"This industry isn't working with the web very well at all..."

Said Raph Koster, author, and long-time MMO developer. Koster's career has spaned a number of highly visible online titles, including Ultima Online, on which he served as the lead designer on both it an its Second Age expansion. He also worked as the creative director on Star Wars Galaxies. At GDC ‘07, Koster spoke about the future of MMO’s and the intersection of video games and the internet.

"Consider the statistics. Webkinz, 2.5 million uniques in December; you buy a plush toy. Runescape: we still don't think of Runescape as being part of our industry, but it's probably the most popular MMO in the world, more popular than WoW. Toontown is up to more than 2.5 million uniques now. We never talk about Toontown because it's web deployed. Then of course there’s was Club Penguin, with 4.5 millions uniques in December alone...When you compare the numbers, all of those are larger than the number two MMO in the western world, every single one of them." he said.

Read the "Where Game Meets Web" article on Gamasutra