It's not that the MMORPG genre is failing, I don't think that that'll ever happen- there's just too many other good options out there, both paid AND free. I played WoW hardcore for about 8 years, but the appeals been declining since the Cataclysm release. A lot of us older subscribers will resubscribe during the expansion hype (Like I did for WoD) and then remember after a while why we'd quit the last time we'd stopped playing. I'm having more fun with Final Fantasy XIV, Tera, and Rift.
For me, it's just been waaaaay to long. WoW now goes through very drastic drastic changes with it's attempts to get new players, but retain older ones with every patch and expansion. A lot of the features we've been begging for for years now are being tossed into the next expansion to try and draw us back in, but it almost feels like a slap in the face, a last ditch effort. Too little, too late.
Couple this with the dramatic loss of friends and guilds over the years... So many people have stopped playing and moved on, or are still playing and aren't the same... To me, WoW has become a place of dreams that can never be again. I love WoW. LOVE it. I always will. It was the perfect game for me, the lore, the art design, the music, the gameplay, and the people I met. It got me through a lot of stuff over the years, and was very, very important to me. But it isn't the WoW I remember anymore, with the friends or the content I love anymore, and it can't be that again.
That's the big trouble with WoW- too many older disillusioned people chasing after dreams of fun they had years ago that they'll never quite recapture, and too many noobs who don't understand and don't care too, much less learn complex game mechanics. It's just the sad truth of a now unwieldy, massive game that's run it's course and well over.
