The personality and aspect of the game is only as dull as you make and see it. if you always have the attitude that the world is empty and shit your gonna think they are that way o.O or like you say it isnt just "leveling" if you only do that its your fault. In FFXI my linkshell comunity has loads of fun role-playing and adventuring together. Just because the programmer didnt give your character a personality for you doesnt mean the game is anything short of roleplaying.
true if you bring roleplaying into the game yourself then that makes it roleplaying, the game isnt roleplaying otherwise because your character is just an avatar of yourself, you aren't assuming the role of a character with story,personality,etc.
and while some games have good community that make the games fun to play (lineage 2) even after you have gone through all the content, if you ingnore the community and look at the game itself many lack content and the content they do have is usually generic crap.
and as for "the world is shit and empty" look at a town or city in a MMO, how many of them have NPCs that will react to and remember things? how many of them can evolve and change based on the actions of the players without developers changing stuff w/patches.
saying the world is empty is something i guess i shouldnt have done, the more correct word would be static. most of the world never changes and its always the same. so by empty i was reffering to the fact that everything is the same and unchanging like a world with nothing but rocks compared to a world with plants&life.
dont think i dont know about how community effects online games or how players are able to fill in gaps by doing things themselves (roleplaying with friends). it works for some games and even then for select groups, the point is games should be doing this shit themselves, good communitys can emulate it but can only go so far...
