The Daily Grind: Would we be better off without WoW?

Back in 2012, Massively's Justin Olivetti speculated that if World of Warcraft had never existed, SOE might have continued to dominate the MMO space, many aborted MMOs might have released as planned, subscription prices would have gone up, and MMOs might have stayed out of the mainstream and in their happy niche of sandboxes and sandpark games from the early aughts. Even though another game would likely have come along to fulfill WoW's role in gaming history thanks to the rise of easy-access internet and the mass-popularity of PC gaming in general, we might have been seeing copycats of beloved sandboxes all this time rather than more and more iterations on themeparks, a trend that is only just now finally beginning to reverse course.

But would we be better off? Would you want to pay $30 subs, play EverQuest VI: The Sandboxening, or consider 200,000 players a spectacular launch? Would you want to play MMOs without ideas and conveniences like the group-finders and UI mods and auction halls and quests that WoW popularized? Would you prefer a genre taken even less seriously by mainstreamers and studios and investors than it is right now? Would we, in fact, be better off without WoW?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!