The Article is from MMOsite Writer Club member Oliase

People like to find something and blame it for anything that goes wrong, or that goes badly. If you do bad in school, you blame it on the teacher. If you forget something, you blame your parent's for not reminding you. And lately it seems that MMOG enthusiasts are the exact same way, blaming WoW on failures in the industry including dropped project. Recently the Marvel MMOG project was even shut down because they didn't think it would be successful with the P2P model they originally wanted it to have because of World of Warcraft, saying it dominated the industry and provided little room for other games in that model type. Now everyone is moving on to F2P models, trying to revolutionize those with new innovations. But has the vast success of World of Warcraft actually hurt the industry, or has it actually been a blessing in disguise?

First off, most people are mis-led by the numbers. Having a friend who compiles MMOG information and analyzes it to see which models are most successful, and which games are most popular, I understand the numbers that are actually being compared. First off, most people gasp in amazement when they hear that WoW has a whopping 10 million subscribers. But unlike what you might think, that doesn't mean there's ten million players today. The game itself has been around since 2004, and has exploded ever since with millions of sales of the game. But that's what the 'subscriber' count is based on, the amount of people who have purchased the game. So if 5 million of those subscribers purchased the game, played for a month, hated it, and quit, they are still being counted as a subscriber today even if they haven't played since 2004.