I came here expecting to find something new... find out about 8 of the games are a decade old or more. I wish they could make another list of top 5 in the past 5 years, or are there really not even that many being released these days? I feel like I've seen some really cool looking ones every year but never hear of them again.
GaaS took all the profitable pieces of the MMO model, and left the entire genre a desiccated husk populated with zombie games that refuse to die from the 90s, 00s, and 10s. Other than a couple Asian market games (because that market is a lot more accepting of extreme monetization in MMO), Lost Ark, and New World, I literally cannot think of a single MMO released in the 2020s that wasn't just a kickstarter scam, and even those are less common now.
I don't know. As a fan of the genre there seems to be renewed interest from some very grass roots developers. I would have agreed with your take in 2020, but in 2023 we have announcements of:
the Riot MMO
Ashes of Creation
The Ghost studios MMO
These are all still in development, some still in the very early stages. But I would say there appears to be renewed interest in the genre by developers. These projects are major investments by industry veterans. There is more hope for a major new game.now than there has been in the last decade.