I really wonder what happened to the MMO playerbase...
The 90s were so great with MUDs and early MMORPGs.
I'm almost now sick of this "immersion" argument -- What breaks immersion is people trying to constantly change a game to their liking even though 100x more people like what they hate. Immersion means you can feel a part of the world the designers create, not what you're trying to change the world into.