EA is to blame for allowing WOW to sweep the entire MMO field into Blizzard's pocket [...]
Ok, so I have to agree with Lord Ron Fellows on the graphics, and I also think the blame is on Sony rather than EA that Blizzard took over with WoW. Origin had to get backed because they did not have the money or playerbase to fund themselves. Sony had a model to follow in UO and crafted two successful cash-in 3D MMORPGs before WoW was a thing. Sony should have been best able to continue that success. EA's Uo 2 was never a player possibly in part to Sony's overwhelming success. They called it EverCrack for a reason.
Here is the problem: EverQuest came out March of 1999. The notion of UO 2 to the public was September of 1999, with the idea that it would be completed in a year or two. A
year or two. I am not sure when that video for UO 2 was compiled, but assuming it was September of 1999 or later, EverQuest already had about 6 months of live development at that time, and roughly 135,000 subs at that point, knocking the top MMORPG crown off UO for the first time since 1997. I am not sure if there is anything in that UO 2 video that looks too much better than EverQuest. By January of 2001, EverQuest was about
100,000 subs ahead of UO. Chained female elf box art sells, eh?
Trion, Scapes, someone!!! :) We need more servers. - Page 14
In addition to EverQuest setting the 3D bar, Asheron's Call further saturated the market in November of 1999, which must have made it difficult for EA to feel as if they could get their share while continuing support for UO. Meanwhile, UO did not have any Western 2D competitors and continued to grow due mostly to their in-game housing market--something no other MMORPG at that time challenged--and the success of UO: Renaissance. World of Warcraft came out in 2004; over that timeline, several successful games, such as Sony's Star Wars Galaxies, helped normalized MMORPG gaming, setting the stage for Blizzard to sweep up with their franchise name. EverQuest was dying at that point, then Star Wars Galaxies was squandered as they forced a major change on the skill tree. WoW came up, and all the Warcraft and Diablo fans gave up the cash-grab Sony franchises for a tag that brought them great games in the past.
Origin paved the way for Blizzard to have tremendous success in that Origin had no choice but to sell at that time because they could not support their product. By 2004, Blizzard could look at the success and failure of several MMORPGs, and their own success given their Battle.net subscriber base. Sony, IMHO, dropped the ball twice as many times given their early success as compared to EA's fumbles with UO. How do you **** up hot elves in chains or Star Wars?