People said that subscription-based massively multiplayer games would never work, that people would never keep on paying for a game they'd already bought.

They were wrong.

Ultima Online sparked the current boom of massively multiplayer RPGs in 1997, and still has around 175,000 registered users, while EverQuest has 270,000 and Asheron's Call has 80,000 -- all paying $10 a month. Even compared to the best-selling games of all time, successful MMRPGs generate huge amounts of money and offer a much better return on investments in game design, marketing and brand building. Now that the upstarts have proven the system can work, practically everyone has one in development. But have MMRPGs hit the wall?

People are still playing, but in some ways the games have stalled. Updates and "events" aside, there's only so much players can actually do. So what's next? What are the people developing the next generation of massively multiplayer games doing to set them apart?

Next page: A break from wizards ‘n’ goblins and massively multiplayer Star Wars

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