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Another thing to consider is that the Milky Way appears "grey" to the eyes and that Digital cameras can see much more light than we can when a long exposure is used.
This picture shows how the Milky Way looks to the naked eye. Nothing much to see. So you know that after the pictures are taken and then downloaded... they are edited by the photographer. This usually involves using various techniques to increase the brightness of some areas and to darken others.
It is very well worth your time to drive out to the country on a night when there's NO MOON in order to capture the Milky Way in as much detail as possible.
Also, pictures showing various colors of the Milky Way (eg a blue Milky Way) are often the result of the photographer using different White Balance settings. Tungsten, for example, will produce a very blue sky with blue stars.
But MOST pictures (if not all) that you see online have been aggressively edited to make the Milky Way more attractive and much brighter than it normally appears.
A good picture of the Milky Way can be captured in a single exposure of between 10 and 20 seconds. There are many suitable lenses you can use but they produce different results on cropped sensor cameras compared to Full Frame cameras. I usually shoot the Milky way at apertures of either f/1.2 (depending on the lens) to about f/2.4.
