In this extensive interview conducted at GDC China, Bill Roper, former design director of Cryptic Studios discusses what he sees as the broken model of MMO development in the West, and explores the negative reaction to Cryptic's Star Trek Online and Champions Online.
Before Flagship Studios, there was Blizzard North. Originally known as Condor, the Redwood-based studio was acquired in 1997 by Blizzard Entertainment. At the time, Blizzard North was hard at work on the development of the game that would be the cornerstone of everything that came after: Diablo.
Perhaps it's not the model that's broken, perhaps its your games. Maybe if Cryptic made a decent game, people would actually play it...