The Daily Grind: Why do you play?

I play them to combat the crushing despair of loneliness.

Exploration & story, good interesting involving story and a very pretty world to wrap it around. That said, FF14 can't get here soon enough.

I play MMO's to meet chicks. More specifically, chicks who cut themselves.

Everything is pain... Now leave me alone so I can suffer through this cigarette & coffee.

I rarely give a damn about the story. I enjoy fighting other players and working with groups of players to achieve objectives through PvP. To me.. Fighting against and with other players is fascinating. I grew up playing games like Wolfenstien, Doom, and Wing Commander and while I enjoyed all of those games I always felt like there was something missing and no matter what the difficulty level was set to the AI was always so predictable. Once you played the game for an hour or two you already knew how the AI would react to almost any situation and countering them was done with near mind numbing ease. Granted, video game AIs have improved significantly since then and there are times when you can guess what other players are going to do it before they do it in MMO PvP, but unlike with the AI it’s still simply a guess. I suppose I just like the ‘randomness’ that large scale PvP brings to the table. It’s uncertain, mostly unscripted, and it’s a hellva lot of fun to listen to people screaming on TS or Vent as their ship in EvE goes down in flames, their character in Darkfall is slaughtered, or their wanna be twink in WoW is pwned and their epeen is removed in one clean swipe. I’ve had my fair share of PvP catastrophes, but if I won all of the time I would get bored.

I want to explore a massive and ever-changing world with my friends, all while playing with a character that is uniquely my own.

Exploration and trying to kill stuff that normally need a bigger group with a few of my friends is what made MMOs fun for me... too bad most of my friends now only cares about phat lootz..
Lately I have been more focused on finding a MMO with a fun combat system that makes you feel heroic and is challenging at the same time.. no luck finding one yet... pinning all my last hopes on SWTOR.. let's hope it is as good as the developers says it is.....

I play mmos for the ability to be part of guild (hopefully with no drama). Do try and do the stupidest stuff in game, to joke around and have fun being slightly suicidal while taking down the biggest baddest boss in the game. And then to be able to pvp and pocket heal the hell outta ppl to win. I love a game where healing is a challenge, but still manageable while playing the actual pve/pvp mini-game thing.

WoW was fun but I didn't continue into WotLK. RoM was a grind at the end with no pvp or very little I should say, also the healing was so fricken easy and broken to me. Most healers spammed one spell. Currently messing around in Guild Wars until GW2 comes out. Between GW2 and SWTOR I hope to get something fun to do.

Agreed. MMOs usually aren't even good games when you compare them to others on the market, but I play because of the community. Without that I wouldn't even bother. This is the #1 reason I hate playing newer MMOs; everybody wants to solo everything (and the game lets them). BOOOORING.

Escapism.

Not that my life sucks or anything; it's great. I am truly blessed.

But you know, epic adventures with swords and armour, monsters, castle sieges and all that jazz. Gotta love it.

Agreed.
The one thing that acutally make MMORPG's better is the social part, and the new MMO's try to be "freed" from it, which is, pretty stupid thing.

Don't like movies, TV tends to bore me and I get sick of reading all the time. I play MMORPGs as a break from real life that is interactive. Its a good way of getting rid of any angst, tension or frustration, its behind my laid-back attitude in real life.

Escapism.

Same reason as an earlier poster. I love my life, my job and my chic. But I like the idea of plugging in and living a movie for an hour or two. I like things in MMO's such as good stories, RP, PVP and a little bit of raiding here and there.