I've been playing RPGs for a lot of years, but I've stayed far far away from the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online RPG) genre, sticking with console RPGs and single-player games like Morrowind. Why?
* A single-player game is as good as the designers can make it. A multi-player game (whether co-op, competitive or both) is as good as the other players allow it to be.
This is a basic principle of multiplayer gaming, and will never change. Some games are harder to ruin than others, but it often doesn't take much for some enterprising soul to find a way to ruin everyone else's day.
Take Diablo, for instance. Diablo was the toast of the town for about three-point-eight seconds, right up until the point where people figured out how to duplicate items, create townkill hacks, create instant-kill hacks and otherwise destroy much of the possibility for reasonable gameplay.
A more recent example is <a href="http://www.kingdomofloathing.com">Kingdom of Loathing</a>, an otherwise-excellent web-text-based online RPG. Second verse, same as the first: rampant item duplication and bug exploits led to incredibly huge piles of meat (money) entering the game, completely hosing the game's economy. A variety of fixes have been implemented, but the game's never really recovered IMHO.
Online RPGs can be even nastier in these respects. In many of them, death can be catastrophic: corpses can be looted, experience penalties kick in, or you may end up spending considerable time returning to your corpse to reanimate it. There's also no thrill quite like buying an expensive item from someone else only to find later on that it's an illegal duplicate or similar fraud, or teaming up with 99 others for six hours to beat on the Really Nasty Megaboss only to have three log out and four others screw around at a critical moment and cause the whole quest to fail.
* Massive time commitments. I want a game, not a lifestyle.
I'm not much into games where "the grind" is paramount, where one spends umpteen hours fighting the same monsters over and over and over and over again in order to build up experience and collect items and materials necessary to keep up with the Joneses. If you have to be online sixteen hours a day to be competitive, I'm out. If you have to play sessions that are eight hours at a time to make meaningful progress, I'm also out. I would like to maintain a _slight_ semblance of an outside life and not be surrounded by urine-filled soda bottles, empty pizza boxes and a pungent aroma. They don't call it "Evercrack" for nothing.
* Competitive balance is difficult to maintain.
In games that permit player vs. player combat, there are always sniping wars between "carebears" (players who just want to be free to wander around and do whatever they wish, unmolested by human enemies) and hardcore PvPers (who recoil from the concept of anyone being immune to attack). Compromise between the two can be difficult to reach.
On a subtler level, players in online RPGs are often competing directly for limited resources, some of which are fairly fundamental to gameplay. Monsters that only spawn occasionally, for instance, can lead to large numbers of people standing around their "homes" ready to pounce.
Then there's the issue of what happens to players that AREN'T slaves to the grind. In games with a high maximum level/power threshold, occasional players will fall far behind diehards, to the point where people are seen selling high-level accounts on eBay and elsewhere.
* And did I mention the monthly fee?
I like to pay for my games all at once, thanks. If a game has a free install and a monthly fee after that, I might consider it, but it'd have to be REALLY addictive; if you're paying full price for the install disc AND fifteen bucks a month after that, it'd better have an arm that reaches through the monitor and gives you a handjob after each gaming session for it to be worth it.
All of the above is why I am quite impressed with <a href="http://www.guildwars.com">Guild Wars</a> so far. It was developed by a group that includes several former Blizzard employees, and it shows, as the game sidesteps most of the above problems of MMORPGs.
* No monthly fee.
* Short game sessions are quite possible and still productive, at least in the early to midgame. I haven't gotten far enough in to judge the late-game missions and such yet.
* Death is temporary and free of long-term consequences. Within a mission, you regenerate with a TEMPORARY stat penalty, which goes away over time or when you abandon the mission. Elsewhere, you simply teleport to the nearest shrine upon, otherwise unchanged and with all your gear.
* While there is foot travel when exploring, travel between known strongholds is instantaneous.
* Quests are spawned for individual parties (whether solo, with NPC henchmen or up to 4-8 PCs teamed up). When you leave town, it spawns an instance of the area with its own monsters, items and bosses; thus, other players aren't around to interfere with you or compete with you for targets and items.
* PvP combat is on strictly opt-in terms, but there are several different forms, ranging from 4x4 to 8x8x8 team sessions with varying rules.
* The low level cap (20) lets players concentrate on acquiring skills, rather than whomping on endless legions of critters over and over to build levels.
* The skill system is clever. You pick a primary and secondary class from the six available, and each has its own set of 100+ skills that are obtainable. Much of the midgame involves going out and finding/buying/earning new skills to supplement or replace those you already have. You can only have eight skills readied at a time, forcing you to tailor your skills and attributes towards your desired play style, though you can always go back and redistribute them in town if you make a mistake. Thus, success becomes a matter of developing and using clever ability/skill sets on both an individual and party level, rather than He Who's Played The Most Hours Wins.
* Did I mention that there's no monthly fee?
Four stars so far. Joe Bob says check it out.