I like how every multiplayer game I play feels like a freely evolving personal story. I play a lot online with my friend down in DC (I live in NYC) and every game, with its attacks, counter-attacs, surrenders and secret alliances, forms a unique and emerging narrative. Sometimes, it seems like we're on the ropes, but then one of our teammates moves in on an opponents capital planet, he realizes he's stretched too thin and quits/surrenders, or offers to join us. This throws off the whole balance of his team, but they still try to rally with what they've got.
There may not be an over-arching campaign within the game telling us what's supposed to happen and when... we decide, through strategy and whimsy, the course of how the story of our game plays out. And since we tend to use random maps with random online opponents, it's a different outcome every time. Sometimes we win, sometimes we don't. Fortunately, these "stories" never go past three hours (we do have lives outside of the game) but sometimes they stretch pretty far, and the longer the battles, the bigger the stakes... This makes the game (endlessly?) replayable and enjoyably, uniquely, epic!
sweet. 
-g
