What exactly is holding MMO's back from looking as good as single player games?

Obviously, there is a bottleneck somewhere along the chain, that is holding MMO's back from being as visually stimulating as a single player game. Also, when it comes to games that have both a single player mode, and a multiplayer mode, the multiplayer maps usually are less detailed than the single player maps. I've always assumed that this had to do with the horsepower of the machines that are running the software, but we seem to keep getting more powerful machines, and it seems like this problem isn't going away.

Does anybody know what the real bottleneck is ?

In the next 10 years, will we ever play a MMO game that is indistinguishable from a single player game (of the same era) ? Is this a problem that is just never going to be solved ?

ok, then why does Halo multiplayer look so much worse than the single player ? Why does COD multiplayer look worse than singleplayer ? I'm talking about the console versions that don't have to worry about a user base with cascading levels of performance.

ok, what about Skyrim and Elder Scrolls online. Everybody knows how good Skyrim looks, yet everybody is expecting Elder Scrolls to look pretty crappy in comparison. You're saying that this has 100 percent to do with the developer trying to make sure the game will run for tons of various PC's. If that's true, why doesn't Bethesda try to scale back Skyrim more, so that it will work on tons of various PC's.

I'm not just talking about visuals either. I'm also talking about gameplay. In Skyrim, it's more of an action game, you swing the sword, you try to block, you directly control the actions. With most MMO's the action doesn't seem to be similar to a single player action game at all.


Think about a game like Grand Theft Auto. The gameplay is quick action. You move your character around, you shoot, you jump into a car, etc, etc. What is stopping Rockstar from making a Grand Theft Auto online that would have 100's and 100's of players in the world simultaneously ? With real, action type combat. Not click, click, click with your mouse, but more like action combat from a God of War or something. Is it purely just a horsepower issue ? Does it have to do with the bandwidth for internet connections ? I remember, 10 to 15 years ago, when I first heard about these massively multiplayer worlds, I wondered when I would be inside a world like Shenmue, except with hundreds of real human players also running around in the world, but I was also expecting to have real fast action combat, like a console shooter or action/adventure type game. Fast Forward 10 to 15 years later, and I'm still not seeing anything like that.