MMO’s became all theme parks (which is fine I suppose), but the theme parks got a LOT simpler.
  1. classes have been pigeon holed heavily, many MMO’s launch with a class needing a single stat – just get more better willpower and U2WIN!
  2. meaningful crowd control and pulling ability have been tossed out the window in favor of easily spaced out, non-interlaced groups of “just the right size” content
  3. shared dungeons gave way to instanced dungeons in part to improve the number of things you could do in an encounter, but also to avoid training and camping
  4. loot got mind numbingly boring. Neat effects gave way to linear gearing and BoP everything. In a world where QL is all that matters, gear choices are a simple greater than, less than check. Thinking, who needs that.
  5. you can equip every single ability you ever learn, even the lower tier versions in some games. This reaches it’s zenith in EQ2 where you need 8 skill bars (or three keyboards I guess) to play the game (some hyperbole intended). Back in EQ1, casters had to pick which 9 spells they wandered around with – choice mattered. Nowadays? Just click whichever ability is lit up, avoid the ones that are grey. Some classes require more thought than others, many play perfectly well on auto-pilot.
  6. games are built to reach max level in a month. The journey doesn’t matter, only end-game does.
  7. however, the game design now focuses on solo to max level and then group up to play end game. In the process of doing the first, you have built no community hooks to supplement the second.

The end result is that games are very streamlined in order to “keep subscribers,” but paradoxically produce subscribers that have no social hooks into the game and thus next to no switching costs to jump to another game.
I can't say any better, what this guy is writing over there: Link.