GameIndustry.biz is featuring a week devoted to the MMO genre. They kick off the week with an editorial by Oli Welsh entitled "Life After Fantasy". In it, Welsh ponders the genre as a whole and its dependence on fantasy worlds.

It seems it's not just the developers and publishers who are risk-averse - it's MMO players themselves. Perhaps that shouldn't be surprising; after all, it's not just game makers who are looking at making a larger-than-usual investment of time and money when it comes to an MMO - it's the players too.

But something needs to be done to break this cycle, to encourage both first-timers and veterans to try something new in massively multiplayer gaming, or the state of hegemony in the MMO marketplace will never be broken - whether it's Blizzard that repeats its own success, or someone else. Although WAR and Conan are both likely to find decent audiences, as LotRO has done before them, neither can realistically hope to do more than chip away at WoW's foundations. And surely, the desire is there for players to spend time in worlds rooted in something other than Norse myth.

There is a lot to be said on this subject as harbingers of doom continue to beat the drums of PC gaming's death and the expense of game development. What do you think? Let us know.