent the last 6 months trying to grind and get can be lost in 20 minutes.

-edit- Shit GOG's edit system is bugged out. Need to retype the stuff from my 2nd edit again.

-edit2- Damn the edit system. It bugged out again.

I don't. The only remotely 'MMO' type game I've ever played has been Neverwinter Nights. Can't stand the concept.

The only MMO I've played for over a month so far is EVE Online and that was because of the space battles, cool ships, and exciting PVP. At some point it started feeling like a job when I got into the corporations and alliances just so I could have access to the better money making stuff to fund my ever more expensive ships since grinding missions was boring. At first the large fleet battles seemed fun, but there was just too much lag for it to be enjoyable. Even the player intrigue got tiresome to me when it all started to feel like dick measuring contests and petty bickering. The direction of the overall game started losing its appeal to me too so I stopped playing.

Now I'm back to playing MMOs with SWTOR and at first I was enthusiastic especially the story aspect, but after reaching level 50 going through all the planets, I don't see myself playing this for more than a month at a time. I'm playing Bounty Hunter and at two pivotal parts, there was a possibility of game ruining bugs. I got lucky the first time, but the second time I had to fight my way through poorly tested and designed content. It soured the BH story for me which started out interesting then these bugs and even the ending seemed abrupt and unfinished as if the endgame content is supposed to hold me off until a proper storyline ending.

I agree about the endless trash mobs, which is what's holding me back from starting the stories for the other classes. I think it's just as much as recent Bioware titles, which I haven't done more than one playthrough either. A distinct difference I think is that it's a bit necessary in an MMO. In all areas you have at least 2 missions you can do, but only one which is your storyline. The NPCs need to respawn eventually for other players in the open parts. The only thing left for me really then is doing flashpoints, but unless you're in a guild it's just hard to get a group going to run them, and just can't be arsed to join one.

The game feels like it has performance issues too. I'll be running in an area fine at times, but all of a sudden my GPU's starting to overheat in the exact same spot. Even indoors when I'm the only player the game feels like it's struggling to run adequately, but outdoors it's running fluid.

It makes it hard to PVP because I can't get the game to respond to my controls at times. Not that I'd want to PVP because there's next to no teamwork in warzones, the equipment looks fugly, and there's hardly anyone doing open world PVP. A lot of this could be fixed if Bioware just put a little more work into putting players in the proper groups instead of randomly dumping people of all levels and skills into any team.

With regard to your feelings on loot and feeling of power of others, I just don't see it in SWTOR. The same with being shunned for enjoying yourself so you'll have to cite examples.

I don't currently play any MMOs, but back when I did I played them for the big, open world with tons of areas and dungeons to explore, along with the great communities that could arise within the different servers. I mainly speak of WoW here, since it's the MMO I played the longest by far (I think it was somewhere between 6 or 7 years, with quite a few breaks in between. I have no interest in going back now though).
The reason I quit playing MMOs is pretty much because both of those things barely exists in current MMOs. The big, open worlds have been replaced by the accessibility of flying mounts or instant teleports, and the server communities have been replaced by cross-server grouping.

Not all MMOs are as you described. I have played a few in my years, and here is the rundown on why I played them
Ultima online
Simultaneously the most casual friendly and the most unforgiving of the lot. Ultima online was quite different in that it did not wave a carrot on a stick right in front of your face. Instead you were just dropped into a world, with no idea on what to do next. The main draw of the game was the fact that it had a very strong community, and the world was very flexible. You could set up houses, and place objects on the ground. The later might seem like a minor thing, but as you had so many different objects in the world that you could use, it really opened up for a lot of room for interaction. Lets say that you wanted to arrange a market, then the players could bring their own tables, chairs, decorations (lots of decorations!), boxes, items to put on display (be it weapons, armour or just fun stuff like dartboards, (useable) chess sets and so on. There were literally thousands of different objects in the game). Ultima online was probably the closest thing to a graphical pen & paper RPG that we have seen to date. And the game was thriving, for a long time, without the need to force you to constantly upgrade your gear. The game also allowed less skilled characters to play together with characters that had masters several skills (there were no levels in this game, every skill was handled individually, so you could in theory have a fisherman/archer/mage/carpenter/chef/tracker), although a person who were poor at using daggers would of course not be able to add as much to the group as a person who had mastered them.
Also, UO had, in its earlier days, relatively free PvP, meaning that you always ran the risk of getting attacked by another player. This was annoying at points, but it also made the game feel more alive, more thrilling, and as there were nasty player killers out there (though not as many as you would think), you were encouraged to work together. A lone person is a target, a group is a threat.

EverQuest
I never spent a whole lot of time with this game. But it is basically a more hardcore "carrot on a stick" game.

World of Warcraft
The ultimate carrot on a stick game. The game is mainly about the sense of progression. It rewards you whenever you get further, everything is designed in such a way that it will make you feel good for getting that extra piece of gear, or that cute new mini pet. And yes, it was a nice feeling when you did see your hard work pay off in the form of a shiny new axe. And then there were a lot of nice people in the game as well, people who expected you to play 2-3 times/week because the guild needed to progress. They relied on you.
And that was basically why I left, I realized that the reason why I was playing the game was not so much because I enjoyed the game itself, but because I was guilt tripped into playing it.

Guild wars
Guild wars was also quite different. The main draw here for me was the competitive PvP. As everyone was on an even footing, as far as gear & skills went (you could create PvP characters that automatically had the best possible gear & max level), it was a game that was mainly about player skill and team cooperation. And it was very fun to play this game competitively. The thrill of the victory was hard to beat, in particular when you went up against one of the more famous and skilled guilds (when you went up against a guild that had a hard time having even two persons stay together it was not as fun). Guild wars is the only MMO that I have played to date where the actual game was very good.

Warhammer online
See world of warcraft, but with better PvP and less rewarding PvM.

plethora of free to play MMOs
Like WOW but a lot worse... never played any for very long.

Have tried various MMO's in the last few years.
The only one im in right now (and then sporatically) is EVEOnline. Why i play them?. I generally dont but every now and then one drags me in.Curiosity as well.See how it works. I guess the social aspect is a good drawcard for many. It was good in Anarchy Online a while back. I tried WOW. Got to a few levels then got seriously bored out of my brain (similar themed MMO's i have same issue with).
Ill stick with EveOnline and see how it goes for now :)

Does Diablo 1 count? I tried it co-op with some(one) I didn't know, I was bored the whole time, and never looked back.

At some point I was thinking of trying WoW, but I didn't like the idea of a monthly fee for playing a single game, and I was actually worried that I would really become so hooked that I'd have time to nothing else (which seemed to happen to one person I know).

But now that I read what you had to say about them, maybe I would eventually had become bored with it as well.

The only online game I've become hooked so far was TeamFortress (+Classic), sometimes not really playing anything else for weeks or maybe months. I tried it again a couple of weeks ago, I was glad to see there are still some active servers full of human players, regardless of TeamFortress 2.

It still felt quite nice to play the old maps I knew, but then there now seemed to be lots of newer maps as well which I'm not familiar at all, so I was quite lost in them. I wasn't that hooked anymore, possibly due to the new maps and the learning curve to learn them inside out.

I also tried TF2, seemed ok but I didn't get hooked yet. I think I want to concentrate on my single-player backlog anyway.

No, that's simply co-op play. Tons of games have that (and I find it awesome, not sure why you hated it so much, not that Diablo was the best implementation of it by a long stretch, but still).