I stopped caring about lore in MMOs around the same time hundreds of questgivers in hubs made me collect 8 bear asses and all had explanations of why they needed those bear asses in a page long request that makes supply requisitions forms at my workplace seem exciting in comparison. I don't think I've read flavor text for an MMO quest since 2005 because who gives a shit. It's usually the same generic high fantasy bullshit anyway.
Exception to the rule was secret world I guess, and even then most of the quests outside of the main storyline fell into the 8 bear-ass category.
I liked norraths lore because it was minimalistic. Did you care about the lore in EQ on day 1? Hell no, you cared about killing that damn skeleton and selling his cracked staff. You learned more about the world over time, but it never was intrusive like some of todays stuff where you need to play solo instances to get to a new continent or progress the story. The lore I like best is the type that barely explains anything and leaves it open to piecing together scraps to figure things out. Dark Souls is probably the first virtual world I've thought was cool and went to read about in a long time. I liked EQ's too, but the other dozens of MMOs just kind of blend together and the lore doesn't make a lick of difference to me.
