[quote name='bfg9k']Seeing that most games are played competatively rather than cooperatively, I am not all that interested in online gaming. Also, I don't have a huge amount of time, and since I consider myself to be only an average skilled gamer, I can't even begin to compete on xbox live. [/quote]
Exactly my thoughts [except for the xbox live thing, I don't have an xbox.] The vast majority of online games are either sports [not into] or FPSes [not really into, and suck at]. And while I love video games, I'm not that great at a lot of them, and I don't have the 14 hours a day to practice that a lot of the kids online do. I have played Ratchet and Clank online, and that was pretty fun, but at least once a session I'd join a newbie-game, and some total non-newbie would join in and apparently want to feel like a big boy by massacring all us newbies.
I did play EQ a couple years back, but i didn't do much of the socializing which is a big component of it. I'm interested in City of hEroes and have heard a lot of good things about WoW, but:
* my computer won't run either of those;
* I don't want to pay another 8-15/mo. for the privilege of playing one game.
I used to play Diablo a lot online; I was in GA and my wife was in NC, and we dialed in on our unlimited-access ISP and played all night. Honest game, cheaper than long distance, no pk or hackers.
Plus the games I like, are generally more single-player type games [RPGs], or if I play multi, I'd rather play local.
Online, to me, is definitely a neat concept and will be bigger in the future--right now, the types of games are too limited, and a lot of people see the hardware or monthly fee costs as a hurdle.
But I agree with someone else, someone who sells an online game, depending on how much of the game is online, should guarantee at least some specific time frame the game will exist.