Yeah, my boyfriend told me a little bit about how it was, at first it was only two regions but they were adding more, I understand that now it's up to 5 gen. I love the MMO aspect and the fact that I can buy and even sell pokemon (usually rare pokemon) seems interesting to me, as well as buying items, objects to move around the maps, and things like that. I really love it, I understand why it was so popular at the time hahaha.
You could recover your old account and try the game nowadays, I hope you can, it's worth it!