Dungeon Master (the original, not Skullkeep) was one of my favorite RPGs. One of the things I loved about it was the "spookiness" of the whole environment. You walked around the first level and encountered these mirrors that had reflections of people whom you could bring to life before entering the dungeon. There was no way out but through, and besides your party there were no allies to be found; no inns to rest at (you slept on the floor), no temples to go for healing, and no shopkeepers to trade with. Scattered throughout the maze riddles and taunts being etched in the wall, with puzzles and traps to match. The first person view was quite well done for its time (1987), as well as the point and click interface to interact with the world. There were four classes (Fighter, Ninja, Wizard, and Priest) but all party members can and usually did advance in all four classes. Spellcasing was rather neat - you had to punch in symbols with the mouse and the spell would only be cast if the symbol was right. Some people hated this but I thought it was rather neat as you could experiment around with different symbols to see if you find a new spell. There was food and water as well, and at lower levels of the dungeon this became scarce. Again some people think that eating and drinking are not very heroic but in this one case I think it added quite a bit to the immsrsion factor. Combat was nothing to write home about - you would have to select the weapons had up to three different attack modes depending on your skill level, and manually swing every time - but given the tempo of the game it wasn't too bad. Even with its dated graphics, I have never seen any RPG with quite the scare and spook factor done as well Dungeon Master. And the puzzles were classic.

I also enjoyed Baldur's Gate (1 & 2). The script and voice acting (especially on the second was) were unrivalled. I feel the second one improved quite a bit over the first - the subquests were more detailed and made more sense. You almost always had a reason for going someplace on the map - it wasn't just "lets go exploring in the woods and see what we can kill/loot". Obviously the art work was better, but the outdoor maps were also laid out more logically; there were a major features in every map and a few "chokepoints" that made it seem like the map was not just some random place in the woods.

I liked Diablo 2 for a bit but never really got into the whole online thing or bothered beating the game on Hell and Nightmare. It got to be too much of a time killer and clickfest.

Well I definitely fall in the lower left quadrant (interaction with world), so alot of my motivation is in Exploring.

So I like:
-Open Ended Sandbox Explorable Worlds (ie Ultima Series).

-Game systems and Rules that are not fully explained (ie Diablo II Horadric cube).

-Detailed NPC character design and Interaction (ie Ultima Series, several NWN mods).

-Customization. Like D&D style cross and multi class systems. Crafting Systems. etc..

Things like that.

And personally I like Party control (turn based or Real Time). I do like playing single characters, but I also like party play.

But I think Most current CRPGs have really shunned the single player party play. I like Systems like BG 1 & 2, Old School D&D CRPGS like Eye of the beholder, and of course the Ultima Series (especially 6- 7.II).