I've heard the horror stories of people being addicted to MMORPGs where they wouldn't ever leave their computer and I've seen the the stereotype of the fat guy in a chair with a bag of cheetos and RC cola and I've lived up to just about all of that.
Ever since I dove into the Massively Multiplayer Online RPG Lord of the Rings Online I find it hard to stop playing. I've played other MMO's but just for small free trials for two weeks or so but never got too involved with them until I discovered an MMO within the Lord of the Rings universe which was very interesting and exciting for me.

Within the first two weeks of running around with my hobbit character I was instantly hooked. I soon realized some other games in my collection were getting neglected since I was so occupied with leveling up my character and questing around with friends. MMOs are so revolutionary how they are so interactive and open-ended, you can complete quests or just go exploring the world how/when you want to. The best way to describe this experience is to pretend you are playing an RPG like Final Fantasy but instead of your party members being controlled by you they are controlled by real people while you control your own character and you must all work and communicate together to take down enemies you come across or complete a simple "talk to this guy in the next town" quest. You can choose to be a solo adventurer if you want but it's always more enjoyable socializing and playing along with friends you know and help each other get through the game.

What's even more intriguing is how different each player can be so there is a large sense of uniqueness even amongst the other thousands of players. Within the specific classes your character can be (Archer, Thief, Guardian, Wizard, etc) there are also specifics within the class you can choose to follow, for instance, a fire damage based wizard or an ice damage based wizard.
The sense of freedom, the variety of gameplay styles, social interaction and being able to be unique are just some features that make MMOs their own genre of video game.

As I played more and more I began to fully understand why people become so engrossed in these MMORPGs; the same reason I was: to be the best. After slaying countless Orcs and Goblins and exploring the Misty Mountains I was ready to take on bigger foes, foes that would require more than just a couple of my friends, foes that are only encountered in raids and instances that can require up to 24 people at once working together to take down a boss. The most memorable being the Balrog which if you remember from the movie it wasn't like the game. A simple, "you shall not pass" and a broken bridge didn't stop this Balrog. It was intense, it was a highly coordinated fight and luckily we could fight him again and again in later days to reap the benefits of the loot he dropped.

MMOs are always releasing more and more content for the users and are always expanding the world. Since my time playing Lord of the Rings 5 new regions were added which equalled more quests to be had and more enemies of Middle Earth to be slain.
Though I love to laugh at depictions of these "MMO addicts" for being at their computer and chowing on cheetos all day and all night I can definitely connect with them because I've been there, still doing it and still enjoying it everyday.