That’s a silly question, but I have my personal answer. You often see answers like “Because MMORPG are addictive, there’s social interaction, a sense of community, etc”.
My answer is: because there are no good CPRG around!!! 😎 really, I think this is the reason. I played many MMORPG, including EQ, EQ2, Guild Wars, WoW, Horizons, Daoc, and so on.
Every time, after some time, got pissed off. why? either was too repetitive and with lack of depth (Daoc, Horizons, Guild Wars) or was insalely addictive, but also very demanding (EQ-EQ2, WoW). By demanding I mean that once you reached higher levels with your characters you had to do raids to acquire new powerful items. And so on and so on.
A continue race to get the highest equipment – almost all MMORPG can be synthetized this way. With a CRPG, can be different.
First of all there’s the story! how many of you actually read the quests text of MMORPG? I bet nobody! while with a good CRPG you read it to find out what you have to do, to see what’s happening in the story. There’s more immersivity, because you don’t turn the angle and you see a characters named “PhatLewt666” or such 😀
Seriously if you compare any MMORPG with a good CRPG like Vampire Bloodlines, Fallout series, etc, there’s no doubt what is better. But unfortunately it seems that every publisher is going to make only MMORPG to suck all the money from people (the monthly fee).
Well I guess is clear – I have to make a CRPG! won’t be soon though 🙂