I think by now most people have realized that the strengths of WoW, those which allowed it to grow as large as and MMO were the exact Kal Online reasons nobody could ever steal away massive quantities of the subscription base.
I have played WoW since its release. I have loved the game for years. Even before the release, during the WoW beta which I never got into, I would follow the forums daily. You could call me an early addict.
I started to shop around, looking for other MMOs to play: Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lineage 2, Lord of the Rings Online, and many smaller production MMOs. None of them had enough grab for me that could take me away from WoW.
My love for WoW started to wane about half way through the TBC expansion; Guild drama, real life, kalonline geons major game overhauls such as the raid numbers issue, and general burnout from playing the same game for three years.
There is no doubt that games have chipped away at some previous subscribers of WoW, but most often the new MMO turns out to be highly niche based rather than a new all encompassing world. Even with all these new MMO games coming into the market, Blizzard loves to point out that their subscription base continues to grow.
Whenever a new big MMO was announced many people would start to talk about how it was going to kill WoW, how it would come in and take away all the subscribers.
