I like the comparison between Blizzard and Google, because they both have tremendous momentum in their favor.
It would be an incredible feat for a company to make a better game than Blizzard. I've watched some QA sessions with Blizzard project leads, and they rarely seem to make assumptions about what works and what doesn't -- they rely on hard data, and the goal is always to maximize playability.
Same with Google, their search has been incrementally improved over many years. They know what works and what doesn't.
That might be why smaller game companies seem to be succeeding (social gaming, flash games), and domain-specific search engines are also doing well (video search, job search, travel search, etc..)
it's not even that it is boring. it's that it is not really a game. MMO's tap into the same compulsion that cults often do, put a little number next to someone's name and they will kill themselves trying to make it higher (or lower as the case may be). In the case of WoW, this has been perfected to an art. You're always just a little bit of playtime away from making some number related to your character go higher. It's basically a drug.
The wish to improve one's "self" with respect to some numeric metric, and especially in comparison to others, has broader application than cults: academic performance. work performance. sports performance. money. also karma.
It would be an incredible feat for a company to make a better game than Blizzard. I've watched some QA sessions with Blizzard project leads, and they rarely seem to make assumptions about what works and what doesn't -- they rely on hard data, and the goal is always to maximize playability.
Same with Google, their search has been incrementally improved over many years. They know what works and what doesn't.
That might be why smaller game companies seem to be succeeding (social gaming, flash games), and domain-specific search engines are also doing well (video search, job search, travel search, etc..)