Money
MMOs are a 24-hour service. The cost of running servers, developing updates, providing customer service, and keeping everything in order isn't cheap. We know that as long as players are willing to pay for this service, we'll need to cough up real cash for monthly fees to play the top notch titles. But we don't care. We want to play MMOs for free. And we don't want to play free-to-play ones either, because they come with the price of lower production values, micro-transactions, or worse yet, in-game ads.
Resistance against fees seems futile. How can developers and publishers make a profit by providing a costly 24-hour service for free? And why should they deviate from the norm as long as we keep voting with our dollars and pounds for new titles that don't try anything different? It looks like we'll have to wait a long time for an excellent MMO thatdoesn't rely on monthly fees, micro-transactions, or advertisements. In the meantime, we'll be waiting and saving our money for the genre to evolve further.
