The fall of MMORPGs

Oh I stopped playing WoW a long time ago and I agree with you that there are people looking for something different, but unfortunately the features that popular MMO's have will have an influence on a player's buying decision and their decision to stick with a new MMO as opposed to going back to an old but well-developed one. Not to say that one can't play both. In fact, that's what usually happens. When FFXI, RIFT and SWTOR were announced, a lot of WoW players wanted something different and tried those games out while still playing WoW, only to stop playing the new game(s) and go back to WoW because of reasons such as FFXI's slow combat system in comparison to WoW's, RIFT being a "ripoff" of WoW, and I don't know much about SWTOR but I heard it wasn't very good. FFXIV flopped during 1.0 because of its depthless combat system, and it was recently revived into a better game so Square Enix could save face, but 1.0 has left a sour taste in the mouths of players so I can't really consider FFXIV as a major competitor to WoW.

I'm actually very curious about Tree of Savior, an MMO that is a lot like Ragnarok Online but with significantly more classes, improved graphics and more varied gameplay mechanics. I think it's still in Alpha or Closed Beta testing though.

 

It depends on how you look at it. There are about 7 million subscribers for WoW atm, and about 7 billion people in the world. That means there is only about a 1 in 1000 chance of your friend being a WoW player, without knowing any other information. This is quite low.

However, if you have a friend that plays MMOs, the numbers change drastically. The numbers on Twitch and mmodata suggest that WoW players make up 80+% of the active MMO players. So if you have a friend who's playing an MMO, chances are he's playing WoW. Of course, this isn't true for everyone, but probability says it's true for most people, so the assumption is fair on a global scale.

And no, I don't work for Blizzard. It's just another example of how the big guys snowball. The smaller guys get pushed out because people put a high value on playing with friends.

 

You are missing a few variables. Your statistics do not take into account the age of the players, the amount of time they have to play, the style of their play (role players and other niche groups), and numerous other variables that I can't think of because I haven't finished my coffee yet.

While WoW may have the largest population of any MMO, that does not mean that if my friends happen to have similar play styles to me that most of my friends who play MMO play WoW...or if they are my age, an age when most of us were weaned on text games and/or Ultima Online and have different expectations for games, or if as older gamers we have too many responsibilities and not enough money (college funds for kids, mortgage, etc.) we don't have the time to play more than a few hours a week and can't pay for a level 90 character.

I did remember a few other variables...don't like levels, don't like fantasy magical elfy stuff, don't like the immaturity of the players on a massive game.....I could go on and on. I honestly can't think of one gamer friend who plays WoW. I can think of many who play ESO, Eve, Lord of the Rings, etc.

My point in all this is that there is room for niche MMO's and MO's.

 

A few issues here: First of all, if a game tries to compete with WoW, they will lose. Making the same game or similar game and trying to get people to leave a game where they are familiar and have friends to come to a game that is the same but without their friends (or levels), is not going to work.

And believing that any mass marketed game made by a big corporation is going to be different just is delusional. Big corporations want money and they play it safe. They see WoW doing well so they copy it, change a few things, and think people will like it better, or as much. They require a zillion players to be profitable so they throw in everything and anything to attract as many diverse groups of players as possible.

A game that focuses on a smaller subset and builds a game that will attract that subset, like Eve or a few others out there, ends up doing very well, not like WoW, but well enough to be respected and continue growing. We need more games like Eve or smaller games that can operate on a smaller budget (no shareholders). They won't be as feature rich as WoW but what they have will be quality and make sense.

I am not bashing WoW or other games like WoW but I think we have to stop trying to find a competitor and start carving out our own niches.

 

Fair enough.

This sums up how I feel and is pretty much what I'm waiting to see from Tree of Savior.

 

Lost Ark Online anyone? Can't wait to see that!

 

Sure there is room. I didn't say everyone was playing WoW, just 80+%.

Not everyone uses Facebook as their main social network, but most people do. People follow their friends.

 

Actually, your 80% is wrong. Worldwide, WoW, makes up a very small percentage of MMO gamers in the world. It is a bit more in the US, but no where near 80%. How about a link to your stats? My son did a bit of research and can't find anything to support your numbers and in fact, he found several sources that show it is much lower.

I am too lazy and too busy to look myself and honestly, I don't care as much as he does. But if you are going to keep quoting numbers, you need a source, please.

Edit: He found 36% worldwide in 2013 played WoW. http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/top10_mmo_table.jpg

 

I think those stats are pretty good and relevant, probably have to wait until next year to get the next round up for 2014, but those numbers might just be less in 2014 is MMO subscribers are dropping. NCSoft I thought went F2P this year so that might change this alot...

 

just my 2 cents.. or like 5 cents lol
i have no interest in playing a MMO.. its just a gimmick..
Elder Scrolls Online is like .. a 1/10 .. .Skyrim is 10/10

i think the technical limitations that come with making a MMO, makes too lame of a game
having too lame of a game, but it costs ALOT and is ALOT of work to do .. is just not worth it..

..ive never played WoW .. and never will.. ive seen like 3 minutes of WoW Gameplay ever lol
.. i played warcraft 2 like crazy and loved it.. wow seems like it has nothing to do with WC2.. so somehow that makes me hate it.. also hate the idea of subscription..
i installed Eve, played it for 10 minutes, and it sucks.. i played ESO beta for 10 minutes, and it sucks..

thing is.. ive modded morrowind, oblivion, skyrim for like... uh.. idk .. maybe 3000 hours? loool i kept finding ways the game isnt "just as great as i envision it could be" lol.. and then ESO is like 1/10th of skyrim

but also.. i have a real crazy hatred for Mobas and LoL ... im angry so many people like those games... those games suuuuccckkkkk !!! ... i just dont get it.. ??? (its for casuals and im not lol) .. i hate how a person can be like level 20 and youre level 5 .. and the level 5 just cant do anything against the level 20.. i dunno.. LoL feels designed like crap.. the items arent really items, its just like skill unlocks masquerading as "items".. which just makes me hate it lol... and theres only like 3 or 4 maps?? reeallly!! wtf!! how is it popular? (i think just because "LoL") .. lol my friend plays FPS games only once per map, LOL and then cant play the same map again, he gets pissed when the same map comes up again (this wasnt as much a problem back when you could download like 300 maps for cod2)

 

that's alot of hate for games... lol! i'm guessing you like to play First Person Shooters? Doesn't look like anything RPG / Strategy Related is your thing.

 

Yeah really! Lots of more important things to be angry about. lol

 

nah... total war, legend of caocao, elder scrolls, heroes of m&m, stronghold crusader, age of empires 2, alot more... strategy games is where its at for me..
cod2 was the last good cod game.. ive been playing red orchestra 2 though... deus ex is best game ever though lol..
battlefield is okay.. but got boring really quickly .. i really liked quake wars.. there should be more games like quake wars lol TDM sucks.. it has to have tactical elements to be a good FPS

WoW just looks lame to me, and is strategy really involved in that and mobas? .. (certainly yeah) .. but its more like nerding about the numbers and crap, i like strategy thats based on reality i guess.. like spears beat horses, and stuff.. not .. the mage staff of shamalama has 10 more power than wand of wagalang or whatever... its too contrived.. and in mobas the items are incredibly contrived .. you have to learn about super fake crap to be effective lol.. the other games you just have to know about medieval combat lol

... mmos have alot of content thats just force fed into the game, so that content exists, the quality of all that content therefore suffers.. and when you go to invest so much time into something, you want it to be something you care about.. i guess alot of people cared about warcraft, but the other mmos are new made-up worlds that noone cares about, so they dont care to invest so much time in it..

when i say mmo is a gimmick.. sure having like a city full of actual players looks cool, but it doesnt really do anything.. sure, the battles are cool i guess.. but you can almost get basically the same thing from like a 8v8 game or like path of exile where you have a 6 person party

ehh .. i guess my hatred for mobas is since ive been listening to alot of youtuber game critics, like TB and cooptional podcast, while i 3d model, and they talk waaay too much about mobas lol.. and im just like "STFU!! THE GAME SUCKS!! how can you like it!!!" .. so i say TB sucks lol.. but he has good points...

 

Good MMO combat is something you won't get out of an 8v8. Maybe a large Battlefield map, but not a small team game.

Thinking past the mechanics and scripted sequences, MMOs allow unique stories to happen, because the stories are series of events that evolve between players or groups of players. Go and look at the stories that crop up out of EVE Online from time to time, as they seem to me to be the ones who do it best. There's actual role playing there, as people more or less genuinely live their in-game persona while they're playing. They're not just following quest lines, they're picking their own things to do, people to hang out with, etc. and then trying to do it in a game world filled with other people doing their own things, hanging out with their own people, and sometimes getting into conflicts as a result.

That can't happen in a single player game, or even a multiplayer game where there's not the required critical mass to have a world literally populated by other players.

That is to say, for a good MMO other players should be a part of the setting.

 

MMORPGs are dying because they aren't fun. WoW should have been extremely easy to beat if you are a major game company. Not necessarily for a small independent team but for the majors it should have been easy to beat. When it came out there were several MMORPGs that were better than it was but everyone was kind of going in different directions trying to figure out what was going to be the next big thing.

Then the recession hit and the business world in generally suddenly became allergic to risk. They wanted to produce Halo 27 or GTA14 rather than do something new and exciting.

WoW definitely got some things right. It's hard to argue with success. But it has been the same game for over a decade.

Other MMORPGs have chosen the free to play model. You ONLY choose that model when your game is absolutely terrible and you want to sucker people into playing it anyway. Entice people into believing that if they just give you "a little more money" the game will suddenly become fun.

But no one has really gone out there and created something that's fun and they don't want to take a risk on doing something different that might make it fun.

That and the last Star Wars MMORPG convinced me that I hate MMORPGs. They should have stuck with what they knew how to produce, which was single player games. Instead I got stuck in an MMORPG with other players who kept going "Do we REALLY have to sit here and wait for you to listen to the NPC's dialog?" Everyone was out of character and pushing you to go through the game as quickly as possible to get to the end game rather than actually PLAYING the game. I'd rather play single player than play that. The other players are detracting from the game, not adding to it.

Anyway, eventually someone will make a fun MMORPG and take WoW's title from them. My money is on the new Everquest. From what I hear that's going to be as ground breaking as the original Everquest or more. WoW took EQ's title and now (a decade and a half later) it looks like EQ's gonna take it back. Someone's finally willing to take some risk and make an RPG rather than play it safe and make a MMO first person shooter and pretend that its an RPG.

 

Not to mention those MMORPGs that start off with an initial purchase plus a subscription until they've achieved a specific threshold and then immediately shift to a free to play model.

I'm sticking to D&D Online until either the community I play with dries up or the game dies off. Once that happens though chances are very high I will be completely done with MMOs.

 

I don't really know about that. Blizzard had a huge following thanks to Warcraft, especially Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne (namely custom games such as Tower Defense and DotA however the normal game is also good), StarCraft and Diablo I/II. Many, many players were looking forward to what World of Warcraft would bring to the table before it was finally released I think in Nov 28th 2004 (I may be off a bit, but I do remember the release being around this time).

There had been a few notable MMO's before WoW. What immediately comes to mind are Ultima Online, *shudders* Runescape, FFXI, Everquest, and DAoC. I think players had high hopes for WoW due to the success of Blizzard's other games. As a result, many players from other MMOs and Blizzard fans decided to invest in WoW.

The reason WoW remained a popular choice for players to continue playing was because of the advancements in design implementations that Blizzard was not afraid to experiment with and implement. Some examples:

-Cross-server Instances (Cross-server PvP and eventually Cross-server dungeons and then Cross-server raids)
-Flying Mounts (Additional "verticality" added to the game that made players feel less bounded by the environment and opened up new strategies for outworld PvP)
-Phasing (This is the term that is used when you progress through a quest that changes the environment for you, but other people don't see these changes nor you, unless they're at the same point of the quest that you are at. This opened up a lot of possibilities to "personalize" someone's progress with a quest without having to permanently change the environment such that everyone receives the change - a lesson learned most likely after the Blizzard developers discussed the shortcomings of server-wide events such as the opening of Ahn Qiraj).

I've definitely missed quite a lot because I haven't played all of the really popular MMO's of the past, but I'm pretty sure none of them could compete with these additions, at least not for a long time.

Long story short, Blizzard's developers think of many good ideas and know how to test them, get feedback and integrate them into their system properly.

I disagree, but that's because the game felt like it changed drastically in terms of Raid Difficulty, Quest immersion (quests in the past didn't really give me a sense of understanding the lore, but quests in WotLK and up feel significantly more involved and I find myself wanting to continue a questline to see how things turn out), Skills/Abilities/Talents (there have been drastic changes to the talent trees between expansions) and Content.

I will admit that my opinion is very biased here**

Don't forget that Everquest had many chances to catch up to WoW in the past. In fact, Everquest 2 was released around the time that WoW was released, so if the Everquest developers were really on-the-ball, they could have kept up with World of Warcraft. I can't really say that I'm expecting much from a new Everquest in terms of being able to compete with WoW.

 

MMO's are fun, if done to maximize fun. I personally enjoy MMO's because I like the social interaction. I love meeting people, role playing with them, creating stories, etc. However, it is very telling that a big MMO lover like me is not currently playing an MMO and hasn't played one for years. I just don't think they are fun any more.

Some of it might be the same old mechanics, some of it is the attitude of players these days....at the risk of sounding like an old lady, they just aren't what they used to be. Many players, not all, see other players as just another mob they should kill, beat, ignore, insult, whatever. I watch my kids play and their experiences have not been good. One daughter quit DC Universe because of rude players and nasty language. Another plays Minecraft on small servers with friends but pretty much avoids people she doesn't know. My son plays MMO's like a single player game, ignoring other people and never interacting. He says no one really interacts with him either. Unless he goes in with a friend he knows outside the game, there is little interaction other than running away from PvPers.

Some folks obviously think this is fun, but I don't. The only reason I play MMO's is to interact with others and share the game and story with people I meet along the way. As MMO's move further away from this, they lose a part of their purpose, a reason why at least some of us play the games. We move on to small shards run privately, emulators, or we just stop playing, like I did...and like my teens did. Above someone stated that people go to games where their friends are...well friends are leaving as groups, playing elsewhere.

My guess is that is why the numbers are dropping. I do wonder if some of the smaller MMO's, especially the Asian ones are going to pick up some of the slack. I have heard from friends that some of them are pretty good and fun. Also, more niche ones like Eve and The Secret World are getting rave reviews from friends. Maybe that is because they are different. Yeah, maybe the combat and mechanics are not as good in some niche games but they make up for it with interesting content.

 

I agree, completely.

Something I think can save MMORPGs as a genre, is to explore being niche. You can use archetypes to a limited extent as something to build around. I personally hold up The Elder Scrolls: Online as a great example of how you build a MMO around the concept of exploration. Some parts of the experience can be safely pared out, or reduced in that example (I'd say, most of Cyrodiil), but I think the fact that TESO hasn't shut down yet is at least partial proof towards a focused theme working in an MMO.

I'd love to see other, more refined attempts at this setup, and possibly towards other overarching play styles. TESO is far from a perfect game that still tries to cater to too many tastes, and as a result poorly serves those it tries to (PvP, lookin' at you.)

 

Yeah, really. I hear people complain about TESO and when I ask what they don't like it is always PvP and combat related. Too many games try to be everything to all people.

 

Most of the "I hate TESO!" crap I hear boils down to, "It's not a standard Elder Scrolls experience." They want a multiplayer Elder Scrolls, not a MMORPG. I think the implementation of TESO actually advances the MMORPG genre quite nicely for the most part, but the largest complaint I've heard is that the game itself defied many players' expectations. So, maybe TESO isn't the best example out there.

I think the upcoming PvP patches with smaller-scale PvP will help a bit, but there's still the whole focus problem. The game is trying to emulate a small-scale Elder Scrolls game, while also providing raids, while also providing PvP...at the end of the day, I see it doing better because it's directly addressing concrete gripes. However, TESO has a few baked-in conceptual problems that can't be addressed without rewriting the game.

 

EQ totally and completely dropped the ball. They were the leader. They upped the ante slightly with EQ2, but we were spoiled back then and a great new MMORPG was coming out every week. It was just too easy to go, "You know, I'm just going to wait for the next one." Their biggest mistake was that they largely abandoned what made the original EQ great. Above all else, they went for graphical realism instead of the incredible art work that had defined the original EQ.

WoW stole that from them. WoW wasn't realistic at all. The graphics quality was quite clearly at a lower level, but where they trumped EQ2 was that their lower quality graphics were FAR more fantastic. WoW graphics, at the time, were just amazing from an artistic perspective. While EQ 2 was giving games very realistic graphics that were as boring as staring into your back yard, WoW was giving gamers low quality graphics that actually brought them into a fantasy world that opened their minds to the possibility. That was really initially what set WoW apart and made it better than EQ 2.

Plus, after EQ 1 we were all spoiled. We expected every new MMORPG that came out to be twice as good as EQ 1 and none of them ever were even EQ 2. Star Wars Galaxies was quite possibly the best MMORPG ever made. But at the time, we were so spoiled that I know I played it for like 3 months and left. Granted, the reason I didn't like it was because it was "EQ in space" rather than "Star Wars", but if you had of taken everything Star Wars out of it and just actually made it EQ in space, it would have easily been the best MMORPG ever made. It was the fact that it claimed to be Star Wars and wasn't that ruined it. As an RPG apart from the Star Wars saga it was greater than anything I've ever seen. There were others too, but there were so many coming out that it was just natural to expect the ONE that would gain the title would be coming out any day now.

I played WoW for a few months and turned my nose up at it thinking something better would come along in a few months. It never did.

I wasn't aware of all the innovations WoW eventually incorporated. I only played it for a hand full of months in its early days.

I eventually went back to Star Wars Galaxies, but by then I was the only new player on the server. And an MMORPG game like that is nothing when you're the only player on the server. Of course there were the 50th level players or whatever who were just using the server as a chat server and weren't even actually playing the game after maxing out their characters. But when you're a low level character, that's not much fun. A few months later Sony shut down those servers.

Anyway, have you actually checked out what they're doing with the new EQ? This is truly "next level gaming" according to what they are "claiming" they're going to do. This is totally and completely revolutionary. It's what I THOUGHT was going to be the type of evolutionary jump we would see within a year after WoW was released and a decade later I'm still waiting for. But if they pull of what they claim to be attempting, it will change gaming forever. That's how evolutionary the original EQ was as it launched the entire MMORPG genre. Sure, there was Ultima Online before that, but UO was not 3D like EQ. There were MUDs before that if you want to go back in history, but EQ started what WoW became. I think this new EQ may just start an entirely new gaming genre.

 

I don't know about that. I can't speak for others, but I'd be happy with TESO with a) less bugs (which has apparently improved a lot since we played), b) more unique exploration content (ie: we went into 3 dungeons that were single-level copy-paste jobs...) and c) cheaper access (for $15 a month we could buy whole new games with just as many hours of enjoyment).

 

The early years of Ultima Online were the golden years.

I got talked into a game several years ago called Darkfall online that was similar to a 3d UO. It had the best pvp I've ever seen(kinda like hexen with fps magic and archery), but was a grindfest. (refining autohotkey scripts to be competitive was fun). It had some amazing concepts like player controlled territory, awesome ocean ship battles over control of seige towers with fps canons, underwater archery, and if you could sneak on someone's ship and kill them it was your ship to sail home, all ships could be crafted with lots of wood/ore/etc. As a newb you could craft a raft and sail around (exploit mobs that can't swim) with just lumber.

The problem with the game is it was too hard(both to utilize the UI and to not die) and the 30 employees weren't big enough to adapt fast enough to a number of things like game balance, grind level, and took a full year to get rid of hackers which destroyed the in game economy.
There's a cascade of problems that arise with mmos you'd never think of, like in game economics.

 

In game economics is the first thing I think of. There was one game years ago that I kind of regret that I left. My primary work in the game was as a speculator and trader. I recognized that the in game economy was broke and I made a fortune basically fixing it. It was all about understanding who was willing to pay what for what. I made a fortune, but the game had other problems that mostly amounted to it wasn't finished. Still, I might have really liked it if I had of stuck around.

 

From my perspective, I have to agree with this. Combat focused players might not agree, but SWG did a great job of appealing to all players but making it all work together. You could succeed without having to focus on combat, without ever having to shoot or kill a thing. Also, you could be a part of the economy, making deals, buying and selling resources or finished goods and you could be part of new towns, even a politician. It was a role players dream with lots of ways to be creative and make your own story.

Unfortunately, all that wasn't good enough for the money makers. They changed it to attract more "typical" MMO users, mainly a younger audience who wanted to kill and loot. Grinding became the focus of the game and you rarely saw a player online who was actually at their keyboard.

I have often thought that someone should expand on the concept of SWG but newer games instead seem more focused on questing and mob killing or they add lots of stuff, but it doesn't feel cohesive, just a mess of "everything".

BTW, not everyone wants magical fantasy games. I liked SWG because it was different, not all elves and dwarves and fireballs.