I'm curious. For those of us who have paid subscription fees for more than a year to one or more games, I'd like to have a discussion of what kept you giving the game developers money. If you choose to respond, please include the following: 1) which game, 2) how long, and 3) 1-3 detailed elements of that game that made you stay with it. And if you've left that game, what primary element was the reason (and I accept boredom/fatigue as an reasonable answer )

So, for me:
1. City of Heros

2. 5 years and a bit, letting my account lapse in June 2012 (haven't played since January)

3. I'd like to qualify my answer with why I started playing CoX in the first place. My wife had been accepted to veterinary school, and I suddenly found myself a vet school widower. I found i needed something to keep myself busy during her constant studying, class work, etc. I came to CoX then looking for an evening social distraction and landed on Virtue due to having some minor aquaintances on that server
a) CoX had a very fast learning curve. And I came to CoX after it had a fully fleshed chat system and was able to find an rp super group within a few weeks that met my interests. The community on Virtue was mostly light to moderate rp'ers, and by and large a pretty friendly group towards n00bs. That element of social community really made CoX a game easy for me to play for years. It certainly wasn't the game mechanics, as CoX is an MMO that is by design focused on casual players.
CoX also has a decent amount of replayability across alts. Each one of the major player archtypes played just diferently enough to make alts attractive. I freely admit to being and altaholic, so this aspect of the game kept me around and interested.
c) I came to CoX just before the Cimerora expansion (Issue 11 I think). Which means there was already 4-5 years of content in the game. And NCSoft has been actually pretty good about continuing content release since I started playing. As a casual player it took me 2-3 years just to work through the base pre-Going Rogue paid expansion material for City of Heros and City of Villians respectively. I didn't even join the task force/raiding community until my 3rd year of playing.

These three elements: 1) a social, (mostly) welcoming community, 2) replayability, and 3) content addition/creation. These are the things that kept me paying NCSoft for what will have been 5 1/2 years when my prepaid time expires next month. Now, why did I leave? I've already mentioned that I accept fatigue/boredom as a legitimate reason, and that was definitely a part. I'd done everthing that I found I wanted to. But the move by NCSoft to that horrid, raid-focussed Incarnate system just killed it for me. I am very much a solo/small group PvE kinda guy, and NCSoft has by and large abandonned that element of CoX.

Brian

1- WOW
2- 30 months since 2007 until 2011.
3- It was Wow, probably the greatest game of all time. Stop playing because Im really not into all the MMO gameplay right now. Hopefully, TES: O can bring something new to atract my attention.

Way too many to list so i will stick to what i feel were the best, then i will explain why i play mmorpgs overall and what i look for and play for in any mmorpg.

UO- 1 year

EQ- 4 years

EQoa- 3 years

Daoc- 2 years

Vanguard- 2 years

Darkfall- 3 years


I play mmorpgs for many reasons but mainly because they are online first off, and also generally made on a much larger and more grand scope than single player games, the worlds are bigger and better than and the gameplay can last much longer. You have constant new adventures, experiences and interactions in a simulated world with 1000's of real players every day.


I played every mmo before/after and between those but to keep it short i listed the ones worth noting the most.

1. Star Trek Online
2. Lifetime subscription
3. The beta was immense fun, and it's Star Trek after all. Back then I didn't know there's almost no endgame content, but I didn't regret my decision yet. I don't have to worry about putting any money in the game, and get a monthly stipend of points for the "c-store". After it went F2P, some of my friends started to play again, and we are having a great time now and then.

1. Star Wars Galaxies

2. About 3 or 4 years played right up until the end and saw the closing of the game.

3. Three things kept my interest:

a) The large and familiar world that encouraged and rewarded exploration was awesome. I can't tell you how many times I set off on a quest and got sidetracked and started up several different ones or began exploring with friends on whichever planet I was on.

The events like Life Day, The Galactic Moon Festival, and Empire/Remembrance Day. Each event yielded unique items, quests, and mini games.

c) The instances like NK-Necrosis, The Avatar, The Lost Star Destroyer, and Tusken King just to name a few were so fun. They really encouraged community interaction and cooperation because you'd end up getting destroyed in the first area if you ran it solo (unless you had the best possible gear, in which case you might've made it to the second area )

The game never really got boring for me, there was always something to do like the collections and getting exploration badges. PvP was another layer to the fun, however I didn't delve into it much until the few months prior to the game's shutdown. Even though it had a lot of problems, it still stands as one of the best MMOs I've played!

Edit: Another thing to mention were the awesome player houses, I spent hours getting my character's house looking like someone actually lived there versus just lobbing all of my unused gear into it.

You are not far away from me to be honest,i also have a life time sub to LOTRO and i also subbed to AOC as well.As far as Vanguard goes ,i have played it since beta and still play it now along with EQ2 as well,station pass is a great help for SOE games.

I have also played quite a few other MMO as well.

Only form of social interaction

Stopped playing AO due to me only being able to turn without crashing

1. Anarchy Online And EVE online
2. Anarchy Online for about 2 years and EVE for around 7-8 years. (some time on and off).
3. While the launch was horrible AO was an amazing game once they got the worst bugs fixed. Fantastic community, great skill system, fun (but laggy) pvp, fun tradeskills, and an interesting world. Funcom pretty much destroyed the soul of the game with the shadowlands expansion that completely changed the gameplay for the worse in an attempt to steal some customers from everquest. The community kept me playing for a while longer but i quit a while later.

EVE online has been and still is the only mmo that really takes advantage of the mm in mmo. A huge single server, a great skill system, sandbox gameplay, amazing pvp with real loss, a fantastic market and industry system. I have tried a lot of mmos but nothing can compare to the experience in EVE. CCP have their flaws but overall they have made the most innovative and interesting mmo ever made, and i doubt any other game company has the balls to try and compete with them. Sadly all other mmos svck in comparison, and i have tried a lot.

• Everquest
  
• Paid for 1-3 accounts since launch in 1999 until it went free-to-play last year (although I didn't play much the past few years)
  
• There were a few reasons I stuck with it so long:
  
  • Regular feature and content additions (both free and paid) which kept me busy.
    
  • High difficulty and skill required to be successful, more so than other MMOs I tried (though this is a double-edged sword).
    
  • Attachment to characters and time put into them. My main character has some 200 days played although that isn't much compared to the hard-core players.
    
  • Incredible variety in types of game-play depending on what you wanted to do: solo, group, raid, crafting, questing, exploring, etc....

Reasons for eventually not playing as much as I used to include:

• Terrible communication between the developers and fans (including the officially appointed community leaders). At several points the mood was downright hostile.
  
• "Questionable" design changes by the game director. This includes things like saying "there will be no RMT" and then introducing RMT a few months later. Also related to poor communication noted previously.
  
• Poor in-game and out-of game support. At one point volunteer GMs running events were common but these eventually disappeared.
  
• Death of a thousand needles: Over the years the game slowly changed into something completely different from the original and un-enjoyable for me. To a certain point this may be inevitable in a 13 year old MMO but it should be done on purpose with a clearly communicated plan.

never more than a month

I get bored easy XD

Game: World of Warcraft

Playing time: It was split into two different periods, but ultimately 2 years 3 months cumulatively from 2008 to 2011.

Why I played:

• The ability to wander around wherever I liked, provided I could survive the enemies there of course.
  
• A pretty solid roleplaying community in the server I was on.
  
• Some great writing at first building on the already fairly decent lore of the Warcraft series, making the game feel like it was really set in a living world.

Why I left: Because, pretty much, the third and partially the second started collapsing once Cataclysm came around; everything became too main-story-focused (with only one or two lines of quests per zone just about), and said storylines vastly dropped in quality; I can look back on, say, the quests in the Western Plaguelands with fondness, the same could be said more or less of Nagrand or the Storm Peaks, but then I think of Hyjal and Deepholm and especially Uldum and I mostly just cringe.

1 - DCUO: DC Universe Online
2 - Since it's launch in January 2011
3 - It has a great opening cinematic, reasonable explanation of new heroes/villains, and episodic quest lines that make you interested in the stories behind them (i know more about DC than ever)

I paid for runescape for like a year(i know) and then WoW for like 2 years and recently I've been playing Asheron's Call which is proabably(for the most part) the best MMO I've played so far but it has like less than 10k subscibers so... It's kind of dead

My longest subscriptions have been Ultima Online: 5 years - Star Wars Galaxies: 8 years - Darkfall: 3 years (including beta) - Mortal Online: 1.5 years (since release), Planetside: 3 years. I've played about 40 other MMOs for less than 12 months, off and on, some just trials or Betas.

I prefer open-world sandbox games where we make our own stories than linear them park MMOs, hence why ESO disappoints me so much.

Lets see.. UO for about 1 year. Just cause it was new exciting.

Asheron's Call 1 . Had that subscription for about 3-4 years. To play with a friend and just enjoyed the very large open world. Later on the pvp server a bit.

World of Warcraft , I still have a subscription that I have had since launch day. Mostly to play and pvp with family. I run my friends and family guild. So even when I am bored and not in the mood to really play still kinda do so. Mainly kept with the game at the first for the.. semi decent world pvp. They have long since killed that off in the game, but I still play to play with my friends and family.

There have been other mmo's I have played.. There are probably even a few that I might have played for an entire year or more a little. Hard to say or remember. They all run together, but mostly just been for my personal fun or exploring. Nothing too dedicated.

Ultima Online: 2 years
Dark Age of Camelot (Mordred FFA PvP): 1.5 years
Eve Online: 2 years

I've played just about everything else that came out, including most recently SWTOR (a gift), but all of the theme park stuff bores me really quickly. The only reason DAoC held me as long as it did was the fun inherit in the FFA PvP Mordred, and the fact that I became involved in the administration of the largest fan site.

1. WWII Online
2. 3-4 years worth
3. Huge zone less map where I could choose from tons of authentically modeled vehicles and weapons. Campaigns lasted for months and months, so you felt your actions contributed in the long term. Coordinated attacks made it feel like the closest thing to real war that you could experience in a game. It's a flight sim, a first person shooter, tank sim, naval sim all rolled into one, with like a 2km draw distance.
4. I left a few years ago because the incredibly dedicated group of like 10 developers just couldn't make updates to the now 10 year old game engine fast enough for my liking. The team is tiny and the project huge and very niche! The spaghetti code they had to deal with made making big changes difficult and time consuming, but I have never found anything else like it, because there is nothing else out there like it.
I also left because at 33 years old, it is a little silly to me to plan your real life around when you have to log in to a videogame. The game has squads and such, like guilds or whatever, and it felt pretty ridiculous to turn down a night out with real friends because it's "squad night".

1. Final Fantasy XI
2. From NA release (2003?) to about 2006.

3a. The gameplay was deep, deep, deep. Everything felt connected in some way to the elements; from the skills you used, what monsters were weak to, crafting, when to craft, everything felt very interconnected in ways that were obvious, and ways that are mysterious even now.

3b. Leveling was very much a group activity; this was also at the expense of there not being much solo content. But I fondly remember some XP parties I had where everything "just worked". Each role in a party was vitally important to the success of the group; if your weren't on top of your game, the rest of the group suffers. When everyone was at their best, it was glorious. Doing "Skill Chains" (using special moves in certain sequences with other players to produce an effect greater than the sum of their parts) was completely awesome and really reinforced group play.

3c. It had features that, to this day, I have never seen in another MMO; it was very forward-thinking. Things like being able to switch classes when in town, which obviates most of the need to make alternate "toons". Because of this, you become VERY attached to one character, and everyone knows you by a single name, which I thought was great. You could also join more than one linkshell (guild) at the same time, another very neat feature. Lots of quests had custom cutscenes with camera effects, etc, that really drove home you were playing a Final Fantasy game. Finally, player housing. You could have a house in your main city, and craft, buy, and place furniture in it to your liking. During holiday events, they gave out special furniture that was really unique and interesting.

3d. The presentation (the graphics, music, setting, world-building) were all top-shelf. The graphics were extremely good looking for the time, and still look good to me even now. The world was very thoughtfully crafted, and my gosh, the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHGUmnrkYi8... simply gorgeous.

3e. Square-Enix really seemed to care about their players and making the game better over time, without bowing to "the squeakiest wheels" and staying true to their original vision for the game. I immensely respect them for that. However, there was (and probably still is) a lot of contention between favoring JP players more than NA players, though a lot of times this was simply perception.

4. One of the expansions, Chains of Promathia, was so difficult it was simply not fun at all. It required a huge amount of time investment, and several jobs (classes) leveled to max level to complete. There was simply no content offered to those who bought it but were only level 20-40, or even as high as 60. The expansion seemed very obviously geared toward the JP playerbase that had already reached stratospheric levels on multiple jobs at the time. I got very frustrated, and since my life was getting much busier with work and school, I decided to quit. I went back a couple of times during holidays to say Hi to old friends on occasion.

I have over a decade of combined subscriptions between my 2 Eve Online accounts. If I had to do it all over again, I'd pay them double if they asked.

I could list a thousand reasons. But to sum it up, CCP has a very laissez-faire style of game management. One of their developers coined the phrase "Harden the [censored] up.", in reply to whiny carebears. Their official response to http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28640 was "This is f*cking brilliant!". Burn Jita was a campaign promise by one of the council members, who said we'd rain hell on the game's largest trade hub if he got over 10k votes for CSM. (for reference, the council is a board of players, democratically voted in by the player base, to be a liaison between the developers and the players)

Paid MMO's = Empty pockets/ wasted money


MMORPG's are a continuous battle to get the best armour. As soon as you get it all, they release a new update with new armour. It is a constant contest to be #1 that eventually gets very tiring. It can be fun with a cool guild that groups together regualarly but overall it just gets tiring.

Just my own personal opinion.

1-Star War Galaxies

2- From Release Day June 26, 2003 to November 15, 2005 (the release of the NGE) If you include the Pre-CU Emulator project, to present.

3- A) Star wars Galaxies, was 10 worlds to explore. 10 real living worlds where you could build a home, create a business, or hunt down rebel vermin and slaughter them.

Because of the Freedom. One day I could be a Creature Handler Rifleman, next day I could be a Weaponsmith/Armorer, and then the following a Jedi hunting Bounty Hunter.

C) Because it was Star Wars. I was an imperial throughout my time there and fought for the Emperor, killing Rebel Scum. So basically, because the game more or less created a Star Wars feel (though the legions of glowbat boys, J3D-3Y3, did mess up the immersion a bit latter on).

I feel sad you only played theme park MMORPGs, Sandbox MMORPGs (which are now pretty much extint/outdated) used to create actual virtual worlds...

Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning

Lineage II - this one was a long time ago, but i just stoped playing them.