Is there life in MMOs after the fantasy genre?

Most of the AAA subscription MMOs are set in the fantasy genre. Many of the in-development titles are set in the fantasy genre. The most popular massive game in the US is a fantasy title. So when is the industry going to get over this hangup on orcs and elves? Is there even an MMO industry without the fantasy setting? Those are the questions asked by Oli Welsh today at the GamesIndustry.biz site. Welsh returns to the conclusion many have reached when examining buzz, marketing, sales figures, and new games: players are just as 'risk-adverse' as publishers are when it comes to new game settings.

As we at Massively have done in the past, the author goes on to hope for a future with a little more bravery in tackling genre tropes. He lauds Cryptic's adherence to the four-color comic book world, and offers high hopes for 'real life' titles like All Points Bulletin or The Agency. Ultimately, he says, it may just be the case that a developer needs to take the Diku-mud style of game perfected by SOE and Blizzard and transpose that sensibility to another genre. Though Tabula Rasa and the modern incarnation of Star Wars Galaxies approaches that style, there really isn't a good, working "EverQuest with lasers" out there. Perhaps the likes of Red 5 or Carbine will ride up on an armored hoverbike to offers us a new and (possibly) better way.