This Year’s MMORPG Cancellations

HomeLan Fed has written up a new article that takes a look at the many MMORPGs that have been cancelled this year and provides some feedback about the future of the genre. A snippet:

So what does this mean for the future of the genre? In my opinion, two things need to start happening in order to expand the market for the games (because let’s face it, most people only have the time and the money to devote to one of these type of games at a time) and to make the games themselves more fun. The first is pretty obvious to me; stay the heck away from the fantasy MMORPG genre. A few upcoming fantasy games, like World of Warcraft, Dungeons and Dragons Online and Middle Earth Online, might be successful but that’s in part because all three games are based on established franchises and are from experienced developers. If you have a fantasy themed MMORPG that isn’t from an established developer and isn’t a part of a fantasy name that people don’t know about, it’s going to be extremely hard to tear people away from similar games that have been around for years and from the upcoming games that are something of a known property. There are a ton of genres (sci-fi, historical, horror, war) that either haven’t been used or used so little in these types of games that there should be plenty of space for them to find an audience.