So basically the MMO genre is dead, or?

[Lazuli]

'Titans' like WoW, GW2, FFXIV are the only relevant MMO's. Everything else is not up to date or is a Korean grind fest import, other than that we only have MOBA #902831203712-07123923061940689236309123872139127319387 and already we are seeing TF2/Overwatch clones which is going to be the new MOBA fad... /le sigh.

As far as I know there are no MMORPG in development in the west, so we will just continue to get imports from china or korea or whatever. I don't know if space sims are considering MMORPGs but I'm not counting them, personally. Star citizen will probably be a decent hit, but does not interest me in the least from the type of game it is.

It kinda bothers me but then again I can understand big name devs' fear of creating an MMO after the monster failures like swtor, wildstar, and eso.

I honestly can't see any MMO in the future even coming close to the 3 biggest right now, and 2 out of 3 I think are garbage lol. That literally leaves me to play 1 MMO... indefinitely ?

I guess I can hope if WoW ever RIPs then Blizz make another MMO, starcraft would be the logical choice.

I miss looking forward to new MMOs, even if they did suck lol.

[PhilUK]

Even though you didn't mention it Eve Online is has been doing quite well for itself lately, along with its new expansion. Though its a niche game it is a nice alternative during content droughts.

[Lazuli]

Even though you didn't mention it Eve Online is has been doing quite well for itself lately, along with its new expansion. Though its a niche game it is a nice alternative during content droughts.

Yeah I know about Eve, it has a strong following, but like I said I don't know if those are considered MMORPGs. I don't even know if Eve has a story, lol. I was never really into space sims as I am more of a on-the-ground combat type player.

[crmarczak]

If you like skilling and don't care about graphics then Old School Runescape is quite fun and more lively than WoW is.

[apelsinjuice]

I would not call swtor a monster failure, they actually make quite some good money since they went f2p

[Deleted]

Developing an MMO is enormous risk. Costs are 1000% of that of a AAA singleplayer (tomb raiders, far cry, uncharted) and the audience while being loyal and willing to pay more than regular gamer are kinda scarce or preoccupied with already existing MMOs. The million head playerbase wow used to have is now in their mid 20's building career or family and since there hasn't been any big new MMOs lately there isn't really any younger generation pool who would definately buy one, no matter how good.

Age of Conan, LOTRO, Warhammer online, Aion, Tera, SWTOR and few dozen korean imports have tried their best trying to manage the western audience but all failed to develop million head subscriber pool and usually went F2P cash shop zero maintenance within 2 years.
Try to tell the shareholders how this another suberb MMO is going to be different than the others. Good luck.

[Edge-]

'Titans' like WoW, GW2, FFXIV are the only relevant MMO's. Everything else is not up to date or is a Korean grind fest import, other than that we only have MOBA #902831203712-07123923061940689236309123872139127319387 and already we are seeing TF2/Overwatch clones which is going to be the new MOBA fad... /le sigh.

Except that most other "major" MMO's on the market are apparently doing pretty well for themselves, especially with many either recently moving to console (Neverwinter, DCUO, Planetside 2) or having plans for a move to console (STO, rumor is Tera may be). There are no more "mega" hits, but that's fine. The MMO market can't sustain "mega" hits one after another like non-MMO's can.

As far as I know there are no MMORPG in development in the west, so we will just continue to get imports from china or korea or whatever.

No brand new "major" MMO's from the West necessarily, but there are plenty of smaller projects (and Star Citizen). Crowfall, Camelot Unchained, and a handful of others that are primarily crowdfunded are all working towards launch and looking interesting.

I don't know if space sims are considering MMORPGs but I'm not counting them, personally. Star citizen will probably be a decent hit, but does not interest me in the least from the type of game it is.

Star Citizen isn't a MMO"RPG" necessarily, but IIRC it's still very much got a MMO element to the game.

It kinda bothers me but then again I can understand big name devs' fear of creating an MMO after the monster failures like swtor, wildstar, and eso.

SWTOR bombed at launch, but turned itself around with F2P and has been doing well ever since. Apparently Fallen Empire (most recent expansion) has been the high point for the game in terms of its finances. ESO is similarly doing well by all accounts after its B2P transition, console launch went well and it's a stable, supported MMO. WildStar is really the only persistent "stinker", for a huge host of reasons.

I honestly can't see any MMO in the future even coming close to the 3 biggest right now, and 2 out of 3 I think are garbage lol. That literally leaves me to play 1 MMO... indefinitely ?

Probably not. But you know what? I'm totally alright with that. I don't care if another MMO becomes a megahit or not. I'd actually much rather have a more diverse group of games all seeing success and appealing to a huge audience of MMO players across the spectrum than have them centralized in a few major games.

I miss looking forward to new MMOs, even if they did suck lol.

I don't. I look forward to doing what's been going on for me for the past year+, which is looking forward to all the awesome content updates and expansion that MMO's on the market have been putting out. I hardly have time to play new MMO's, I'd love to play Black Desert but no time yet. Why? Because hot damn if SWTOR, STO, GW2, Rift, DCUO, TSW, Tera, and a host of other "bigger" MMO's aren't all putting out a ton of awesome content that I want to return to them and play.

[Kiljaedon]

I hope MMO's go back to the niche market it use to be. A bunch of Quality of life changes along with instant gratification systems has degraded the spirit of long term MMO's and imo caused harm to the genre overall. I never did raid and only quested and did group runs and managed to get gear almost on par with the epic raiders back then. I got my epic in EQ playing a few hours a night in 3 months so I feel it was something meant to take several months. Content should be semi grindy to require months to absorb.

[PhilUK]

Yeah I know about Eve, it has a strong following, but like I said I don't know if those are considered MMORPGs. I don't even know if Eve has a story, lol. I was never really into space sims as I am more of a on-the-ground combat type player.

Everything is player driven, currently there is a galactic war going on between a group called the money badgers and the imperium (goons). There are a lot of corps(guilds) that will take on new players and gear them just to get to the front line. The subreddit is a great place to check out the game. https://www.reddit.com/r/eve

Also this is the cinimatic trailer to their latest expansion:

[unholytestament]

Star Citizen, Shroud of The Avatar, City of Titans, Camelot Unchained, etc. Pay some attention before you start questioning a genre's death.

[Ahovv]

'Titans' like WoW, GW2, FFXIV are the only relevant MMO's. Everything else is not up to date or is a Korean grind fest import, other than that we only have MOBA #902831203712-07123923061940689236309123872139127319387 and already we are seeing TF2/Overwatch clones which is going to be the new MOBA fad... /le sigh.

As far as I know there are no MMORPG in development in the west, so we will just continue to get imports from china or korea or whatever. I don't know if space sims are considering MMORPGs but I'm not counting them, personally. Star citizen will probably be a decent hit, but does not interest me in the least from the type of game it is.

It kinda bothers me but then again I can understand big name devs' fear of creating an MMO after the monster failures like swtor, wildstar, and eso.

I honestly can't see any MMO in the future even coming close to the 3 biggest right now, and 2 out of 3 I think are garbage lol. That literally leaves me to play 1 MMO... indefinitely ?

I guess I can hope if WoW ever RIPs then Blizz make another MMO, starcraft would be the logical choice.

I miss looking forward to new MMOs, even if they did suck lol.

You're not stuck with WoW because of its numbers; those numbers ultimately mean nothing since you will not interact with the vast majority of players. And when you do, it's most likely a miserable LFR experience with worthless garbage who don't care about playing well.

Other MMOs have pumped out more and better content than WoW, so I wouldn't focus much on the numbers. Now, that's not to say every MMO has a healthy community. Many of them do not meet my standards for a minimum player base. But that player base doesn't need to be in the millions. Player bases between 10,000-100,000 are sufficient for a good recruitment pool to accomplish your goals.

[luma]

Black Desert Online was the last hope but now that all the hype is fading we can see it wasn't big deal. So yeap, mmorpg days of glory it's over.

[Edge-]

Everything is player driven, currently there is a galactic war going on between a group called the money badgers and the imperium (goons). There are a lot of corps(guilds) that will take on new players and gear them just to get to the front line. The subreddit is a great place to check out the game. https://www.reddit.com/r/eve

Also this is the cinimatic trailer to their latest expansion:

Ahhhhh, I've watched that trailer so many times. It's bloody fantastic, as their trailers usually are. I dig that they use their in-house band for the song, too.

[grandpab]

For me it's dead until someone releases one with graphics that are on par with triple A games that have been released in the last couple years, in addition to an awesome combat system, an end game with a good variety, and maybe no leveling at all. I quit following MMOs after GW2 didn't live up to the hype. Now I have a ps4 and a xb1 and I just follow console games. I haven't even played a pc game in a few years, and I probably won't until I find an MMO that's actually worth playing.

It's funny though, since it's completely backwards from how I used to play games. Ever since like...16 years ago I've always had an MMO to play, about 6-7 years ago I started playing every MMO I could to find something new and fun, and about 3 years ago I just kinda gave up and switched to consoles.

[Talaa]

Im not saying this is what really is going on but here it is from my perspective.

I see the genre dying yes, I feel the reason for this is due to games trying to hit bigger markets and become more widely accepted and what seems to be a general trend in gaming to avoid "hardcore" game-play elements, when I say hardcore im talking about things like strict gating, lots of grinding time consuming elements. I miss these from the genre but I can see the need, I personally wouldn't have the same time to invest, If TBC came out today (as it was) I wouldn't be able to raid on it. Maybe this will change in the future if we get better society's were people have more free time we could see those kind of elements return.

Tbh there are so many variables at play on this topic its really hard to know or predict the future on it. Gaming has changed SO much in its short lifetime and I feel that, as with technology in general, its an ever quickening pace. who knows what the future holds. Maybe VR holds the key to the rebirth of MMO's

[Daedius]

We're long past the era of players wanting to commit time to building up their character(s)... we've been in this age of instant gratification for the past decade now.

[Slaughty8]

Star Citizen, Shroud of The Avatar, City of Titans, Camelot Unchained, etc. Pay some attention before you start questioning a genre's death.

The genre is definitely dieing.
All upcoming mmo's and the ones You mentioned are niche games, especially Star Citizen will have a very limited gameplay and choices.
Camelot Unchained, Albion Online, Crowfall - all are PvP sandbox centered games. Niche titles as one can say.

Well, I think that we have reached the time, when desired visual and code complexity of the future mmo's has reached the level where you have to make a compromise and decide
- cut some visual and code and add more gameplay pve content
- add more visual and code and do less gameplay make it more pvp/sandbox so you don't have to focus that much on the content

if you want to have stunning visually and amazingly coded game with at least as much pve as wow, then the cost of the game is instanelly big, bigger than Star Wars the Old Republic's budget.

And again, the games you mentioned have limited budget, they have to focus on only one thing and make a niche mmo.

Also, less and less people are interested in mmo;s because they simply prefer faster online games and slower single-player ones.
Young people are mostly not interested in the classic mmo model and there is nothing that will make them interested.

We're long past the era of players wanting to commit time to building up their character(s)... we've been in this age of instant gratification for the past decade now.

Exactly. I 100% agree.

[Daedius]

For me it's dead until someone releases one with graphics that are on par with triple A games

Elder Scrolls Online had great graphics, and it flopped within a year. i.e. - Going for the latest graphics is hardly a factor...

[grandpab]

Elder Scrolls Online had great graphics, and it flopped within a year. i.e. - Going for the latest graphics is hardly a factor...

And it certainly wasn't the only factor I listed.

[unholytestament]

The genre is definitelly dieing.
All upcoming mmo's and the ones You mentioned are niche games, especially Star Citizen will have a very limited gameplay and choices.
Camelot Unchained, Albion Online, Crowfall - all are PvP sandbox centered games. Niche titles as one can say.

Well, I think that we have reached the time, when desired visual and code complexity of the future mmo's has reached the level where you have to make a compromise and decide
- cut some visual and code and add more gameplay pve content
- add more visual and code and do less gameplay make it more pvp/sandbox so you don't have to focus that much on the content

if you want to have stunning visually and amazingly coded game with at least as much pve as wow, then the cost of the game is instanelly big, bigger than Star Wars the Old Republic's budget.

And again, the games you mentioned have limited budget, they have to focus on only one thing and make a niche mmo.

I don't think this post is internally consistent, nor does it say anything to prove the genre is dying.

Unless you meant to imply that a genre has to have AAA games coming out that have ALL THE FEATURES and appeal to ALL THE DEMOGRAPHICS in order to not be dying.