Honestly there has never been a good MMORPG. The old ones had piss boring combat that was incredibly slow, or it was fast but filled with stupid shit and much of it skyrim-esque (ie: combat felt completely disconnected from anything close to real), crafting systems were always total trash and bordered on brokenly good or completely useless with varying levels of "time to sacrifice six virgins to the RNG gods if I dont want to blow up this next craft attempt"
The stories were either trash with disjointed unconnected events, or a constant stream of shit that never felt like you got any kind of actual resolution to anything. The landscapes, oh sure there were places to "explore" but you only thought that because maps were shitty and you hadnt gotten used to the fact that 99% of the map is just "random area with nothing to do but kill w/e monster type, or pick w/e flower etc, is located there." Just like modern MMOs the overwhelming majority of space might as well be empty.. ESPECIALLY once you hit endgame stuff where in all but half a dozen areas AT BEST are completely devoid of meaning and reason to go there, and thus as the population of a server averages closer and closer to max levels those old zones become more and more lifeless, inhabited only by NPCs the server might as well not even bother loading anymore because who would even know?
Then theres the total lack of player agency in any mmorpg. You can murder the same boar until max level and then go talk to bumfuck god leader NPC number 20304 and he'll treat you as the savior of the world regardless of if you've done anything meaningful. THEN theres also that you're almost always granted your super godly abilities for your class/job/w.e regardless of if you've earned it. Oh sure, some games had "skill" systems to level up abilities but again, they could almost without exception be gamed by casting specific spells over and over, sometimes not even in combat and instead just farting around a town, and wham you're a master of X magic skill hooray you now have super-powerful-finisher, you truly are a master of the craft (of diddling yourself and pressing 2 on your keyboard every 5 seconds)
Sure popular MMOs now like WoW and FF14 have tired boring systems with boring combat where you're just gift wraped the most powerful spells just for being you and grinding pig asses for 20 hours or for completing piss easy quests, lifeless worlds as everyone congregates in 2-3 locations because 90% of the gameworld is a "go there once then you're done" fiasco (even major hubs are like this and might as well just be an AH a vendor to sell trash/repair at/have dialogue options for all the different types of wares all on one NPC a mailbox and a bank and just scrap everything else), crafting that is either brokenly OP or stupidly worthless, zero player agency or ability to be anyone on even your server unless you're bumfuck dps number 12 in *world top 5 guild name here*, little reason to engage anyone outside your own little group in social interaction, and so on and so on
But the thing is, thats no different from how they've ALWAYS been.
Even mmos now that try to have fast paced or more "console" type combat end up falling on their faces because it always ends up with 2-3 combos for each class being "all you need/do" so sure you can do 80 combos but 78 of them are useless or wasted and never used, or they have talent systems that let you pick from an insane variety of builds.. but naturally the player base is always going to gravitate to what works BEST and ignore all else because no one wants to carry the special snowflake through content so they can "play how they want" which ultimately kills any meaning such systems have
Its just… all one giant clusterfuck and always has been. MMORPGs as a genre are dying, and for good reason. They deserve to considering how overblown most of their budgets are while the world feels empty and lifeless, the combat uninspired, the talent/skill systems always end up with a few dominant setups dictating the exclusion of all else, the story never impacted by the players choices or actions, etc etc. They havent gone back to analyzed the core of their games and realized, hey, this just isnt fun and all we're doing is sucking money out of people who need SOMETHING to kill all the empty freetime they have in their lives.. because they havent had to, that model has been profitable. But its quickly losing steam as other games are coming out that offer that same thing but without all the niggles or grinding or shit communities or constant need to keep paying them
