The appeal of pokemon to me was the premise of the show. Be the best pokemon trainer, whatever that means. Actually, to me it means to beat my friends and their emotionally invested pokemon with my emotionally invested pokemon. That being said, it was always a dream to connect the regions together and be the best in all. Imagine if they had USA regions.
Maybe you can have different servers and each one being a specific region ultimately being to travel throughout the whole pokemon world when you get more badges. Then there's real pokemon tournaments. Same rule as the show. You're late or don't show for it, the next round of players will battle.
Really, the appeal to a pokemon console game is to invigorate the real world feeling. I'm sure most of us who played it as children had gotten caught up with the dream of being a real pokemon trainer.
