| Personally, I think the long term success of an MMO is less about the quality of the game, and more with the people you play it with. How many of us kept playing EQ long after it become boring, simply to hang out with the friends we made in it?
Obviously, the game has to have some appeal to keep some of the people logging in, but I can easily imagine companies introducing features, that on paper sound good, but in practice is going to hurt this concept. Things like limiting guild sizes, restricting chat, etc, may make for a more realistic game, but only serve to drive people apart.
I can't really offer any fantastic suggestion on how to achieve it, but as long as you, and any other designers, ask themselves the question, will this bring people together or push them apart, whenever they want to implement something, I think they are going to make a better MMO. | 