Where's Maple Story? They now have over 6 million users, and is the number one PC game on gamefaqs.com

Pretty sure Ragnarok was popular also?

MapleStory is like the utmost embodiment of a grindfest.

no one has mentioned that WoW has PRE existing brand appeal. Warcraft I, II, and III were all smash hits and Blizzard has a reputation for great games. So before you even get to the actual game WoW had a leg up on everyone else.

Absolutely, but your point doesn't seem to disagree with mine. Ignoring the hardcore fanbase doesn't mean literally going the entire opposite direction and making a game with a single button that performs one function; it just means not doing what they want, which is to make the fighting games increasingly complex and intricate. 

In short, I agree that it appeals to both groups. But hardcore fans wanted games to continue to get more and more complex, and Smash consciously went in the other direction to great success. 

Melee was unintentionally made much deeper than 64, due to the exploits and rigourous probing done by the competitive community.

Other fighting games seriously need to reinvent themselves. We're basically seeing the same fighting games that have been around for 10-15 years.

Well, as true as that is, Brawl was made deeper than Melee intentionally.  Air combat was increased, making it a dual sytle game (so you need to be good at both).  New techniques were added such as Footstool Jump, Gliding, Glancing Blows, and Pivot Grab.   Old exploits were made into official techniques such as L-Canceling, now called Ukemi, Small Jump, etc.  Smash isn't really a shallow game at all.  It's full of techniques for the advanced. 

However, knowing how to jump and use the A and B button is enough to play against low level CPUs, and that's basically what Smash is about.  Anyone being able to play, but being extremely competitive at its strongest.  Sakurai once refered to it as a sport, and I think this is a good analogy.  Just like sports, it has varrying degrees of skill.  Your 7 year old can play in Little League, but that doesn't mean he's going to be beating Barry Bonds's home run record either (Unless of course you give him lots of sterroids).  The same basic theory applies to Smash, and that's why it works well.

I have played UO, Wow, FF11, LII and Guild wars. My fave is UO and it will always be the best. It kicks wow's ass, but it is old and so buggy :(

Wow is just boring... running everywhere doing quest. I prefer freedom to do what ever and make what ever type of character I want.

Wow is doing so great, it's fresh and has alot to offer. I'm hoping console mmorpg's will start to change things and compete with wow :P

We won't know if Brawl is as deep as Melee for quite awhile.  They have made it easier to return to the stage with the increased floatiness, and vastly increased the sweetspot to grab onto the legde.  Not to mention tether recoveries don't need to be aimed to hit the sweetspot, the close edge game is near gone at the moment. 

L-Cancelling is gone as far as we know. Ukemi is not L-cancelling, the L stands for lag not the L button.  L-cancelling is a way to reduce the lag time that follows certain moves, not preventing yourself from falling over after being hit.  Sakurai has removed L cancelling and has just put more variations on the lag times of different moves across the different characters.  Also, the stun time on characters has been shortened which means, as of now it is harder to string together combos as characters float further away and can recover.  Short hops are still in, but that was a given, all in all Brawl has made the Smash series even more beginner friendly.  We'll know if it's as deep as Melee probably around 3 - 6 months of it being released IMO.