MMO genre dying... how do we get our Warcraft fix?

[Linri]

MMO genre is fine, WoW is a great game, but there are other games out there which also have far superior things.

[Transmigration]

Play FFXIV or BDO, simple as, move on.

Or try to play something new such as Overwatch.

This really isn't doing it for me. There are two MMOs that I had over a year of actual playtime in: FFXI and WoW. Both games felt unique in their communities. One was born from the ideas of EQ(WoW), one had the grind and difficulty of EQ (FFXI). A lot of people don't even realize that FFXI was the first MMO to have a real auction house and it was released in the US a full year before WoW.

Anyway, I've played many MMOs over the years. WoW, FFXI, FFXIV, BDO, Tera, TOR, Aion, Warhammer, PW, Shadowbane (this one was pretty cool I have to say), Planetside2, Ragnarok, Maple Story, etc. etc.

I have over a 1000 hours in to FFXIV (decent game imo), while it took about 20 hours for me to realize that BDO has no future; mainly because of the community it has already and the lack of communication and support from the devs.

So in 14 years, of all the MMOs I've played, only 2 of them gave me 365+ days of playtime. I didn't begrudgingly force myself through it. It just happened organically. I played the shit out of those 2 MMOs. Why? Because they have something that all the other games I listed do not, which is a soul. When I logged in to Vanadiel or Azeroth, it was like wrapping a blanket of magic around my brain. It just had this way of releasing massive amounts of dopamine in to my system. Every single thing in the world was coherent and connected. There was no "who the hell is this guy that keeps telling me to do things?" or "what is the point of this?".

When I log in to other MMOs I am constantly asking myself those questions and others similar to them. They feel like empty worlds created to just make a quick buck. I see the forums flood with hype and then with disappointment threads. Of course this happens with all games, but go back and look at that list and tell me which of those games has thrived in the US for more than a couple years, if even months. By thrived, I mean forums filled with posts from the current day discussing mechanics, lore, recruitment, the future. Games where you log in and it isn't just gold spammers and trolls, but players actually conversing and getting together to do content. People so enamored with the game that they don't feel the need to irritate people out of pure boredom. I only see 2 in that list from my experience. Many people from these forums didn't play FFXI, so they may only see one.

You can tell me that "MMOs are alive and well!" because there are people making new ones, but they're all garbage compared to a few MMOs that were developed 14-15 years ago. I don't think it's alive and well, I think it's just a surge of anxious energy prior to death as many organisms experience.

This is of course, all just my opinion.

[Thage]

Square Enix thankfully is the company that is always 10 years behind everything else. So FFXIV a realm rehashed is halfway decent.

Fun side note: Until very recently, Square Enix was trying to follow market trends in JRPGs (trends they themselves helped kickstart with Final Fantasy XIII). It wasn't until Bravely Default, a classic-style JRPG that harkens back to their older Final Fantasy titles with a robust job system (including their famous Black/White/Red Mages, the first two of whom retain their iconic designs), vastly oversold their projected income, that Square has begun seriously focusing their efforts on more classic-style games.

[Spinster]

People still like longer, more complex games. People are picking up tabletop gaming including games that can go on a long, long time. I don't think people have changed all that much. Quicky games don't scratch the same itch as longer, involved games do.

That said, the MMO genre has been lousy about evolving in the ways it needs to. Social tools are in the freaking stone age. MMOs are like radio stations were in the 70s when everyone listened to the same three stations because we HAD to. If you didn't like a side of Captain and Tennille with your Queen and Heart, too bad: You all get the same content. In this day and age when we can all pick and choose what we want to listen to or read or watch on television, MMOs still ask us all to play the same content with random people and like it. Is it any shock that we don't like it?

The next gen MMOs need to have sophisticated social tools that let us group with folks we actually might LIKE. People don't necessarily bring their friends to an MMO like they used to, and they need to be able to make friends in the game. MMOs will also need to have randomly generated encounters so that players don't just learn stuff from some website: It needs to feel like an adventure. And the next big MMO will want to appeal to all kinds of people in ways WoW barely touches on.

Until the genre evolves, then yes, the genre is just a niche.