Mumorpuger

I received an email from Ncsoft a couple days ago, telling me that they're going to reactivate my City of Heroes account until this coming Sunday, I'm sure in an attempt to get me to sign up for a monthly fee.
It occurred to me that I haven't ever paid for this game. I got a free one-month trial initially, which I let expire. After that there have been several of these few-day reactivations that I've done. I generally download it each time, play for the time they give me for free, and quit when they want me to sign up.
The game itself is standard MMORPG (Mumorpuger, thanks Yahtzee) fare, meaning the really fun stuff only starts happening when you team up with others. Since I tend to play my games in a solitary fashion, (my brief time with EVE Online being the one exception), I tend to get bored after a while of grinding out the single-player missions. These usually involve go-here, kill-that, and haven't really provided me with incentive to pay $12 or so each month to continue after my free time expires.
Every once in a while, I feel the urge to reinstall Guild Wars, or even EVE, but then I remember what it was like to play them. I found it enjoyable at the time, even paying for EVE for several months, but eventually the magic wears off. As with just about any of these games, you will eventually need to work with other people to have a good time, there's only so far you can solo. Trying to coordinate online gaming with other people requires a time investment that I'm not willing to make, and that's coming from a hard-core gamer.
I have never tried World of Warcraft, for fear of it's heroin-like effects drawing me into the realm of poop-socks. I've logged innumerable hours in single-player rpg's, so I know that an MMO game that has lots of solo-content, (as Blizzard's epic success supposedly does), would be dangerous to try, even on a free trial.
Guild Wars I would consider going back to only because there is no monthly fee, so I'm a reinstall away from my old characters and items. Too bad the game really is more focused on PvP (Player vs Player) combat than the RPG experience, a fact that keeps turning me off.
EVE Online tempts me back with its sci-fi trappings and meta experience, although if I did go back in, I would probably join Goonfleet, (a player run corporation founded by members of the Something Awful forums, commonly referred to as Goons). EVE's high level of player ownership can be enticing, and since corporations can form alliances, build space stations, ships, and anything else in the game, the economy is almost entirely player-driven. This opens the door for all manner of interesting gameplay, such as the following example from wikipedia:

"Piracy (in the ship-to-ship sense) is part of the game, as is protection racketeering, theft, and ransom. One infamous example is a corporate infiltration and heist where one corporation infiltrated a target corporation over the course of nearly a year. They then performed a virtual assassination on the target's CEO and proceeded to steal billions of ISK (EVE's fictional currency) worth of corporate property to which they had gained access. Events of this nature are debated both inside the game world and in the media.
Such dangers are an inherent part of Eve Online's virtual economy and thus are purposely not dealt with by the developers. Players are expected to make financial decisions based (among other factors) on the possibility of other players' financial malpractice, much as in real-life economics."

So it seems like there's fun to be had, if you're willing to put in the time and money. I don't think I'll be re-subscribing anytime soon, because even as interesting as that sounds, I've got a bit too much going on as it is.