Because, like all MMOs, Destiny is digital cocaine.

Stay away, @OfficerRaichu15. Stay clean.

I not 100% sure if Destiny is a success for Activision however it's stock might tell us it wasn't as successful as Activision has expected. In fact it's stock dropped when Destiny release and it has been there ever since, the drop is even enough for EA's market cap to surpass it.

I even made a thread about this: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=195619&page=1#1

As my brother explains this game, its like a shitty mobile game with solid gameplay. You come back and do the same repetitve shit week in week out but you cant stop because it plays so well.
I however came in expecting a grand story and got fucking grimoire cards (not even readable in game) so you can see why I think its no more than a 7/10. At least PvP was fun for awhile even if you couldnt get far only playing PvP post story

The highest metacritic score... XDDDDDDDDDDD Nah, now they´re going to say that metacritic scores doesn´t matter (if they don´t say waht you want). When it comes from nintendo anybody seems to care...

*cries on corner* I'll get a prediction right one of these days

Destiny is NOT an MMO. Not even close... I know they did a lot of PR arround this and branded it as an MMO to sell but it is just not the case.
It is just another average shooter and I was so disapointed.

I was hyped about Destiny when I first read about it. That hype died down with every new revelation. By the time the game and the reviews landed, I decided to save my money for other things.

How grossly wrong you were, partially anyways. Push consoles but it got dumped on meta

We can mince words, but 12M+ online only players seems pretty MMO to me. Destiny has more players now than WoW (an accepted MMO?) ever did. I'm just curious where is deviates from any of the three identifiers: Massive? Check. Multiplayer? Check. Online? Check. So why do people even care about or bother refuting its status as an MMO?

I get it, you like destiny :)

But no, it is NOT an MMO. Based on your definition (and you "checks"), the majority of multiplayer games are MMOs (Forza, Halo, Destiny, COD, hell even Minecraft...). The problem is with the "massively" part, you may argue that it does not matter if they are playing on different instance/realm/server but it does matter actually and this is why COD has never been flagged as an MMO, so why would Destiny. In Destiny, you do not play in a single persistent world where you can see thousands of players and interract with them like in a real MMO. You are just doing what any other multiplayer game out there is doing: creating MP session/games for 16 players and playing that game (like instance in MMOs), like 99% of the multiplayer games out there are doing EXACTLY that.

I agree that those games (COD, Halo, Destiny) can be considerated as MMO in some areas. After all you have one character/profile and you upgrade it/level it up etc and always play with the same character/profile while running those instances/sessions. But comparing those games to a real MMO like World of Warcraft or EVE Online is quite silly. Even the MP matches/sessions are peer to peer in Destiny, there do not even have dedicated servers and it is limited to 16 players, hardly massive...

So maybe you'll come back and say that yes, it is an MMO but then as I said, COD, Halo, Forza, Gran Turismo are ALL MMOs and therefore they are all cocaine based on your words, right? :) And the majority of MP games are MMOs...

FYI, here are 2 definitions, as you can see in the multiple exemples, there is no mention at all of FPS or Minecraft...:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_multiplayer_online_game
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Massively+Multiplayer+Online