The Daily Grind: Want to make an inaccurate prediction?

GW2 will be free but have a sub option.

SWTOR introduces non-rails space flight. The Sith lose (they do, they really really do I've seen the following films so I know, ok).

WoW Kills Jaina, Garrosh is beheaded by Thrall. Panda's suddenly pop up out of nowhere on both factions. Sugar cane imports increase in Azeroth.

AoC goes fully nude. YEAH! Er, for 18+ players only of course.

Beau will end the year extolling the virtue of mainstream sub-based MMOs over browser-based F2P games.

Deadalon will announce that he's so impressed with the way Secret World launched that he's bought shares in Funcom.

Planetside 2 will beat GW2 for Game of the Year.

SOE will announce a major expansion for Vanguard.

Brad McQuaid and Richard Garriott will announce that they have teamed up to develop a new MMO and have appointed Derek Smart as Director of Community Relations.

Let me see...

WoW will decline, lose more players cause they will launch one more expansion with crap content, minor updates and bla bla bla. Maybe they can got attention from PvP players again, but not enough. GW2 will be the game of the year, i don't think they will have a sub option (@dudes) just a shop to buy mounts, pets, change realm, change name, chnge sex.... this kind of things. Diablo 3 will finish WoW, a lot of guys will prioritize D3 over WoW. I'm one of this guys. Firefall will fail. RIFT will go F2P. Wildstar will be the revelation of the year. TERA? One more, nothing special.
I'm drunk, that's all folks! Happy New Year!

World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic merge to create Star Azeroth: The Old World. Forums for both games cause the internet to collapse due to the sheer volume of digital screams.

Sunrise will announce the development of a Tiger & Bunny MMO, where you play as a member of the Hero Academy or second league. Players will be able to roam freely around Sternbild, looking for dynamic event-style crimes and accidents to use their NEXT powers to help resolve. To my eternal dismay, there will be no game-supported option to side with Lunatic.

Guild Wars 2 will flop financially, as gamers will find the philosophy behind it too confusing.

Blizzard will announce the addition of more "sandbox features" to WoW.

FFXIV 2.0 will turn out to be FFXI-2.

My mother will learn how to jump in Glitch.

Blizzard will keep talking spast about upstart MMOs and Ghostcrawler will continue to belittle people with taunts of "you'll be back" ... only to realize that talking pandas get WOW laughed at and no one comes back to stay.

The people who keep whining about "no new innovation" in MMOs will karking FINALLY wake up to the fact that if they want to see innovation, they have to financially support the games that do so and not abandon the game when these "innovations" get hiccups.

However, even after that realization these no-new-innovation-naysayers will go running back to the games with the most polish faster than a franging cheetah just like the numbers show they do every frakking time.

MMO makers will have a consciousness shift and realize MMO players want a virtual world to play in, not some stang filled themepark. Leveling areas will still be themepark rigid, but "end game" will be a sandbox island/continent where guilds (in the name of their factions) will seek to colonize/dominate as they place and destroy each others buildings (while the main guild city is in an instance back around the capitals... allowing guilds to earn expansion xp without losing everything).
Furthermore, gamers will start seeing activities divied up in their game experience:
1. Combat Class: duh.
2. Social Professions: Like a Sims-style politician (who talks to NPCs to sway guild city elections); Barbers/Gear Dyers; Events Coordinators (who can spawn fireworks, kegs, circus tents, w/e); etc.
3. Professions: A crafter and two Gatherer skills
4. Past Time Professions: Sports, racing, and other non-combat PVP things to choose from
5. Piloting Skill: Choose from steering a ship, driving a tank, flying a plane, etc. on the battlefield!

After that consciousness shift, however, MMO makers will be total bishwags when they realize that a virtual world requires work; and they go back to making F2P themepark grind fests

I will start giving a kriffing frip of how geeky I look using STAR WARS profanity ( http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Slang ) some time around June... only to revert back when I realize actual profanity gets your posts removed from forums/comments sections.

SWTOR will implement a lot of features that the community wants and has been asking for. The overwhelming response to this by the Massively commenters will be "I hate this game and for it to bring enjoyment to others is a terrible personal attack against me".

There will be a quest in Mists of Pandaria that will have players waterskiing after a boat, hitting a ramp and actually jumping over a shark.

As Guild Wars 2 will be nearing release, a full on forum war will break out between fanboys hailing it as the second coming and haters declaring that it just stole from WoW/SWTOR/GW1/. Those of us who are more interested in gaming than arguing will just try the game out either way.

A new MMO is announced, hyped, hated, delayed, cause for some sort of scandal and in the end scrapped. Most people in the world will be unaware of this.

Some great comments so far. I can't really think of any quite as funny, so I'm going to try for the boring-yet-may-come-true predictions:

WoW will continue to lose subscribers whilst simultaneously introducing more and more paid-for junk. I'm guessing subs will be about 7.5m by the end of the year.

Rift will go F2P

Tera will be a slight disappointment both on numbers of subs and quality of game (would love to be wrong about this)

SWTOR will be a big success as far as subs go (yeah ok, that's not exactly a brave prediction)

GW2 will be awesome! (I hope)

...and finally Hello Kitty Online will hit the ONE HUNDRED MILLION subs mark, attracting top raiding guilds such as Paragon, Method etc over to try to conquer it's high-end raids. (Siamese Core, Catwing Lair, Sunwell Cateau etc)

There will be much more PvP in the coming year:

http://ponyvspony.artix.com/

Well I think that many new mmo's will come out and will take down WoWs subscriber number even more. The new xpac for WoW will flop taking down there population wven more. SWTOR population will rise with a small amount of WoW population. The Secret World will be released near the end of the year and do well then level out. Warhammer 40K Dark Millenium Online will be released effectively finishing off the other war hammer game. Other twitch mmos such as RaiderZ will come out and do successful in the Asian market and okay in American and European markets. TERA, another twitch combat game will flop because of RaiderZ. GW2 will do good during the first few months but population will level out. RIFT will put in a cash shop and/or go free to play. Many new f2p will be released and fail. The new top MMOs will be SWTOR at 3 million active non bot/gold farmers and WoW at 5.9 million active non bot/gold farmers. All in all an active year

a) Final Fantasy XVI will shutdown due to lack of interest.
b) SWTOR will lose 200K-300K subscribers in the coming months.
c) Tera will will surprise most mmo pundits as being a very good mmo.
d) Star Trek online will have a massive influx of players and servers will
crash.
e) Guild Wars 2 will be the surprise hit of 2012.
f) Planetside 2 will go live sometime 3/4 of '12

California passes the Steve Jobs Bill, which includes a provision that all MMOs (sub and F2P) run on OSX. Riots follow.

To counter Mists of Pandaria, TOR announces that its first expansion will be all about the Lepi.

DCUO announces its expansion, "The Brave and the Bold," which will require that players go on missions alongside the most obscure and quirky Silver Age (and earlier) characters developers can get their hands on. Player numbers briefly skyrocket when the Madam Fatal mission becomes a meme.

Fox announces an MMO based on its "smash hit" Terra Nova. The next day, Fox cancels the show.

In October, a presidential debate becomes a full-on shouting match when the candidates are asked, "Horde or Alliance?" Most analysts agree that Obama - who argues for the Horde - wins the night.