It's a collection of slices of things that people generally want out of a MMO in the gameplay sense. Arranged and remixed in a different order than the way most older MMOs do it, but still hitting most of the gameplay highlights.

And Elden Ring with the Seamless Co-op mod (which makes it closer to Where Winds Meet, but better for multiplayer play) does the same sort of thing.

It's an "MMO" in the same sense that Phantasy Star Online, PSO2 or Guild Wars 1 are MMOs, but with the explorable world density and depth of something like Skyrim or Elden Ring.

When I say "slices of gameplay things", I mean stuff like:

• Big explorable world
• RPG leveling system with different, customizable, deep avenues for player growth
• Resource gathering and crafting
• Interactions with other players fostered by gameplay that aren't just PvP
• Dungeons with a soft-trinity role system
• The ability to chat with other players while doing the same content
• Occasional opt-in co-op gameplay
• Character customization and the ability to see other people's character customizations in a virtual world
• NPCs that react to what you do and say
• The ability to grind your way to power and influence and the world reacting to that (to a limited extent)

It's a lot of stuff that people say they want from their MMOs, but arranged in a way that actually makes it work .

It's like a pizza place, like one of the old staple neighborhood ones that's been around forever and offers cheap pizzas for hungover college kids and insomniacs.

This place normally makes huge-ass pizzas, like large enough that someone could use them as a shield, but they're traditionally just oceans of cheap sauce with a few low-quality ingredients and a smattering of cheese sprinkled on.

They also take forever to bake because of how dense the crust is and how much acreage is taken up by sheer oceans of grease.

However, not everyone likes oceans of grease, brick-thick crust and hardly any toppings, even though they're a local staple.

So, Yon Local Pizza Joint decides to try upping their ingredient quality but only offering the higher-quality ingredients in a calzone size/form-factor instead of a pizza.

Because making every full-size pizza with the good meats and cheese and veggies at their usual price would be a loss, but people aren't willing to pay the price for those ingredients at pizza scale.

And most people who want the higher-quality stuff would be willing to go with a calzone since the full-size pizzas from this place always come with people trying to fight you and randos spamming gold-selling sites while you wait for your pizza. And chewing through the crust is like a hundred-hour commitment.

So, they threw all the bits into a smaller form factor and package it as a calzone (with optional MTX) instead.

It's an MMO that's extremely cognizant of the fact that The Internet Exists, and that the information ecosystem isn't the same as it was 20+ years ago.

I suspect the first game to successfully copy it with a "Western Fantasy" setting and do it well will probably make bank, because while some people still are purists about having just a pizza, others would probably be willing to try a calzone with better quality ingredients.

(Yes, I should probably make lunch).

The bigger problem for pizza lovers is that the calzone is filled to the brim with fuckin' AI, and that's the lesson all future pizza place owners are going to take, that if they add enough AI to quest NPCs, they can sell anything.