My other two points:

1) The market is always the judge, jury and executioner.
2) Discussing game mechanics and features on paper is completely theoretical and academic. Getting it out the door is a wholly different beast.

Why are there so many clones right now? It's because that's what the market wants. We in KGB may not like that (in fact we find it rather distateful!), but we also aren't the audience that makes up the mainstream market.

It is, however, to the point now, though, that the market is becoming saturated, and that stirs up initiative and creativity amongst content creators.

As for the second point, I can't stress how many developers have set out to create full-featured games only to see them limp out the door as half-complete, poorly constructed shells of what they could have been. Making a game is expensive, and difficult, and that's just working on the core fundamentals of what an MMO should be, such as character creation, missions/questing, and working basic client/server tech.

I don't believe anyone would argue that the industry needs to create and deliver better products, but I am not certain it's due to a lack of creativity or desire. There are some very smart folks putting out clever products everywhere... some work out, some do not. It's a terrible thing to see features get slashed out of a product, or worse, for a game to fail, but blaming that on a lack of foresight or initiative does not really take into account all of the pressures and realities that developers and publishers have to deal with.