With apologies to the original poster; this was a comment on a Blog i had weeks ago.

I thought his points were good enough that they deserved attention; and unlike the other posters; his is so new no one will ever see it on a lost old blog. I hope and expect some of the other posters will repost their comments again as well here - the coomenst on that blog were allo very very well articulated.

Xix13- Thu Nov 01 2007 4:32AM

• A few points stand out.  Yes, there's grind to keep the subs going.  But the most famous sacred cow of grinding is that the FREE to play games are even MORE of a grind!

  Secondly, book publishers have one major advantage over MMO companies:  they deal with WRITERS!  People who are somwhat conversant in the language in which they write, AND are PAID to develop stories.  MMO devs are PROGRAMMERS.  The language they speak is geek, er, C++ or some other such.  They are paid to develop MECHANICS.  OK, so how about paying a WRITER to work on the team too.  Well, they do.  But they ain't paying for a Tom Clancy, David Drake, Terry Pratchett, Robert Jordan or Carl Hiaasen.  They're paying a guy fresh out of school who's taking his first shot at creative writing for pay.  Some are good, some OK, some terrible.  Some are all 3 in the same game.

  Case in point is Auto Assault.  This game (which I loved, sadly gone now) was all about story.  3 factions.  The writing and the story for the Mutants was absolutely terrific.  You actually felt some emotion and got some yuks ocassionally.  The Biomek story was OK.  The Human story was virtually non-existant, a series of standard Kill X and Fed Ex missions strung together.

  This implies, of course, that players will actually READ the mission text.  Well, I do, but I'm also the one the group yells at "Hurry up, Xix!" or leaves behind as they head into the room/corridor.

  All that being said, I don't think that MMO devs should be as concerned with providing Shakespearean content as for providing a framework in which players can make their OWN content.  Hence, I always prefer the "sandbox" style of game.  My favorite MMOs to date have been pre-CU SWG (top of the list by far), UO, Horizons and EVE.  I happily pay/paid for these games and could spend hours online doing whatever I felt like whenever I felt it.

  The linear grind games are the norm now.  Sandboxes are shutting down or being destroyed.  That puts a HUGE amount of pressure on the dev companies to provide constant new CONTENT, and they aren't equipped for that.  I don't for the life of me know how they expect to succeed with that model.

The short answer to the question:

Can the MMO business model survive? 

Yes.

The long answer.

As long as people keep paying. 

Let me clarify, Guild Wars was the first real challenge to the MMO business model. No monthly fee, only the box price, and a well polished, AA title worthy of being placed in the same category as games like WoW, EQ2, LOTOR, etc.  

A point will come in the future, perhaps with Guild Wars 2, that a MMORPG will be released that is of the same caliber as games like AoC, WAR, WoW etc. that features the same variety and amount of content. The difference will be that is has no monthly fee. It will be a bold move, but the original Guild Wars (4 millions copies sold) has proven that it can work.

Many don't consider GW to be a true MMORPG, but they've promised that GW2 will be more of a "tradtional" MMORPG. If it truly is a traditional MMORPG, but with the same business model as GW...

then the standard MMO business model may not survive.