"AAA Mainstream MMORPGs" are trash. Meanwhile LOTRO, SWTOR, DAoC Eden, and Warhammer Age Of Reckoning are *CRISP* right now! Community is alive at that level!
MMOs are not dead imho. Players have changed - being social is way less important and basically people want to play online games in a world full of other people, but by themselves and have their progression only tied to their effort and not other players. Basically persistent worlds full of solo players. Also, many MMOs popped when there were not a lot of alternatives and gaming was much smaller as a whole. Now you have great games that can give better experiences, or have a much more flexible structure that can accomodate different playstyles. Most MMOs are tied to old gameplay systems that are just outdated in modern gaming.
yup I like having a world thats home with people in it, but I also like being left alone in that world, its enough to know others are there and sharing the world, Like real life, you dont want to live in a world by yourself but that doesnt mean you want to always be around others socially.
@LizzieLeish makes total sense. Amd in gameplay terms, nothing is more fulfilling than having the security of just logging in and get stuff done no matter how or with whom i play.
@@LizzieLeish XD i love delves aswell, even if they're too easy on some aspect. But again if it's meant to be solo content, they have to make so any class/spec can do them reliably. Given the wildly different toolkits, they need to consider the lower common denominator. Now i'm starting to do m+ , and it's a pain not really because of the difficulty or anything, it's just that for any reason at any moment the whole run could just go down the drain and i have wasted ao much time. Delevs i can just jump in and do them. I would pay big money for a dungeon system where i can gear up 5 characters of my warband and run those with them.
People are getting bored of doing the same exact thing every year but in a different zone. Blizzard has followed the same formula since Legion, this seasonal approach to video games is just so ass and restrictive in terms of creativity.
Blood elf fire mage here, I started in dragonflight s2, since I have been aotc every raid and hit 3k io in s3, even I have to say it's starting to get very repetitive and I have to take a break every once in awhile for a few weeks coz it's a burnout
Go give osrs a go, it does have a very steep learning curve and its own issues but its worth trying, its a game that respects your time, no needles seasonal resetting of progress and the like.
I tend to disagree in general since the MMORPGs are one of the few unique environments that give all of the elements you mentioned in your video a CONTEXT, making those elements feed off of each other and build up on one another. What is a dungeon or a raid without a purpose of going through it for example. Of course there is a room for making all of the elements more complex and meaningful - SWTOR comes to mind in regards to the story and narrative design. Also, MMORPGSs are the only genre that successfully emulate a fictional world which grips you even more into it - I mean look at you Accolon, you are still making WoW videos despite so many years gone by which is a proof that the genre has some magic to it that makes it unique. Lastly l, something more specific to a WoW - it will never die, or at least become non-profitable, the WoW has run for so many years that it transcends the concept of it being just another game, for many of us it became home, not because we are addicted but because we are attached and invested into it.
The biggest issue I have with WoW is that it always feels like it's a work in progress, like I'm paying to constantly beta test the game. I don't expect everything to be perfect, but entire guild banks disappearing is inexcusable, let along the myriad of other bugs embedded in.
Guild Banks were never meant for what people abused them for, and you can claim that said banks deleting their inventory is inexcusable, i strongly disagree. that's on you, KNOWING that things could go wrong when messing with Banks, yet you didnt move the items or gold in any measure. shit happens, bruh.
WoWs shift in focus to the single player experience like delving is what is going to keep the $$ rolling. The shared space in MMOs should not be taken for granted. We like to show up our stuff, which is why it’s different from solo games like Elden ring. Also you can’t use cheat code and cheat mods in WoW unlike solo games.
I don't think MMOs are over. It is time for them to evolve dramatically. Remember the late 90s/early 2k when every other game was a platformer? We don't have many platformers anymore. But most open world type games have all the platforming gameplay. Genshin Impact for example is a platformer disguised as an action rpg. They evolved. WoW is basically an open world "hub" for three separate games that share assets. Some people feel like they have to do everything. You don't. My aunt has played since day 1. She levels and pet battles. I would like more mmo type things included in other games. COD should have lots of customization, and a hub city to walk around, chat and meet people. It wouldn't take away from the current game, just add an avenue for team building.
Yeah probably the biggest issues. WoW's main three for some reason get tied into one another instead of being separate. Which is probably due to gearing. From what I understand to gear optimally you had to do a certain amount of Mythic+, PvP, and Raiding. Regardles of which of those lanes you were in. I think this expansion delves replaced PvP in that aspect so maybe that is a bit better... but not by much.
Everything has it's Time... And it's Place!!! Everything!!! Including MMOs! Although that said, I'm still having a blast with Hardcore! I guess because it's just sooo streamlined and familiar! And the critically important Community appears to be stronger than ever here! 👍🏼
I think wow could be in a strong place if they removed all that gearing gadgets that actually demands farming and time sinking, such as crests and valorstones, which stands for the same thing as artifact power but now way more compelling, because it affects directly on your gear power and level. The game uses the “plenty of options” excuse for that, but its actually a “to do” list, since the more you grind, the more you gear up. I wish it stayed more as simple as just getting loot from stuff and thats it..
Well, I loved Pandaria Remix. Constant progress in power level. I've leveled up almost all classes and am looking forward to the next remix. But when I think of TWW now, it's no longer a real MMO for me, but more of a huge collection of minigames in WoW style. Not to mention all the gatekeeping. I think if the development team goes back to the core of the game - character progression (without artificial limits) - more people will have fun for longer and won't drop out after a few months.
You are over thinking it. Most casuals want to be able to get the best gear, which is not very obtainable at a reasonable pace for the casual game mode in m+. We are only able to obtain 1 Myth track piece of gear, which takes almost one week cap of crest to upgrade to max ilvl. This is discouraging. Crafted gear does not reach max level now and it does take a week cap of crest to upgrade to its max ilvl. Heroic level gear only is able to go up to 626 ilvl now with the max ilvl being 639. Where champion gear goes all the way up to 619. Basically the carrot is gone. There are many things they could do to make this better which is make mythic raid a smaller raid size. This would force blizzard to not make such class dependent fights anymore. Another thing they could do is just let M+ players get more myth track gear. They also need to ease the progression from 11's to 12's. The collectors, solo players and high end game mode is fine right now. They lost their casuals who still like a challenge base.
honestly the MMO Genre has had it's time of oversaturation, so it's reasonably limited with how many people play them these days. sadly, that means that WoW will not likely last another 10 years... possible sure, but not easily, since that means they'll have to double down on their playerbase which is for the most part aging/dying. all things that begin also end, it's a universal truth, but it's an ugly truth.
What’s wow’s problem it misses the small stories, stories like vanilla stories that keept the game interesting, scarred crusade story lines etc etc. All stories now are tied to the main and once u pass them once you will have 0 interest to do it again.
A lot of people that enjoy mmo's are just going to private servers. The communities are big, there is custom + content(or are faithful recreations), the devs are right there and available on discord and are happy to talk about the game, and they're run pretty professionally for the most part. Why even play retail games at this point if you enjoy mmo's?
The problem with MMOs is that while yes, gamers want MMOs, not all gamers want MMOs. They're a niche, even if that niche used to be huge, it suffered from the same thing Battle Royales, Hero shooters, Mobas and others suffer - everyone trying to just emulate the "successful" one. People who want MMOs do NOT want WoW clones, why play a wow clone if wow exists? So then we go to the next point - Unique MMOs. Those exist and are really fun, but then you create niche within the niche and the "total" playerbase spreads more and more so everyone can find what they enjoy and NONE of them is able to capture all of the MMO niche, they all just pick something and focus on that aspect. So when you have a finite playerbase - the people interested in MMOs and then fracture that further into smaller niches - MMORPGs as a genre cannot sustain millions of active users for each game. They're well catalogued on wikipedia - for every WoW and FF14, there's 8000 MMOs that die in obscurity, not because they're bad games (a lot are, but not all), but because that niche that they tried to fill has already been filled. Unlike singleplayer games or Mobas or shooters where they can exist simultaneously and support recurring player spikes and downs, MMOs just compete with each other for every single player and every minute of these players time. And when a game fundamentally focuses on repeatable daily activities, limited time events, FOMO, continued subscriptions or buying new expansions all the time, or (god forbid) the p2w elements to keep going forward - the playerbase gets even more fractured. People grow up and don't have 16h a day to run around WoW anymore so they play less and less, become more and more casual and the player numbers dwindle naturally. Then that leads to the next problem - attracting new players. New MMOs spike in numbers on release and die out quickly because players go in to check the newest freshest game, realize it's not as good as they'd like and quit. Once word of mouth goes out that "this game is dying" - it's a self fulfilling cycle until it fully dies It's not sustainable as a concept. It was a great idea back in the days when people had no internet and limited amount of games they can play. Nowadays... it's impossible to sustain and the fact the few "big" MMOs are still holding the numbers they are holding is pure luck, magic, nostalgia and/or underhanded tactics that i've rambled for years about
FF14 DT got me drained, bored and pretty much just feel questioning my purpose lmao. Like the game just drained the Hype out of my system that i cant get to care anymore on new announcement. Its painful but i just try to keep going and log in to do weekly savage and then log out.
hell no, if anything create an Offline Mode, akin to Phantasy Star Online, that would be way more important since it would mean that the game is still playable once the servers go down.
I just could not find a group of ppl to play with and I have a very available schedule. Could not find a AOTC guild or a group of ppl to do M+ with and pugging both of those things just got to the point where I felt like it was a waste of time. So I've stopped playing I do miss it but with nobody to play with its just becomes Q simulator.
I don’t wanna say the games been the same since I’ve started plying but it’s really the same. The raids have the same 15 mechanics, the new dungeons just aren’t really catered to m+ imo, I’ve been playing since BFA and it just feels like nothing new is under the sun.
The genre did nothing wrong, it's the community. All you have to do is look at the Hardcore-Casual spectrum. Hardcore players are despising the game rn, casuals are loving it because hardcore players simulate the fun out of every patch instantly with WoWhead checklists while casuals are just doing mount runs and doing content with friends. If you just explore the game at your own pace and make your own goals, it's literally infinite fun. But the community ruins everything for themselves, then they wonder why they aren't having fun. its really that simple.
The people who really like games are still a minority. They have always been a minority and they always will be. Think back to your school days - there was usually a small group of nerds who always played MTG, discussed nerdy stuff like Star Wars/Star Trek etc. These people are your MMORPG audience and they would LOVE a complex MMO fantasy world that they could invest a lot of time into. The remaining 80% of the "gamers" do not really like games. They don't like puzzles, they don't like complex systems, they don't want to learn, they don't want to plan and manage resources in a game, they don't want to explore worlds, they don't want to interact with others. They just want a time waster after a hard day of work. The simpler the game the better. The only reason they got into gaming is the fact that somehow it became socially acceptable, more popular. These are your average AAA games players. And I'm not saying they are bad or lazy people or anything like that. It's just that they don't have the passion for these things, maybe they have other things going on in their lives. That's fine. But games are designed for them now because the industry cannot survive on the backs of a few nerds.
I don't think MMO's are dying, the issue is just that people are often just so focussed on the dopamine ride or addiction. Within WoW this is represented by making everything just about gear and efficiency. They want everything straight away, and get frustrated if they do not. WoW even plays into this, cause looking at TWW, there is no high level zone like Suramar, leveling from 10-80 can be done within 80 hours, especially with the XP buffs. People often just get stuck in this cycle and if it's not streamlined to max efficiency, well, just get in the continuous dungeon cycle and gear upgrade track and get bored once they reach their wall. Together with an upgrade system and different seasonal gear tracks, it's the only focus people have. It's sad to be honest that you cannot loose yourself leveling for a day that you are off, it's slows you down, and enjoy the process of getting somewhere. But it's a reality we live in, it's not only a WoW problem, it's more than that, look at social media, TH-cam Shorts, TikToks, all just instant gratification or better said dopamine hits. I like TWW, especially just playing with friends, setting myself some goals and not caring about gear, realizing that, I enjoy the game and my own life a lot more. For the Warcraft Direct, I am looking forward to new fresh classic servers. Cause I wanna just level a character from 1 to 60, not with the goal of endgame, cause I can do that in retail, but to just spent a whole day from 45 to 48 for example and enjoy the tiny upgrades that I am getting, slowly paced and enjoy my time instead of being on a treadmill.
MMOs have been dead for a long time. We are a niche genre, and probably always have been. MMOs, ehem, WoW was a big thing just because early 2000's didn't have a social virtual space. With the advent of social media the raison d'etre of MMOs was gone.
Dude think about your DAOC example, "hardcore" mmo, - failed to generate interest and died. Ok but what about all these mmorpgs that were ultra casual, some didnt even had combat, or the Korean mmorpgs that you level through super fast, theres "fuality of life" features galore and a cash shop with all the boosts and mounts your heart desires... ALL OF THESE ARE DEAD TOO. Some zombiefied, some closed down permanently... Korean market and mobile market are filled with mmorpgs that pop up from nowhere and half a year later they are baren wastelands and getting shut down. You cant find a more casual friendly place than the mobile market... and shutting down these casual auto battler, auto play mmorpgs is the mobile markets status quo. So clearly its not the mmo being casual or hardcore that generates steady playerbase but the actual quality of the game experience.
2:49 Because you think you do, but you don't! 😅 MMOs are rarely designed to be good games, and are more often designed to make money and retain players. Maybe the correct move is to make 3 different MMOs that take place in the same Persistent World. I can play my narrative open world questing MMO. My dad plays a PVP combat MMO. My sis plays a cozy simulator+collectible MMO, but they're all part of the same world, and they interact with each other.
I honestly think that people forget what makes the magic of a mmo that being your character and others interacting with the world and seeing each other do that. I Don't want to sit in a safe place like Dornogal or Limza and be teleported into a instance then just see everyone else doing the same. I don't feel as connected to my character for a lot of the time making me not want to put time into them if i can make an alt and have it fully leveled and geared in 8 hours. Also Basing my whole game experience around a story that i have to wait months to play makes me just want to stop playing because i grow attached to other games i am playing. If i didn't have friends playing ff14 i doubt i would come back because i've already done everything offered and had to wait months for a new story beat ,trial, and raid.
Forgot to mention Delves shouldn't have been a main focus when dungeons and raids should have been a stronger focus and maybe better world events that make me want to stop what im doing and go do them with the larger community
This is the direction I thought things would go, I remember in 2008 talking with a friend and saying, “I wish you could get into this without having to go through the leveling grind.” I actually think retail WoW has largely solved these issues, and having played Monster Hunter World, Destiny, and Destiny 2 have come to a slightly different conclusion. The open shared world that allows for a wider variety of play styles allows WoW to have a much higher complexity ceiling with continued development that specialized games lack. Specialized games without a shared open world have a much narrower targetable market meaning they either grow boring much quicker or attract a very small market segment that probably doesn’t allow for continued development. Retail WoW is not without it’s flaws and would be incredibly well served by completely breaking PVP off from its relationship with PVE content, but I think the shared open world that allows for a variety of players will continue to attract a large audience for a non-insignificant amount of time to come.
I can't say that MMO'S are dead, but for some reason when i try a new one, i always find myself returning to WoW instead of continuing to play that new one. Maybe im just a one MMO Andy at the end of the day. I just find it hard to leave a game that i have invested 20 years of my life into i guess no matter how much i may need or wanted to do just that
I mean wow has way more players than any mmo you mentioned still, you can see it on twitch, youtube , google trends etc, wow is the only mmo that still kinda competes with the other big games on twitch which are either free or buy once. Also, on warcraft logs they broke a new record now with wow being back in china. I think wow is doing very well.
Final Fantasy suffered from a similar case of Concord. The game was honestly never that great, When I first started in ARR I thought it was a lot better than WoW. That quickly changed and sadly the game is far too positive to gather any proper feedback which is why the game is slowly starting a fail. WoW, always has its ups and downs. I think you are always going to have players drop over time. WoW I am still actively playing TWW my play time has been cut to about a quarter of what I was player when it launched. It happens you find other things to do than repeat the same content for a few months. These games can't provide enough long term content to keep players interested for a 3 - 6 month patch cycle. Which is a big cause of the player drop offs. It's really a loot treadmill, and you treat it like a tread mill. You get your work out and move on with your day.
Im gonna do it again, time to shill OSRS. If you are bored with the wheel that is most modern mmos, the daily quests, the weekly resets, patches constantly resetting your progress, give OldSchool RuneScape a go.
If one want fast fixes by blizzard as the pusher then retail are that for them and all content are dumbed down from how everything was the first time -people dont have time or patience or anything going for them - I like goals that cant be reached but gamers seems to be children in a way -they want it now and always->boring and then you get judged by those as player when you dont have the gear. Classic mobs are the nerfed mobs from early Burning crusade eg nerfed about 30%-50%
![เปิด อาณาจักร หมื่นล้าน "สาระตั้ม" l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3XE0nPF4YkQ/mqdefault.jpg)
The MMO era has been dying videos have been coming out for 15 years. It ain't going anywhere.
I wouldn't play an MMO with no open world stuff - that's one of the draws for me. Still playing wow and enjoying it.
"AAA Mainstream MMORPGs" are trash.
Meanwhile LOTRO, SWTOR, DAoC Eden, and Warhammer Age Of Reckoning are *CRISP* right now!
Community is alive at that level!
MMOs are not dead imho. Players have changed - being social is way less important and basically people want to play online games in a world full of other people, but by themselves and have their progression only tied to their effort and not other players. Basically persistent worlds full of solo players.
Also, many MMOs popped when there were not a lot of alternatives and gaming was much smaller as a whole. Now you have great games that can give better experiences, or have a much more flexible structure that can accomodate different playstyles. Most MMOs are tied to old gameplay systems that are just outdated in modern gaming.
yup I like having a world thats home with people in it, but I also like being left alone in that world, its enough to know others are there and sharing the world, Like real life, you dont want to live in a world by yourself but that doesnt mean you want to always be around others socially.
@LizzieLeish makes total sense. Amd in gameplay terms, nothing is more fulfilling than having the security of just logging in and get stuff done no matter how or with whom i play.
@@Coldkil666 yup, which is why they dont call me the guild master anymore, I am now queen of the delves lol
@@LizzieLeish XD i love delves aswell, even if they're too easy on some aspect. But again if it's meant to be solo content, they have to make so any class/spec can do them reliably. Given the wildly different toolkits, they need to consider the lower common denominator. Now i'm starting to do m+ , and it's a pain not really because of the difficulty or anything, it's just that for any reason at any moment the whole run could just go down the drain and i have wasted ao much time. Delevs i can just jump in and do them.
I would pay big money for a dungeon system where i can gear up 5 characters of my warband and run those with them.
People are getting bored of doing the same exact thing every year but in a different zone. Blizzard has followed the same formula since Legion, this seasonal approach to video games is just so ass and restrictive in terms of creativity.
Blood elf fire mage here, I started in dragonflight s2, since I have been aotc every raid and hit 3k io in s3, even I have to say it's starting to get very repetitive and I have to take a break every once in awhile for a few weeks coz it's a burnout
Go give osrs a go, it does have a very steep learning curve and its own issues but its worth trying, its a game that respects your time, no needles seasonal resetting of progress and the like.
I feel like Bliz could cater to the RP community and have massive success. And part of that would be player housing and updates to major cities.
Final Fantasy is doing that and they are suffering too, WoW is best off just trying to cater to everyone like they're doing now.
Yea, I remember looking into "Fellowship." Looks fun.
I tend to disagree in general since the MMORPGs are one of the few unique environments that give all of the elements you mentioned in your video a CONTEXT, making those elements feed off of each other and build up on one another. What is a dungeon or a raid without a purpose of going through it for example. Of course there is a room for making all of the elements more complex and meaningful - SWTOR comes to mind in regards to the story and narrative design.
Also, MMORPGSs are the only genre that successfully emulate a fictional world which grips you even more into it - I mean look at you Accolon, you are still making WoW videos despite so many years gone by which is a proof that the genre has some magic to it that makes it unique.
Lastly l, something more specific to a WoW - it will never die, or at least become non-profitable, the WoW has run for so many years that it transcends the concept of it being just another game, for many of us it became home, not because we are addicted but because we are attached and invested into it.
The biggest issue I have with WoW is that it always feels like it's a work in progress, like I'm paying to constantly beta test the game. I don't expect everything to be perfect, but entire guild banks disappearing is inexcusable, let along the myriad of other bugs embedded in.
Guild Banks were never meant for what people abused them for, and you can claim that said banks deleting their inventory is inexcusable, i strongly disagree. that's on you, KNOWING that things could go wrong when messing with Banks, yet you didnt move the items or gold in any measure. shit happens, bruh.
it's crazy wow as a 20-year-old game still has better battle responsiveness and open-world than most single player games/mmos now
WoWs shift in focus to the single player experience like delving is what is going to keep the $$ rolling. The shared space in MMOs should not be taken for granted. We like to show up our stuff, which is why it’s different from solo games like Elden ring. Also you can’t use cheat code and cheat mods in WoW unlike solo games.
I am very limited on my time to play, but I have been with WoW since vanilla and have so much time and money vested in it that I just can't leave.
I don't think MMOs are over. It is time for them to evolve dramatically. Remember the late 90s/early 2k when every other game was a platformer? We don't have many platformers anymore. But most open world type games have all the platforming gameplay. Genshin Impact for example is a platformer disguised as an action rpg. They evolved.
WoW is basically an open world "hub" for three separate games that share assets. Some people feel like they have to do everything. You don't. My aunt has played since day 1. She levels and pet battles.
I would like more mmo type things included in other games. COD should have lots of customization, and a hub city to walk around, chat and meet people. It wouldn't take away from the current game, just add an avenue for team building.
Yeah probably the biggest issues. WoW's main three for some reason get tied into one another instead of being separate. Which is probably due to gearing. From what I understand to gear optimally you had to do a certain amount of Mythic+, PvP, and Raiding. Regardles of which of those lanes you were in. I think this expansion delves replaced PvP in that aspect so maybe that is a bit better... but not by much.
Everything has it's Time... And it's Place!!! Everything!!! Including MMOs! Although that said, I'm still having a blast with Hardcore! I guess because it's just sooo streamlined and familiar! And the critically important Community appears to be stronger than ever here! 👍🏼
I think wow could be in a strong place if they removed all that gearing gadgets that actually demands farming and time sinking, such as crests and valorstones, which stands for the same thing as artifact power but now way more compelling, because it affects directly on your gear power and level. The game uses the “plenty of options” excuse for that, but its actually a “to do” list, since the more you grind, the more you gear up. I wish it stayed more as simple as just getting loot from stuff and thats it..
crests and valorstones are abundant if you actually play the game
play final fantasy if you want that, personally I found that system not complicated enough to keep me interested lol. A happy middle would be nice
you fail to understand what an MMO is bruh.
This MMO life cycle has always existed, all the way back to before WoW came out.
I think MMOs got too serious and the devs just don’t know what they are doing in that space
Well, I loved Pandaria Remix. Constant progress in power level. I've leveled up almost all classes and am looking forward to the next remix.
But when I think of TWW now, it's no longer a real MMO for me, but more of a huge collection of minigames in WoW style. Not to mention all the gatekeeping. I think if the development team goes back to the core of the game - character progression (without artificial limits) - more people will have fun for longer and won't drop out after a few months.
You are over thinking it. Most casuals want to be able to get the best gear, which is not very obtainable at a reasonable pace for the casual game mode in m+. We are only able to obtain 1 Myth track piece of gear, which takes almost one week cap of crest to upgrade to max ilvl. This is discouraging. Crafted gear does not reach max level now and it does take a week cap of crest to upgrade to its max ilvl. Heroic level gear only is able to go up to 626 ilvl now with the max ilvl being 639. Where champion gear goes all the way up to 619. Basically the carrot is gone. There are many things they could do to make this better which is make mythic raid a smaller raid size. This would force blizzard to not make such class dependent fights anymore. Another thing they could do is just let M+ players get more myth track gear. They also need to ease the progression from 11's to 12's. The collectors, solo players and high end game mode is fine right now. They lost their casuals who still like a challenge base.
honestly the MMO Genre has had it's time of oversaturation, so it's reasonably limited with how many people play them these days. sadly, that means that WoW will not likely last another 10 years... possible sure, but not easily, since that means they'll have to double down on their playerbase which is for the most part aging/dying. all things that begin also end, it's a universal truth, but it's an ugly truth.
What’s wow’s problem it misses the small stories, stories like vanilla stories that keept the game interesting, scarred crusade story lines etc etc. All stories now are tied to the main and once u pass them once you will have 0 interest to do it again.
A lot of people that enjoy mmo's are just going to private servers. The communities are big, there is custom + content(or are faithful recreations), the devs are right there and available on discord and are happy to talk about the game, and they're run pretty professionally for the most part. Why even play retail games at this point if you enjoy mmo's?
Im loving SoD so much, maybe try SoD??? :D
Take away sub time, or take away paying for the expansion.
The problem with MMOs is that while yes, gamers want MMOs, not all gamers want MMOs. They're a niche, even if that niche used to be huge, it suffered from the same thing Battle Royales, Hero shooters, Mobas and others suffer - everyone trying to just emulate the "successful" one. People who want MMOs do NOT want WoW clones, why play a wow clone if wow exists? So then we go to the next point - Unique MMOs. Those exist and are really fun, but then you create niche within the niche and the "total" playerbase spreads more and more so everyone can find what they enjoy and NONE of them is able to capture all of the MMO niche, they all just pick something and focus on that aspect.
So when you have a finite playerbase - the people interested in MMOs and then fracture that further into smaller niches - MMORPGs as a genre cannot sustain millions of active users for each game. They're well catalogued on wikipedia - for every WoW and FF14, there's 8000 MMOs that die in obscurity, not because they're bad games (a lot are, but not all), but because that niche that they tried to fill has already been filled.
Unlike singleplayer games or Mobas or shooters where they can exist simultaneously and support recurring player spikes and downs, MMOs just compete with each other for every single player and every minute of these players time. And when a game fundamentally focuses on repeatable daily activities, limited time events, FOMO, continued subscriptions or buying new expansions all the time, or (god forbid) the p2w elements to keep going forward - the playerbase gets even more fractured. People grow up and don't have 16h a day to run around WoW anymore so they play less and less, become more and more casual and the player numbers dwindle naturally.
Then that leads to the next problem - attracting new players. New MMOs spike in numbers on release and die out quickly because players go in to check the newest freshest game, realize it's not as good as they'd like and quit. Once word of mouth goes out that "this game is dying" - it's a self fulfilling cycle until it fully dies
It's not sustainable as a concept. It was a great idea back in the days when people had no internet and limited amount of games they can play. Nowadays... it's impossible to sustain and the fact the few "big" MMOs are still holding the numbers they are holding is pure luck, magic, nostalgia and/or underhanded tactics that i've rambled for years about
FF14 DT got me drained, bored and pretty much just feel questioning my purpose lmao. Like the game just drained the Hype out of my system that i cant get to care anymore on new announcement. Its painful but i just try to keep going and log in to do weekly savage and then log out.
blizzard should split wow into 3 separate games. PVP, PVE, and WOLD only (what it used to be)
hell no, if anything create an Offline Mode, akin to Phantasy Star Online, that would be way more important since it would mean that the game is still playable once the servers go down.
I just could not find a group of ppl to play with and I have a very available schedule. Could not find a AOTC guild or a group of ppl to do M+ with and pugging both of those things just got to the point where I felt like it was a waste of time. So I've stopped playing I do miss it but with nobody to play with its just becomes Q simulator.
I don’t wanna say the games been the same since I’ve started plying but it’s really the same. The raids have the same 15 mechanics, the new dungeons just aren’t really catered to m+ imo, I’ve been playing since BFA and it just feels like nothing new is under the sun.
As long as Blizzard will turn a profit, WoW will go on.
The genre did nothing wrong, it's the community. All you have to do is look at the Hardcore-Casual spectrum. Hardcore players are despising the game rn, casuals are loving it because hardcore players simulate the fun out of every patch instantly with WoWhead checklists while casuals are just doing mount runs and doing content with friends.
If you just explore the game at your own pace and make your own goals, it's literally infinite fun. But the community ruins everything for themselves, then they wonder why they aren't having fun. its really that simple.
The people who really like games are still a minority. They have always been a minority and they always will be. Think back to your school days - there was usually a small group of nerds who always played MTG, discussed nerdy stuff like Star Wars/Star Trek etc. These people are your MMORPG audience and they would LOVE a complex MMO fantasy world that they could invest a lot of time into. The remaining 80% of the "gamers" do not really like games. They don't like puzzles, they don't like complex systems, they don't want to learn, they don't want to plan and manage resources in a game, they don't want to explore worlds, they don't want to interact with others. They just want a time waster after a hard day of work. The simpler the game the better. The only reason they got into gaming is the fact that somehow it became socially acceptable, more popular. These are your average AAA games players. And I'm not saying they are bad or lazy people or anything like that. It's just that they don't have the passion for these things, maybe they have other things going on in their lives. That's fine. But games are designed for them now because the industry cannot survive on the backs of a few nerds.
I just started playing my first MMO-New World Aeternum. Really enjoying it. There is so much to do.
I don't think MMO's are dying, the issue is just that people are often just so focussed on the dopamine ride or addiction. Within WoW this is represented by making everything just about gear and efficiency. They want everything straight away, and get frustrated if they do not. WoW even plays into this, cause looking at TWW, there is no high level zone like Suramar, leveling from 10-80 can be done within 80 hours, especially with the XP buffs.
People often just get stuck in this cycle and if it's not streamlined to max efficiency, well, just get in the continuous dungeon cycle and gear upgrade track and get bored once they reach their wall. Together with an upgrade system and different seasonal gear tracks, it's the only focus people have.
It's sad to be honest that you cannot loose yourself leveling for a day that you are off, it's slows you down, and enjoy the process of getting somewhere. But it's a reality we live in, it's not only a WoW problem, it's more than that, look at social media, TH-cam Shorts, TikToks, all just instant gratification or better said dopamine hits. I like TWW, especially just playing with friends, setting myself some goals and not caring about gear, realizing that, I enjoy the game and my own life a lot more.
For the Warcraft Direct, I am looking forward to new fresh classic servers. Cause I wanna just level a character from 1 to 60, not with the goal of endgame, cause I can do that in retail, but to just spent a whole day from 45 to 48 for example and enjoy the tiny upgrades that I am getting, slowly paced and enjoy my time instead of being on a treadmill.
MMOs have been dead for a long time. We are a niche genre, and probably always have been. MMOs, ehem, WoW was a big thing just because early 2000's didn't have a social virtual space. With the advent of social media the raison d'etre of MMOs was gone.
Dude think about your DAOC example, "hardcore" mmo, - failed to generate interest and died.
Ok but what about all these mmorpgs that were ultra casual, some didnt even had combat, or the Korean mmorpgs that you level through super fast, theres "fuality of life" features galore and a cash shop with all the boosts and mounts your heart desires... ALL OF THESE ARE DEAD TOO. Some zombiefied, some closed down permanently...
Korean market and mobile market are filled with mmorpgs that pop up from nowhere and half a year later they are baren wastelands and getting shut down. You cant find a more casual friendly place than the mobile market... and shutting down these casual auto battler, auto play mmorpgs is the mobile markets status quo.
So clearly its not the mmo being casual or hardcore that generates steady playerbase but the actual quality of the game experience.
2:49 Because you think you do, but you don't! 😅
MMOs are rarely designed to be good games, and are more often designed to make money and retain players.
Maybe the correct move is to make 3 different MMOs that take place in the same Persistent World.
I can play my narrative open world questing MMO. My dad plays a PVP combat MMO. My sis plays a cozy simulator+collectible MMO, but they're all part of the same world, and they interact with each other.
I honestly think that people forget what makes the magic of a mmo that being your character and others interacting with the world and seeing each other do that. I Don't want to sit in a safe place like Dornogal or Limza and be teleported into a instance then just see everyone else doing the same. I don't feel as connected to my character for a lot of the time making me not want to put time into them if i can make an alt and have it fully leveled and geared in 8 hours. Also Basing my whole game experience around a story that i have to wait months to play makes me just want to stop playing because i grow attached to other games i am playing. If i didn't have friends playing ff14 i doubt i would come back because i've already done everything offered and had to wait months for a new story beat ,trial, and raid.
Forgot to mention Delves shouldn't have been a main focus when dungeons and raids should have been a stronger focus and maybe better world events that make me want to stop what im doing and go do them with the larger community
This is the direction I thought things would go, I remember in 2008 talking with a friend and saying, “I wish you could get into this without having to go through the leveling grind.”
I actually think retail WoW has largely solved these issues, and having played Monster Hunter World, Destiny, and Destiny 2 have come to a slightly different conclusion.
The open shared world that allows for a wider variety of play styles allows WoW to have a much higher complexity ceiling with continued development that specialized games lack. Specialized games without a shared open world have a much narrower targetable market meaning they either grow boring much quicker or attract a very small market segment that probably doesn’t allow for continued development.
Retail WoW is not without it’s flaws and would be incredibly well served by completely breaking PVP off from its relationship with PVE content, but I think the shared open world that allows for a variety of players will continue to attract a large audience for a non-insignificant amount of time to come.
I can't say that MMO'S are dead, but for some reason when i try a new one, i always find myself returning to WoW instead of continuing to play that new one. Maybe im just a one MMO Andy at the end of the day. I just find it hard to leave a game that i have invested 20 years of my life into i guess no matter how much i may need or wanted to do just that
I mean wow has way more players than any mmo you mentioned still, you can see it on twitch, youtube , google trends etc, wow is the only mmo that still kinda competes with the other big games on twitch which are either free or buy once. Also, on warcraft logs they broke a new record now with wow being back in china. I think wow is doing very well.
WoWs Disney-fication is TRASH.
They destroyed faction warfare, they've destroyed the world. Its a lobby game now.
I agree, WoW is a lobby game with an open world to make it look otherwise. M+ is just a treadmill for those who are addicted.
I still enjoy WoW immensely.
MMO's are headed for extinction. Maybe so. But not today. Come play Hardcore on EU Nek'Rosh. My guild's almost full and I'm having a blast
Final Fantasy suffered from a similar case of Concord. The game was honestly never that great, When I first started in ARR I thought it was a lot better than WoW. That quickly changed and sadly the game is far too positive to gather any proper feedback which is why the game is slowly starting a fail.
WoW, always has its ups and downs. I think you are always going to have players drop over time. WoW I am still actively playing TWW my play time has been cut to about a quarter of what I was player when it launched. It happens you find other things to do than repeat the same content for a few months.
These games can't provide enough long term content to keep players interested for a 3 - 6 month patch cycle. Which is a big cause of the player drop offs. It's really a loot treadmill, and you treat it like a tread mill. You get your work out and move on with your day.
Im gonna do it again, time to shill OSRS.
If you are bored with the wheel that is most modern mmos, the daily quests, the weekly resets, patches constantly resetting your progress, give OldSchool RuneScape a go.
hell no
The game is trash
If one want fast fixes by blizzard as the pusher then retail are that for them and all content are dumbed down from how everything was the first time -people dont have time or patience or anything going for them - I like goals that cant be reached but gamers seems to be children in a way -they want it now and always->boring and then you get judged by those as player when you dont have the gear. Classic mobs are the nerfed mobs from early Burning crusade eg nerfed about 30%-50%