I wonder if procedural generation is really the next step. We've seen this in the dungeon crawler genre and it worked well. However, I don't want MMOs to be procedurally generated dungeon crawler. I'm already tired of the grind.

Personally, I enjoyed CoH and WoW, but I'm not sure there is a fix for the current state of MMOs. Once you've lived in and been burnt out by an MMO, it's very hard to go back. The genre would have to change dramatically for me to consider investing another 4 years in a new MMO.