But an MMO that doesn't allow voice chat or playing with a party, the way the game is generally played? Whereas the non-"Better Together" version does?
I still can't help seeing it as a step back compared to what we have now.
That's pretty silly, to me. (you don't party up in MC btw, you just join the same server, generally speaking)
You're saying that
-- Being able to play with friends on huge dedicated servers, but if they're playing on another platform you have to use something like Discord for voice chat (assuming there's no in-game solution, which there likely will be)
is a step back compared to
-- the same thing except all of the console versions are still gimped (because that's how it is right now on W10/Mobile)
or
-- the console version being limited to 8 friends on the same service playing in a limited-size world that exists on one of their consoles and no dedicated support at all (but they can use chat to talk)
But currently, the market has several MMOs that are not crossplay. That's just the landscape of where things are right now. You're making it sound like all MMOs have cross play so this should too but unfortunately, this is the norm right now.
Minecraft isn't really analogous to a conventional MMO, it's just referred to as such here as a shorthand to emphasize just how important its online element is to the full package, and how social the game is in practice.
Minecraft is more like a MMO sandbox game. The mark you leave on a game world
is the game, you're not just consuming content designed by the developers. Now that console versions of the game will support dedicated servers, that means console players can leave their mark on shared worlds with one another, which is the main draw of this game, and which cross-platform support enables in a more inclusive fashion. Minecraft is also available and played on far more platforms than any other MMO, by far, so cross-play is a more ambitious endeavor in MC's case than it would be for most conventional multiplat MMOs (of which there are few), with wider implications for its community's future.