The bigger question however : is it even possible to make a blockbuster MMO that isn fantasy or superhero based ?
Certainly I don’t recall any that tried to integrate MMORPG gameplay ( i.e. not FPS or space flight sim ) and achieved significant commercial success – Star Wars Galaxies, Tabula Rasa, Anarchy Online… ? It is hard to find modern / future settings which don’t essentially eliminate all MMORPG archetypes but ranged DPS – no melee, no tank, no magic, no conventional healers… Aside from adding Jedi type careers by the handful, there is just no proven scope ( so far ) for non-fantastical MMORPGs beyond “people with guns shoot each other till one side dies”. As bleak as that is, it is probably still preferable to a resurgence of ‘fantasy in denial’ settings ; pasting over white magic with nanotechnology, relabelling fireballs as pyrokinesis then slapping a few shiny gurders around the landscape and claiming it’s science fiction.
