sometimes ridicule is simply ignorance and stupidity, i think. fear, in some cases, never needs to come into the equation.

i've never played mmorpg's for two simple reasons:

1) no interest in becoming another victim of the latest "evercrack"

2) no money to spend on monthly fees

3) not enough time or interest

ok - well that was three. so a fourth reason would be "i'm not smart enough to count"

a lot of this is the same reasons i don't get back into d&d... it's just hard to fit that into a standard 37 y.o.'s lifestyle...

i did play extensively in the 90's on a mud (or mush?) - rivamush - which was based on eddings belgariad. that was all-text, and much more like d&d meets zork. i had lots of fun and fell in love with a girl named marti from gainesville who played a drasnian intelligence agent by the name of kalandra. after completing my time with this game, i did feel a bit silly about it all - however, i still miss it sometimes.

my other experience was with guild wars - it was free, so i thought i'd give it a go. in the end, it was simply not compelling, and i quit quickly.

the only other interest i've had was for ultima online - which i never played, but sounded like the most compelling/realistic online community of all of them. the rank lawlessness of the game as it was structured by the developers led to entire clans of players who banded together to either take advantage of other players - or to protect other players - an ACTUAL economy built of ACTUAL rouges and heroes, and not just people playing characters with those titles. that still compels me! but, my two (aka four) reasons still stand - even though i know that there are free UO servers now.

*deep breath* that's all