Exactly, and that's precisely why I never bought World of Warcraft when it came out. I was a workaholic and had long stretches of weeks or months where I didn't have time to game whether I wanted to or not. I didn't know if I'd be able to play at any point in a given month let alone when I might be able to, so I might buy the game, play it that day, and not play it again for 3 months at which point I have to pay another $15-20 or whatever, and maybe only play it for a few hours that month too. Of course I might randomly get a solid weekend or two out of it but I had no way to know in advance either way so the value proposition just wasn't there for me compared to everything else I could be doing such as playing one of the dozens of games I already owned and hadn't completed, or buying a new game that I pay once and play as long as I want. If the model was a small price per hour, such as $0.10/hr or so then it might have been worth considering. You log in and while you're on the clock you're paying 10c an hour. Still more expensive than many games but having that as an option might have convinced me to try it.

Now I've got all the time in the world though but I don't want to feel like I *have* to play a game today or tomorrow or next week n times in order to get my value out of what I spent on it this month. So I'll just never ever buy a game that has a monthly subscription price really, it just doesn't work for me. I'm not opposed to them creating such games though especially if it is highly profitable for them - profit means people like it a lot and find it to give them value worthy of the money they spend or they wouldn't spend the money afterall. I'd just be one of the ones that don't spend the money, not finding the value in it for the price I'd be paying. :)

Plus nowadays they're competing with dozens of F2P games of which there are a number of them which are allegedly quite worthwhile to play through without spending a cent and enjoy them all the way through without limitations, or at least to a certain point with a good experience. I'd rather play a game like Path of Exile for example, but I'd even pay $3-5 for that game if it wasn't straight up F2P as it seems worth it in the limited time I did try it out. I wont spend money on buying my character a different colour shoes or a feather to put in their ear or a kangaroo leather sheath for my sword or other superfluous aesthetic items that are ridiculously priced though either. :)

I really don't get these circular loot grinding games, all this says to me is "come play our game, we know it's boring so we are going to let you spend real money so you can skip through our boring game".

I guess the group play must make up for alot...

Its the whole package, level design, story, quests, pvp, pet battles, raids, challenges, exploration, whatever... Loot is irrelevant unless youre doing high-end PVP or HC raiding.

It depends on the game and the player. Some of them can be a lot of fun such as Diablo/Diablo II, Torchlight series, etc. for example. I've had countless hours of enjoyment from all of those games, but eventually even with all of the tonnes of new items, combinations of things and customization present the battles start to feel repetitive eventually without new maps/content showing up and eventually I start to lose enthusiasm. In some cases rolling a new character class brings new life to the game and in other cases you've just worn it out and want to move on to something else.

Some games just aren't terribly fun to begin with, might not have a good story or narrative or immersiveness though and so the looting/endless upgrade cycle becomes very repetitive quickly and it's easier to lose interest.

Group play definitely can add to a given game in a significant way, but the game still needs to have some strong core elements to hold interest for long.

One thing that kills a game for me, is if you progress so far but are expected to spend more real world cash in-game micro-transactions to buy a non-lame weapon, ship, or other items or suffer through it painfully otherwise - whether it is a paid for game or free-to-play. I don't mind playing a game like that if the game is fun and balanced without additional purchases, but if the additional purchases are required to keep enjoying the game, or cause massive imbalances between the haves and have-nots in a game which are intended to coerce other players into forking over money to keep enjoying playing, then I just bow out and say "no thanks". Games that offer various aesthetics for sale that don't serve any other purpose are totally fine for people who like that sort of thing but do not affect game balance or divide people into in-game upper/lower class citizens for example. But "You gotta buy the $15 Sword of 1000 Truths to finish this campaign or struggle immensely on The Supreme Witch of Death boss" doesn't fly with me.

Loot and churn can be fun if it is done right, but there's a lot of "done wrong" out there for sure.