I know...everyone predicts the untimely passing of MMO's way too early. I am usually the naysayer; I was, after all, the one person who stated that Star Wars Galaxies would truck along for years despite people's hatred of the 'New Game Engine'. Lo and behold, it's halfway through 2010, and SWG remains operational...and has even some modest growth over the past 18 months (I'm assuming due to people's excitement over 2011's Star Wars: The Old Republic).

Age of Conan is another game that so many predicted would die....a pretty reasonable assumption after the mass subscription cancelations that followed a healthy first month of sales (simply put, the game was just too buggy, laggy and content deficient to keep people interested). However, even AoC has improved and their recent xPac (as well as their new free trial allowing people free access to the island of Tortage and level increases up to 20) should help cement that MMO as an 'off-brand' choice for the more adult-oriented gamer.

World of Warcraft remains a steady animal....with frequent large game expansions and a relatively loyal subscriber base (though they've seen some chips in their armor over the last year with a tremendous slowing of new player subscriptions).

Vanguard remains a sloppy discarded mess...but one that's miraculously still live more out of spite than anything else.

And yes, there are a handful of other MMO's including Lineage 2, Darkfall, Fallen Earth, EQ2 (and even Dark Age of Camelot is still going) that enjoy varying degrees of popularity; but none (besides, arguably, Lineage 2) have any serious player populations. In fact, the strongest of the alternative MMO's would be Eve Online with over 350,000 subscriptions and a quickly-increasing player base after winning 2009's Game of the Year.

But what about Lord of the Rings Online?

'Lotro' cemented itself as the main rival to WoW 3 years ago. It provided better in-game sound and a more photo-realistic graphics engine (I won't say 'better' since its truly a matter of taste) but otherwise, gameplay was shockingly similar to WoW in most respects (as was the quest system). Lotro did have a few unique features such as titles and 'traits' (but these offered zero potential for character uniqueness). And other unique features (like the ability to become 'family' with others / adoption) ended being an underused and forgotten-about gimmick. Likewise, the implementation of the PvMP system wound up being a near-complete misfire. To this day, the content for evil mobs ("creeps") remains staggeringly limited compared to the fairer races. The ability to 'customize' levelable weapons' also ended up offering little in the way of customization since each character class had specific weapon stats/types they were looking for. Possibly the main selling point of Lotro...and easily it's biggest selling point early on, was that it required less time to play. For the 'casual gamer', a person's character would build up potential 'bonus xp' when not in use allowing them to catch up quickly to friends and guild-mates...the concept was a solid one, and ensured that Lotro was the favored choice for those interested in MMO gaming without the heavy time commitment.

But expansions came slowly (only two major xPacs in 3 years) and class/race selection remained limited; largely due to the carefully-guarded narrative constraints of the LOTR source material. And so, as happens with all MMO's (except WoW), the subscriber base started to peter out....servers became lonelier places and formerly bustling cities were reduced to mere ghost towns.

Of course, since Lotro offered lifetime accounts (a genius bit of marketing), players would reappear after big patches and expansions...but would disappear shortly after exhausting the content leaving the game largely empty save for 'pick up group' raids and guild functions.

It should be noted that Lotro shot themselves in the foot somewhat by introducing the mercurial and oft-scrutinized (and largely reviled) "radiance gating". In a lame effort to increase server populations, the Turbine devs designed an odd character stat that would require multiple runs of the same instances/raids to increase (the stat was increased through armor pieces earned by running group tank and spanks of the same areas repeatedly). This created a large rift in terms of the casual and hardcore player...with those who who played most often having significantly better gear than those who didn't.

But Lotro has done some things right. The crafting system is still the best of any MMO on the market. The game (even after expansions) has been nearly bug and lag free...high praise going to the dev team for exhaustive beta testing and quality programming. But none of this has brought new players to the game recently; and over the last 6 months, the game seems to be faltering significantly.

Is Lotro doomed to close any time soon? No...but it does risk falling into a state of irrelevance. If Turbine really wants to stay at the forefront of everyone's MMO-playing mind, they need to increase the frequency of content updates, introduce better customization and seriously consider returning to their 'casual MMO' mindset.