While luck is rather a dismissive sort of word, yes, I do think a great deal of WoW's success is right place-right time-good game factors glomming together. Then afterwards, once numbers hit a critical mass, word of mouth, peer pressure and internet phenomenon turned cultural icon did the rest to keep adding to its population. Worldwide.

WoW had a diku-based MMO structure, supported by ease of entry into the newbie levels, escalating requirements to reach the max level, and a whole bevy of developers who believed in raiding as endgame. One look at that structure and I said, four years. My guess was that the average person would end up sucked into that rat race treadmill for the period of a college education before getting bored and moving on.

However, my best guess was based on people who gamed. Primarily achievement-seekers, hardcore players who would eventually drain dry the content before it was humanly possible to replace it with more, and find more content somewhere else.

Not the other population component of WoW, those attracted by the social draw of an online community. For whatever reason, good marketing combined with pop phenomenon, WoW awareness turned mainstream and it was suddenly cool and acceptable to be seen playing WoW. A number of those people are always going to remain attached to their first online community and not move on, plus others who get tired of it never make the next step into another MMO.

Blizzard did many clever things right. Cartoony cute graphics are a crowd puller - a spectator watching someone else play will go "Hey, what is that? Looks interesting." Enter lead-in to an addictive free trial being dangled on a hook.

The hand-holding and linear level design of the early levels, plus clear UI, make it very straightforward for a true newbie to catch on, and hook themselves in casino-like fashion.

The smoothness of combat and arcade-like response times of skills and spells was a great design decision, well-implemented and not let down by any lag on the side of client or server architecture.

Marketing was fantastic. Never rested on its laurels, and always kept pushing the word WoW into the collective consciousness. Coupled with an already strong fanbase from its Diablo and Warcraft/Starcraft games who supported the lore and would sing its praises as free advertising.

But other factors were luck - in the sense of being in the right place at the right time. The concept of an MMO as fun grind can only pervade world consciousness once. All the social network hooks of "your first MMO" is a once-in-a-lifetime event.

I believe not even Blizzard will be able to recapture those kinds of numbers with a second MMO. With another kind of innovative game and good marketing, no doubt, something as different and yet as easy to pick up as Diablo or Starcraft and complex to master, they can hit those numbers. But an MMO to compete with their own WoW gorilla already on the market? Nah.

There's always a certain subset of people who won't accept change and won't want to leave. That's already a significant drop in percent population. (Unless they pull a clever statistic trick by offering current WoW players a free subscription or copying all existing characters to their new MMO or something.)