Challenges to the dominance of World of Warcraft over online games and gamers look set to emerge in 2008.
So say industry watchers looking back on a year in which the field as a whole matured and signs emerged which show how the industry sector is developing.
During the year Blizzard's flagship title consolidated its hold on gamers as its subscriber base kept growing.
But debuts by Age of Conan, Warhammer Online and many others may mean that hold begins to weaken.
Numbers game
"We expected, like all the analysts, to see a dip in subscriptions in 2007," said Paul Younger, an editor at the Inc Gamers network. "As it turns out we've seen the rise and rise of WoW."
At the start of 2007, the number of active subscribers playing World of Warcraft was eight million but by the end of summer the number had passed 9.3 million.
According to statistics gathered by Nielsen the average WoW player racks up 17 hours of play per week 12 hours more than its nearest competitor The Sims. As such it was the most played PC game between April and November 2007.
In online games such as World of Warcraft players create an avatar or character, give them a profession and venture out into the game world to battle monsters, find treasure and turn their novice into a powerful hero or heroine.
Mr Younger said online games such as Lord of the Rings Online, Tabula Rasa and Hellgate: London were widely tipped to poach significant numbers of players from Blizzard but, he said, it was not clear that had happened.
"There seems to be an inability by other massively multi-player game makers to capture what Blizzard managed to capture," said Mr Younger.
Rob Fahey, industry veteran and columnist for Gameindustry.biz, said the new launches and continued success of WoW showed how strong the industry had become.
"There's plenty of choice out there for players now," he said "You can even play massively multiplayer dancing games, if killing monsters isn't your thing."
Another sign of the growing maturity of online gaming was the notable failure of titles such as Vanguard.
Although released in February it was error prone and has taken months to become reliable enough.
"It's clear that it's no longer acceptable to release buggy games, and players aren't prepared to pay a monthly fee to test an unfinished product," he said.
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