M&Ms were not my first CRPGs but certainly games I played. I still have the handmade map I made of the first M&M where it always looked like you were standing between 4 cards with pictures of scenery on them!
I dabbled with the later M&Ms (6, 7, & 8) but don't think I finished any of them. 6 crashed and was not recoverable (I started over 3 times from scratch and had the same thing happen each time - somewhere along the line the game saves became corrupted and there was no solution). I generally played until the game started getting sci-fi and settled for ArcoMage instead.
Many of the CRPG companies have had difficulties but I can't believe that there isn't a market out there for these games. No doubt it is more complex to put together a CRPG than a Shooter. Seems like the long development time is the biggest cause for problems. The critics tend to rag thess companies if there is not a major improvement in the game engine. Sometimes I would be quite happy to have the existing engine if the game itself is creative and interesting. I'm not always a fan of new bells and whistles. Unfortunately it seems when they do use the same engine to get a new game out more quickly, they don't do enough with the plot. M&M 7 and 8 weren't significantly different than 6. I didn't even bother with M&M 9.
Wyv