The Automotive industry in not even close to an equal comparison. Software development in an MMO is far different.
Take WoW as the primary example. They have had continous development for over 10 years now. Every day that goes by they are adding more to the game or working on expansions and bug fixes.
Explain how a MMO that started development today come out with as much content and polish as a game that in the end has had 10 more years to work on their game?
WoW was the exact same way when it first released. EQ was bigger, was polished, and had more content than WoW when WoW first came out. Why then did WoW pass them up eventually?
WoW was successful because of what they did after the game was released, fixing bugs and adding content, not because of what it was at launch. If WoW was the same game 6 months after launch that it was on day one, it would have failed in the first year.