I think the MMO genre is in quite a bit of trouble at the moment. There arent really any standout titles flourishing on a large scale currently and the immediate future looks pretty stale too.
For me, the golden age of MMOs was the period 1997 to about 2005. UO, EQ1, AC1 and later DAOC, were the golden age. The first year or so of WoW just about slips into the end of that era. Since 2005 though, I feel like MMOs have lost their way and drifted a long way from what it was that made them so special. The need for communication and working with other players has slowly been reduced in the name of "soloability" and "accessibility", at the expense of community and sense of realm/faction pride.
There arent really any MMOs currently in development which attract me (possibly Camelot Unchained , the spiritual successor to DAOC but even thats a maybe), and I wonder if my time with the genre is coming to an end, perhaps to be replaced by more MORPGs rather than MMORPGs.
The MMO genre is in trouble because sometime along the way, businesses turned Massive Multiplayer Online into Mass Market Online.
It is not just the business' fault, the modern gamer has become a locust. They want their MMO to be the equivalent of a fast food joint - quick, easy, cheap, not something you savour.
So to make the most money the business' try to appeal to as many people as possible - and in doing so, they create dilute, repetitive games that are essentially solo play to the end as it is convenient, then group content stuck at the back end to try keep people around.
Us dinosaurs that fondly remember games like EQ1 are dismissed as people wearing Rose Tinted Glasses and the modern gamer tries to claim that such games were awfully designed and terrible to play - a game shouldn't be hard because then it feels like 'work'
Sad thing is, those wanting an indepth game which can be hard work, do require actual interaction..we are a small minority and not profitable for businesses spending millions on a game.
For minorities like us, our only hope is niche games. That means hoping one of these rookie development teams manage to deliver what they promise. It means a lot of failures, and disappointments, but eventually one will succeed.
AAA MMOs will not evolve, they are too scared to and carrying on with the status quo will mean making money quickly, niche is the only place you will see games that are not the same stale old junk