To this point, I've steered clear of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), even though I like gaming, I like the idea of playing collaboratively and these kinds of games (notably World of Warcraft) are immensely popular.
So why? Largely I think because they are almost all heavily centred in the Fantasy genre and this generally does very little for me. I enjoyed the whole golden era of fantasy/warrior movies in the early to mid 80s (Conan, BeastMaster, etc) but it just doesn't do much for me now.
(There is also the dork factor, which I have referred to previously in my Lightning Bolt post)
Perhaps this is because when I play games, I enjoy doing things that I'm not normally able to do - but which it is conceivable that I might. This is why GTA IV appeals so much I guess - it's a very contemporary city and makes use of a lot of the things about modern life that I think are kind of cool - modern music, cars, the internez and blowing things up. You might have some primitive explosives in WoW but I just don't really care.
I don't think it's an imagination thing either - I'm currently playing Psychonauts (more on this later) which is one of the more out-there games I've every played conceptually (and one of the most awesome).
I've heard some good things about City of Heroes, which is a superhero themed MMORPG, but not enough to excite me and this seems to be about the limit of what's currently going.
There have also been murmurings of a modern day spy themed MMORPG for a while, which will be console based but I'm a little unsure now, watching this video which (while rather cool) does seem more like a shmup (shoot-em-up) than anything. (I do like the console angle as my PC only has a wireless connection to the network and I'm sure this is slower than direct cabling)
