That's also why when I see a post speculating on whether over-saturation of the genre is going to hurt MMOGs, I can't help but feel like it's missing the real issue. I'm picking on Moorgard a bit here, but he's hardly the first person to consider that problem. The question isn't whether good games will be drowned in mediocre ones. Players will always find the good games. The question is whether the good games are good enough to pull players away from a good game that they already like, know, and are significantly invested in. In most cases, I'd bet that the answer is a definite "no." Why would players have any motivation to leave WoW, really? Unless they sit down to play your game (getting them to that point is a feat in itself) and the experience is so ridiculously much better that they wonder how they ever really put up with their old game, you're not going to keep them. Not for long. They're going to gravitate back to their comfort zone. You're much better off trying to attract a whole new set of players who can step into your game with fresh eyes, untainted by preconceived notions of what your game should be.

So when will the players leave WoW? Simple. Whenever another game comes along that advances the gameplay of the DikuMUD by another monumental leap, or when Blizzard closes the doors and shuts it down. If you can't bring that to the table, don't bother trying to lure their players away. At best, you'll get the lost souls already wandering from game to game, for whom WoW was just another pit stop on the road to the next interesting thing. At worst, your game will tank and ruin your company. Even if you can snag players for a while, they'll go home soon enough (wherever that is for them). The post-WoW MMOG market is exactly the same as the pre-WoW MMOG market, except you can't innovate on EverQuest and do what Blizzard did again. Don't be fooled. The best you can really hope for in that area is 200-500k sustained subscribers, and you have to be damn good to get that.

As far as I'm concerned, the denizens of Azeroth are there to stay--- at least for a while.