I was motivated to post this as I started installing Neocron after installing my new solid state drive, making it the 8th consecutive computer (well same computer new drive same thing) I've put Neocron on.
I find that I keep coming back to Neocron time after time, it was the first MMO I ever played, I didn't even have a credit card at the time I played the single-player teaser demo for a month before I got one.
I think it's for a variety of reasons, first of all it's UNIQUE. There's nothing like this, anywhere, I tried Tabula Rasa hoping it might be the same (remember that dog of a game?), I've played maybe a dozen MMOs from WoW to EVE to Star Wars and I keep coming back to Neocron.
It's the one MMO that gives me a real sense of a huge expansive world, not just a fun time playset to go run around in. It's a combination of art, the wastelands, the vehicles, the design, the open-ended leveling system, and a certain special something that make it feel so expansive even compared to modern MMOs or single-player games. I think a big part of the "not feeling like a game" is that the wastes are huge, there's buildings that don't have a "point" in the form of a loot chest or an epic boss at the back. I have a love-hate relationship with that, I mean it feels pointless at times, but it feels REAL too, the huge tangle that is Industrial Area and Outzone feels like the mess of a decayed dystopia, not a video game.
It does things that I've never seen any game do. Tradeskills that level through crafting alone, a crafting system that gives you stuff better than "raid drops" so it actually feels like it matters, vehicles you can drive, and shoot, the outpost system, APARTMENTS... NO GAME HAS EVER DONE PLAYER HOUSING AS WELL AS NEOCRON. Soul-light, the implant system, the LE implant, a brilliant solution to the "non-consensual PvP" problem that's deviled every game ever. DRONES, a prescient idea really. The reloading animations! they breathe life into all these fantastic sci/fi technologies in little ways.
I'm not sure if this thread has a point, maybe just my love letter to the game I keep coming back to, in preference to a 200-game Steam library full of 4k HD action bonanzas, eight computers and 12 years running.