Quote Originally Posted by Sorel View Post
It's so that we don't have to use the mouse at all.

A player can rest their right hand over the number pad and use their right fingers to control their character movement and use their right thumb to control the camera simultaneously ... leaving their left hand and the rest of the keyboard for chatting, using hot-keys, and firing off abilities.
This pretty much says it all. FFXI (I know people hate mentioning other MMO's) was the first MMO I played where you weren't using mouse clicks to move the characters, and ever since I used that numpad layout it carried over to every game I played since. Can't image playing a game any other way. Even in Phantasy Star Universe my friends thought I was using a controller boy were they surprised.