Is there a key to getting more into MMOs I'm missing? Once or twice a year I'll pick one up for a week or two and blow most of my free time on it... then get bored and move on to the next thing.
The benefit of a clan/guild/free company can’t be understated. They will provide entertainment, support, and access to a set of content that’s otherwise very hard to do.
I like trusts, but they’re definitely a band-aid for a very specific issue (DPS queue lengths).
1. time investment
2. social interactions with others
3. repetitive gameplay loops
Interestingly, the games I do sink hundreds of hours into all have the same sort of principles, but in different forms:
1. I don't mind sinking hundreds of hours into something like Rocket League or a fighting game or a multiplayer shooter, but I also don't feel like I need to in order to get the most out of the game. I can go weeks or months without playing Rocket League and pick up right where I left off. If I stop playing something with a "progression" component, then when I come back, all my buddies are now leveled beyond me, or a new expansion is out, or I somehow feel like I've missed out on a bunch of content. MMOs start to feel like another job almost.
2. I mostly play games to play with my friends online. But I'm not necessarily interested in making new friends I don't know in real life online. So while I love multiplayer games that I can play with my friends, or with/against randoms I don't need to maintain a relationship with, the kind of social interaction in MMOs doesn't really appeal to me.
3. Again, a game of Rocket League or SSB is going to be essentially the same as every other, so they are highly repetitive too. But at the same time, the fun in a game of Rocket League is in the thing you are doing over and over again. In an MMO, the repetition of killing the same monster 100 times to level up isn't generally that fun. Rather the reward is the actually leveling up and the loot, (or the social aspects). And even the social aspects take a lot of work for the payoff (I'm thinking about the amazing narratives that come out of EVE, or tightly knit clans in WoW). But that means I'm essentially spending a ton of time doing something I don't find that fun just for the reward at the end. If I'm going to be doing that I figure I might as well be working, or working out at the gym, or something like that.
You may be similar to me in finding the games appealing on the surface, but the fundamental aspects of the genre unappealing in reality.