Here's a chart of MMORPG population figures, from http://www.mmogchart.com (which is an awesome site, if you're at all interested in current and upcoming MMORPGS):
I always ponder the large subscriber numbers for Lineage and Lineage 2, but figure it's a cultural thing (though a friend of my son's said a lot of his friends at boarding school play L2... 15 year old males... but I really don't know of anyone who LIKES it). But what really got me was the fact that WoW has absolutely crushed EQ2 by an almost 10:1 margin. Now does this mean EQ2 is a failure or that WoW is better? No, Yellowking, it does not. It just means that WoW has a metric crapload of subscribers.
One interesting thing about that chart is that I don't really see a whole lot of cannibalization by WoW... I mean, if you look at the "big boys" before WoW came out : L1, L2, EQ, DAoC, SWG... you don't see any big dips except for L1, and who knows, the way that yellow line swings wildly month to month, what's going on there.
Anyway, given the lack of cannibalization, I'd say that it does indeed appear that WoW has "expanded the pie" of users playing MMORPGS, and is an example of a new MMORPG that didn't get most of its users from other MMORPGS... and a growing market is a good thing.
In other MMORPG related news, Mythic announced today they are planning to add a new DAoC server type soon: one that has no Trials of Atlantis zones, no buffbots, and no instant /level 20 characters. It's been speculated that this won't really bring in new people, but will instead keep the people who've been playing DAoC playing longer, and I think that's a pretty good assessment of it. After all, if you think DAoC sucks, that server won't change your mind. But if you think ToA caters to the guys who play 20 hours a day, and you can "only" play 3 or 4 a day, then yeah, this server might suck you back in for a few months.
Assuming you're not spending those 3-4 hours a day in WoW running Molten Core raids, that is.
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