Quick disclaimer: I'm primarily talking about WoW here, since that's what I have personal experience with, but most of it should apply in other MMORPGs too, to some degree.

That's absolutely not false, especially as a new player, but at the same time it's not really representative of the "true" experience that people play it for. Yes, questing (especially on low levels) is mostly the same fetch quests over and over with dull combat.

But once (if) you do get past that, there is a much more engaging endgame, where you have 10-30 people (20 at the highest level) who need to execute slightly different strategies, at the same time, more or less flawlessly. Plus, there's all the management stuff in trying to have all those people not get too angry at each other, while hitting their heads against the same boss for hours upon hours, over the course of several days.

So no, they're not flawless, and the levelling process is dull, but it's not really representative of what appeals to us that do play them.

I ignored this possibly because I was playing it solo. Good catch. This is actually similar to the high people get in both RTS and FPS games when coordinating action. A friend and I were doing it last night so fresh on my memory. :) Going to have to redo my analysis of the digital crack aspect to factor this in sometime in the future.

"while hitting their heads against the same boss for hours upon hours, over the course of several days."

That's where I'm already calling it excessive. It's repetitive stuff where you're doing the same things over and over to get an arbitrary number down for ridiculous amount of time. At best, doing it once or twice for an endurance challenge could be a benefit. Past that, this is causing a net loss for the players as alternatives could be happening with better variety, personal improvement, and mini-challenges built in.

For instance, our run on Battlefield 4 last night was a good example. Matchmaking is so broken at our level that deck stayed stacked against us like a boss fight with just two of us vs 2-8 opponents with skill + supporting amateurs. We constantly assessed environment and strategies given we were on land, in water, flying through air, and so on. Buildings varied in whether walls were there, what could get through them, snipers/choppers having line of site, traps, and so on. Weapons were more complex than aim and click with specific wait time, angle, or area of effect. Pro's with vehicles (extra rigged) changed whole dynamic of the above where we had to use weapons, location, pacing, and so on to counter them over period of time with many deaths. The opponents, non being NPC's, had human-level intelligence with a combo of common behaviors and surprising behaviors that were novel + forced us to improve our own tactics/awareness. All of these circumstances and effects hit us over a period of 2 hours. I helped that along by leaving any server that was getting repetitive or too empty.

So, the above experience compared to a mostly-repetitive, MMORPG, boss fight is about a non-comparison in value for the player. I had more depth of gameplay, more novelty, used more of my senses, improved hand-eye coordination, required more strategy, and so on. The benefits of enough such games to me personally & to how I approach situations in future games (tactical strategy & FPS) is clear. Everyone wailing against a boss doing same stuff, it and them, for hours involving mostly some clicks or macros I can't see except moments of hand-eye coordination or improved ability to focus despite boredom or wear. I got those, though.

So, they seem weak for a value proposition vs alternatives. I could see ways to mix that genre with what I described in BF4 run we did. I believe some do already. Meanwhile, playing them sacrifices more experiences than it gains while the supplying organization's numbers continue to go up. :)