Never played L.O.R.D, but I was a devout follower of Realms of Despair. I actually tried playing RoD again recently, but it just wasn't the same lol. Same small hardcore players, but the feel changes after playing some MMO's like everquest and WoW.
As for the difference in view point compared to age, I think there is some merit, though not really age. More like the Nintendo generation is clashing with the Playstation generation (note, I don't mean nintendo fans and ps fans, just those people who grew up playing games in Nintendo's dominant years, compared to those growing up playing games in the Sony years). I think its hard for some of these newer gamers to understand having fun when the graphics were so bad (and in some cases such as MUD's, no graphics at all). Hell, if I started my online gaming playing WoW, I doubt I'd take a second glance at a MUD...
edit: I guess we should include the Atari generation too, since they beat out everyone else on playing games that need more than a little imagination to figure out what those 8 bit coloured globs actually represented. Anyone here play the popcorn game on atari? Oh god, now there was a pointless game that I spent wayyyy to much time playing.
