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Is it me, or is there a comparison to be drawn here between MMO's and the internet booms in e-commerce several years ago.

To clarify,
E-commerce had existed for a while but hadn't been proven massively successful. Several e-commerce sites showed up however that did excel (amazon, early e-bay) proving they could be extremely profitable. Next thing we know thousands of them are popping up, but are failing to bring in the big bucks that were expected because of poor assumptions about consumers. The investment in internet sites slacks off massively and then does what it should of done in the first place... look at things realistically and improve slowly.

MMOG's have existed for a while but didn't make it into the media spotlight until Warcraft came along. (Some would probably argue a bit earlier than that really). Now it seems like everyone is trying to cash in...

Will we see the same problems arise? I would say it's likely. There will be so many MMOG's that no one can really subscribe to all of them for long if at all.

So what will happen? One of a few things I would guess.. here are some of my ideas:

The market structure will change allowing people to subscribe for more games. (Sony's 'StationPass' perhaps an indicator of this) Subscribing to a company gives you access to their portfolio of games, rather than an individual game. Alternatively maybe micro-payment will take off in a big way. Pay-per-Play or something.

The nature of MMO's will change... People won't see themselves having time to stick around and grind. Content will become more casual, easier to drop in, get loot, drop out, play something else. Booms in subscription payments will occur around the release of new content expansions. People subscribe to something till they have 'completed the content' and then switch to something else.

MMO development will slow down to allow several big MMO's to appear around the same time each taking a share of the market that is sustainable until the next set.

I'm sure there are all kinds of predictions that can be made but those are the big three for me if something has to change. Market Change, Game Change, Development Change. I suppose the unpredictable one is: Player Change. People just start playing other things or want different things. Hopefully not the mini-game Churn idea I saw somewhere.