Modern MMORPGs

World of WarCraft is the most largely played game in North America, and one of the most popular MMORPG's to date. A raid group of horde-factioned players can be seen here on their mounts.

The most recent generation of MMORPGs, based on arbitrary standards of graphics, gameplay, and popularity, is said to have launched in April 2004 with NCSoft's City of Heroes, which was based on a comic-book superhero theme instead of the usual fantasy or science-fiction. This was followed in November 2004, with Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest II and Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft. At the time, Sony expected to dominate the market, based on the success of the first Everquest, and decided to offer a flat monthly rate to play all of their MMORPGs including EverQuest, EverQuest II, and Star Wars Galaxies, to keep from competing with itself. However, World of Warcraft achieved unprecedented popularity immediately upon release, dwarfing all previous monthly-fee MMORPGs. At present, WoW is one of the most played games in North America, and the most played American MMORPG, with a total of over 6 million customers worldwide. With the release of these newer games, subscriptions began to decline for many older MMORPGs, even the year-old Lineage II, and in particular Everquest 1. World of Warcraft's position in the MMORPG market is analogous to the position of Dungeons & Dragons in the tabletop RPG market, with both games' market share being greater than 50% of the overall market.

In April 2005, Guild Wars launched successfully, introducing a new financial model which might have been partly responsible for its success. Though definitely an online RPG, and technically having a persistent world (despite most of the game's content being instanced), it required only a one-time purchasing fee. It was also designed to be "winnable", more or less, as developers wouldn't profit from customers' prolongued playtime. Other differences compared to traditional MMORPGs included strictly PvP-only areas, a relatively short playtime requirement to access end-game content, and instant world travel. For these differences it was termed instead a "Competitive/Cooperative Online Role-Playing Game" (CORPG) by its developers, and is now seen by some as occupying a new niche in the MMORPG market.

Finally, despite WoW's domination in the pay-MMORPG market, there still has been significant competition (and potential for profit) among free MMORPGs. A good example of a potentially profitable free MMORPG is the Korean MapleStory, a side-scroller developed by Wizet, which features purchasable game "enhancements". Due to its free nature, the game is said to have more than 30 million players in all of its many versions, with the majority of them from East Asia.