>>718902135
In the modern vernacular, dead means its not popular (which can ironically make it become popular among hipsters who want to play an obscure game.)
Everquest is a dead game but it doesn't hide it. It's a ghost town, if you bumble around in everquest or GW1 it's largely going to be just you.
Modern MMO's try to hide this by obscuring the numbers or playercount, or in GW2's case making megaservers. That can only go so far to making a dead game appear lively because you are going to have a hard time doing the OG content on GW1, there simply aren't people to queue with.
> not a commitment for life
I think there's only a very small portion of gamers who are like this and Ideally that's who you want to attract if you are getting an MMO. I'm not a loyalist personally. I played Runescape originally, jumped over to Ultima Online, then WoW, then GW2, then Archeage, then FFXIV, currently not playing any MMO's because if the game is not fun, why bother?
Among those MMO's I listed, the only one I would consider not "dead" is FFXIV, but only because there's a daily incentive for veterans to play legacy content so you're not going to have trouble queuing as a new player.