Question - What makes a world work?

[LordVreeg]

So here, Ivar mentions wanting to play in the world. I thinks an important 'flavor' for successful games is motivation, and by this I mean creating goals and passions for the players. Pathos and conflict are crucial to make the players care about things in the setting, and by reflection, care about their characters and thus the setting itself.
Creating huge good vs. huge evil is boring, but creating guilds and leaders they want to be with, NPC's the PC's care about or hate (Morator, the Arcanic of the Coom Isle Collegium Arcana once captured one of my PC's dog, Jared, and the PC found it in a dungeon that way...hate and emnity was created in spades) organizations they support and despise.
Pc's love underdogs, and love evening the odds. Create organizations and relationships that allow them to do this, and they will keep coming back. [/blockquote]

I'm talking about huge, monolithic evil without a face or action, like saying, 'orcs are bad' and leaving them beige hordes built to be sword fodder.  If it helps, read my quote as 'Creating huge good vs. huge evil without persoanlizing it is boring'.The point I am making is that the smaller details of the world are what engages a PC.  Huge evil is totally boring by itself, it is the effects of that evil and personalization that makes it memorable.  PCs are much more motivated by what happens to them and theirs than hearing you read some obvious adventure hook that has never bothered them before.

So I'm not saying saving the world is bad, I'm saying make the things that happen in the world around the PC make them WANT to save the world, and your campaign will last a lot longer.