Well, as I always say, I have mixed opinions.
For the most part this is correct, but a big part of it is people jumping in with little or no knowledge of what they are getting into, or plans for an MMO other than to make a boatload of cash. I'm actually hoping economic Darwinism has eaten a lot of these companies at this point, after all at this point people should have caught on to the simple fact that an MMO lives or dies by it's endgame and it's content. A quick franchise cash in is not going to work.
That said, I am hoping this current generation of MMOs will do a lot better with the $15 a month price tag. See, right now I've been spending more money than I want to admit on FTP games, largely because they represent the only option for the things I want to do. Something I feel the "Free To Play" Market counts on and why so many people jump on it. Like a lot of people I'm definatly looking at the whole $15 a month for everything idea with a degree of envy, in "Star Trek Online" for example I've heard people talking about Wildstar with disbelief when they consider that they could play that game for three months off of what they spent on a 5000 point ship pack, not to mention he dilithium to outfit it without having to slowly wait grinding to the dil cap for months.
I could be wrong (I actually expected ToR to do better against WoW) but I actually think Free To Play greed has started to catch up with itself and we might see a return of subscription based games to primacy, as long as they do not try and double dip.
As far as "Elder Scrolls Online" goes, my actually analysis is that it comes across as being more of a "Neverwinter" clone, albeit with more of an open world/open zones as opposed to the very linear progression and design style of that title. I see more similarities between those titles and how they play than between WoW and ESO. ESO's success or failure largely depends on whether they can sell the benefits of their system. See, a lot of people like the idea of "free to play" because the stuff they earn is always there, without having to pay to access it, however people are beginning to realize they probably won't be playing in a year or three. When you can dump $30 for a mount or whatever people are realizing it's not that good a deal when they could instead be getting all that stuff for a $15 a month price tag and when they are done can move on with a lot less invested than the hundreds of dollars it might have taken outfitting a fleet of internet space ships, or half a dozen endgame grinders with ideal companion/gear setups. Targeted correctly ESO could rake in the dough, if I was them I'd directly attack Neverwinter and it's pricing in my ads, especially seeing as it has 3 million downloads through ARC alone. ESO is basically selling the same type of real-time/active RPG experience in a more cost effective fashion, as long as it doesn't open a cash shop and provides new content for free periodically (at least a new mount a month or whatever) it could be set.
With "Wildstar" I have more mixed opinions, to be honest it's a little too cartoony for me (which has been grating recently even if I like the basic game set up... those evil furball/ewok things the bad guys have on their side are a bit too much IMO). On the other hand it seems to be gearing up for a more hardcore MMO crowd, with "Wildstar" it comes down of course to them proving themselves cost effective and not double dipping, and actually delivering things like these old school 40 man raid experiences from the beginning.
What is going to kill a "second coming of subscription MMOs" is if they charge you $15 a month and then on top of that expect you to pay extra for all the cosmetic features and such in a cash shop, so every bit of cool content comes with a fee attached. In the end you wind up paying for the right to pay more to get the coolest stuff. On the other hand if they maintain the same pace of producing cosmetic and "cool" content as a FTP game, and provide it as part of the $15 service... well, they are going to get quite competitive, and will probably draw in a volume of users especially if they make a point of showing what a good deal it is comparatively.
