Will this change with technology like Google Stadia? Could a massive compute farm calculate all of the state for all players, and then just stream video data down?
My guess is no - you'd want the rendering to happen on the edge close to the player, but with a sufficiently advanced compute topology maybe some tasks can be farmed down the graph?
My understanding is that the client-side isn't generally the bottleneck for MMOs, it's all the server-side computation that has to happen to make it all run. Calculating behaviors, physics, etc for hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously is really hard, and Google Stadia doesn't change that in any meaningful way.
Edit: Well, now that I think about it, it depends entirely on the game; PlanetSide 2 is an example I can think of off the top of my head that brought my computer to its knees during big battles. But most MMOs aren't exactly pushing the envelope of graphics quality or physics simulation, so it's not as big of an issue.
My guess is no - you'd want the rendering to happen on the edge close to the player, but with a sufficiently advanced compute topology maybe some tasks can be farmed down the graph?