According to research firm DFC Intelligence, the WoW killer has been found, and it is named League of Legends.
Color this author skeptical, however. DFC Intelligence creates a quarterly report of the Online game market place using statistics gathered from the XFire network. In their latest report, League of Legends has more hours of gameplay than World of Warcraft. Other sites are touting this as the 'WoW killer'.
This author respectfully disagrees.
League of Legends is definitely a popular game. It garners plenty of viewers on Twitch.tv when it is ran as a tournament, with over 1400 viewers tuning in to watch matches. Players do play for hours on end in this game, so this author has no doubts as to the numbers seen by XFire as to its popularity.
But is it the WoW killer? No, it is not. First, League of Legends is not a MMO, it is in the same genre of games such as Starcraft 2, and the upcoming SMITE. For an MMO, what matters is the number of subscribers. World of Warcraft still holds the record, and people are paying for that game monthly to keep their accounts open. League of Legends uses a different revenue stream. So, trying to compare World of Warcraft to League of Legends, what is being compared is oranges to tangerines. Same general family, but different enough to not allow the term 'WoW Killer' to be used.
Right now, the closest game to being a 'WoW Killer' is The Secret World, until at least Guild Wars 2 goes live. These two games are in the same market as World of Warcraft. Many are praising The Secret World's innovative quests, while Guild Wars 2 will be directly competing for the fantasy MMO market with World of Warcraft. Look to these two games at this time for the real comparisons, until Phantasy Star Online 2 hits the United States market in early 2013.