I personally enjoy the social aspect of a good MMO. It's nice to know that the other people in the world are real, and thus not binded to some predictable behavior by usually bad AI. Also, the industry thrives on MMOs because they make much more money off of them. Not to mention the fact that such a large and intertwined userbase allows the players to develop their own game within the game. Those are things I find appealing about MMOs.

MMOs are addictive, a waste of time and money, and many are pointless but I just can't get off of playing WoW after hours and hours and countless deaths. Thats what makes them what they are today. Plain old fun.

Huge obsession with MMOs in general is based on the fundament of any popular MMO - mass appeal. These aren't games that are made to satisfy a specific taste or a target community of hardcore genre fans. They are designed to appeal to everyone, be played by everyone, and ultimately they are designed to be addictive.

It's only natural that, as a consequence, "everyone" likes them, talks about them, and ultimately wants to make more of them.

MMO concept in itself obviously has amazing potential. Lots of players. Online. At the same time. In the same place. Who wouldn't like that?

On the other hand, I can't let this post slip without saying that the way MMO concept has been exploited so far is shamelessly horrible in terms of the quality of actual gameplay. Popular MMOs today owe their success more to the actual concept of an MMO game and lack of competition that would take it a level higher, than they do to the actual quality of the games they got.

However, with The Agency and (to an extent) Conan, things seem to be looking a bit better for the future of this genre.

Altough it has been said already I'm still gonna point it out to you:

MMO's have been around for a decade now. You might as well start about platformers, boy there are a lot of them.

Many people prefer player-to-player interaction and that the game-world around them feels real. What is a better way to do that than to put the entire player-base on a single server? When I go to a mall I'm not seeing just the 16 people from my neighbourhood that happened to be there or knew the password.

It's pure logic.

I've been playing MMO's for 11 years. They're the best form of gaming for me. The reason you get so many people posting MMO ideas is because they're not satisfied with the current choices. Those choices consist of WoW, Eve, maybe Age of Conan - the other games are either dead or filled with Koreans (which is fine if you're able to interact with them - for me, they're just super awesome AI).

For me, there's no game out there right now. My ideal game is the freedom and character development of Ultima Online (pre-Ren or pre-Pub16) mixed with the politics and warfare of Shadowbane. There's just nothing out there like that for me.

For me, the real joy in MMO's comes from PvP that's fueled by social, territorial, and political differences that has real impact on the game world. This kind of game has only even been attempted once in MMO form (Shadowbane), which is ridiculous. Sure, I can PvP in WoW, but it's absolutely meaningless... Hell, I can kill Illidan 50000 times solo and it still doesn't mean crap because the game is static.

People want to spread their MMO ideas because there just isn't one that satisfies their individual gaming needs.

So far I feel that this thread has gone off of the writing for games topic a bit but here is my two cents.

MMORPGs are popular for human interaction, competition, and features you won't see in many other games.

Many people love the idea that they are a hero and can train and become stronger than other people, to some people it's there way of getting some sort of power in the social world.

For me however there are two aspects of MMORPGs that are the only two reasons why I am attracted to them. The first reason is customization. When you start you get to make a character with your own personal touch to it and you can choose your character class and equipment. In many offline games this isn't a feature that is present and can make the game seem a too linear and is outweighed by the freedoms of MMORPG customization.

The second reason for me is the fact that I can cooperate with other characters to complete specific goals. Co-op play I think is a very popular feature of any game which may explain a lot of the success for the Halo series when you aren't taking the X Box Live factor into account. I love playing offline games with great customization and co-op. That's what makes games like Phantasy Star Online so fun even if you decide to play it offline.

I believe some offline RPGs would be more popular if they took customization and co-op play and blended it with a good story-line. Perhaps if someone takes this idea up for a new game to be developed it might become a new popular fad.