IIRC the only MMORPG I really dedicated myself to was Priston Tale, first in the beta and then when it became F2P with an official Brazilian version, but it didn't last long too (I have 55 hours clocked in xfire for the second run), I lagged behind some friends and then the game just got stale. I spent some time with other free/beta MMO's too, such as Ragnarok, Mu Online, Fly For Fun, but that was it, and I don't plan getting into one again.

I have a lot of friends in Xfire who spend the whole day playing Perfect World or Atlantica Online (if not playing, at least with a shop up)

FFXI is one of the worst games I have ever played in my entire life, but twesterm is right about the way they integrated the story into the game.  It was done extremely effectively, unfortunately it got lost in the shuffle of that game being unplayable trash.

I'm not talking about the intro, I completely agree that is awful, but the nation mission and expansion missions are all really well done.

I've considered switching nations a few times just to see the cut scenes for the other ones (and I hate listening to Taru's).

I LOVE them!

Nah, they just don't seem to captivate me as normal RPG's do. Granted that they are an Evolution to what the Diablo and Ultima series brought to RPG's, but I just can't grasp the concept of a bunch of people banding together in a RPG. I like my RPG's in single player fashion, the only kind of MMORPG i've ever played was Diablo 2 on battle.net and that was because I was too hung up on D2, but after a while it got pretty boring.

Also, on D2, there came a time were every high leveled player became an instant jerk and PVP'ed newcomers, just for the sake of it. I took care of showing a few of them the error of their ways, but that plague just kept spreading until it almost became unbearable to play. To those of you post 1.08 Buriza CS Amazon hunters and Skeleton Summomancer's who frequently lagged the servers, I just say damn you, damn you all to hell! *Pun included* :P

Blame Amazon, they're the ones who sell it and had it on their page. All stereotypes are based on reality, they're like social carricatures if you will. And besides, with the amount of people actually getting clinically hooked on MMO's and needing treatment while going thorugh tough periods of abstinence there seems to be evidence to support that people who play MMO's are more likely to spend more time on it and as such just might have a more reduced social life. Thing with MMO's for many is that its a perfect arena to actually maintain your social life as well, through guilds and other groups. (One can argue that you can get hooked on other types of games as well but MMO's suck you in like nothing else on the market, as is its intention).

PS: If we were to never judge anyone on their gaming habits and choices, this very thread and most of the others (indeed, the very site itself) would not exist, at least not in its current form. I'm sorry if you feel personally offended by my post or something but I hardly think my short tidbit from browsing Amazon will drastically change our standings with the public, to be honest.

You can be part of a history in an MMO, if you actually do something worthy of being there.  For example the huge corp battles/plans/betrayals in Eve are part of its history. 

If you have any game that actually has a decent PvP system (RvR/GvG most preferrably) the current dominant forcewill be the history so to speak in the future ^^ That's what I quite like about decent MMOs.

Edit: IMO the best MMO's are those that give a little space for player actions to give other players something to talk about.

I find most entertaining until the repetition sets in.

So, that's like 2-3 hours then?