Like Veld, when FFXI came out in the US initially, I wasn't interested. I wasn't particularly enamored of the MMORPG concept at that point, but when a friend of mine pressured me to start, I said what the hell and signed up.
There's a not-really-all-that-funny story about that, incidentally, but I'll leave that for my blog someday.
When I first started, I was hooked. Badly. But once we'd caught up to the friends who were already playing, I no longer felt particularly pressured, and things smoothed out rather nicely.
In short, I'm apparently not one of the MMO addicts. I happen to like the genre, but I don't feel that need to keep playing, or advance at all costs. I may occasionally stay up late, but only when I have nothing important to do the next morning. I may occasionally get up early, but only if I woke up on my own (with a handful of exceptions generated by well-intentioned friends with my phone number who really wanted me to get Hauteclaire. Which I have. Bwahahahaha!), and only if again, I had nothing else to do that morning.
I've no particular distaste for starting over again. Particularly in a new game, when everyone is on the same playing field. Another part of what killed WoW for me was walking into a fully-developed economy in a game where money is basically given away at higher levels, so anything really good for lower-level characters gets snapped up by people running a well-funded alt. But still, I tried it again at a friend's urging when FFXI was getting a bit stale. I got several characters halfway up the leveling process, geared them as well as I was able, tried as many aspects of the game as I could, and dropped it in a heartbeat. In WAR, I hit the level cap, pushed my Renown (which served a variety of functions) past my level, capped one craft, nearly capped two more, got the best sword for my class in the game, had a wide variety of excellent gear, and walked away with almost zero regrets after a handful of months.
Ironically, the only game it's ever caused me any stress at all to leave is FFXI. And while the folks on Sylph are awesome people, and I've fulfilled a lot of my wishlist with this shell... I dunno, it's not the same as Quetz, where I knew so many people, from one shell or another, and so many that I'd leveled up with and so on.
I suspect server transfers have rather corrupted that situation, but still, some fond memories. I still have the urge to return to Quetz just to help out friends.
But if I can get enough of my friends, particularly rl friends, to jump over to FFXIV when it launches, I'll be able to finally cancel my content IDs with a sense of peace, I expect.
Though I won't do it for at least 4-6 months after FFXIV launch, knowing me.