After thinking about MMORPG design for a while I have come to the conclusion that if you look at all the MMORPGs released since back in Meridian 59's day you can broadly divide the approach to the creation of the game into two camps; the society design camp and the game design camp, and that when you look at the games through this lens you can learn a lot about what worked in the game and what problems occurred. Even better, using the same categories to look forward you can get an idea of what problems might face MMORPGs yet to be released.