Now the market is much bigger, I think a brand new MMO is better off focussing on a niche. Even in the theoretical world of unlimited dev time and money, by this stage in the evolution of MMOs, it’s better for games to focus on one area, and avoid all the conflicts inherent in balancing a game that does casual, hardcore, PvE, PvP. Balance is much easier when a game is really only about one single thing (Starcraft series for PvP, for example).

I think it’s great if ToR offers something completely different to GW2 and to Tera. Sure, it might be nice to imagine a game with ToR’s story and GW2′s open world and RvR focus, but my guess is that by this stage, the PvP specialised community would be unhappy with a compromise game, the story-led community would also be unhappy with a compromise game. And there has to be a compromise, even with unlimited dev time and money, because of game systems and balance.

In conclusion, I think you are right when you say that “All the solutions [...] have some huge gaping hole in them”. A game can’t serve two or three masters equally and faithfully.

To be honest, that’s what took me back to WoW. I got to the end of TOR and finished my character story and I felt… done. I was finished. I felt like I had reached the end of the book and there was a huge “And they lived happily ever after.” I did my best to keep playing. I tried end game and I tried alts. But the game’s story had been so innate to me that when my character’s story was finished, so was I.

If you compare WoW and TOR a few other things pop out. WoW has more professions. It has more distinct classes. It’s map is larger. It has more dungeons. It has more raids. It has more PvP (battlegrounds + arenas). I am not of the opinion that a lot of horrible content is better than a little great content, but the truth is that more content means that there’s a lot more to do before boredom creeps in.

The second half of that truth is that I’m not saying that WoW is larger because it is better (this is NOT a TOR bashing comment at all!). WoW is larger because it has had 8 years to grow. It didn’t have that many professions, classes, races, or map space when it first opened. It grew. And the sad part is that it would be hard for any MMO to start out as big as WoW is now (remember I’m not talking “big” as in “popular” but big as in “play options”). The money and the time just isn’t there.

So, what can a brand new MMO do to be able to provide as much content to keep players engaged? I, honestly, have no idea. Then again, maybe it’s just that the story of TOR emotionally ended the game for me. Don’t get me wrong – I loved it from beginning to end. But the fact that the story ended at all – that was what made it increasingly hard for me to log in.