Is WoW dying.. or are Mmorpgs dying ?

[MoanaLisa]

Exactly. It captured the zeitgeist.
I seem to remember a metric that was tossed around during the 11M sub haydays (by Blizzazrd, but I just can't seem to be able to do the google-foo to find it); at that point WoW amount of people who had tried WoW was around 90M.

The early days were a wave of people coming and going. Then it hit the shore at start of Cata and has been retreating/normalizing ever since.

I think what you are talking about was the World of Warcraft Infographic which was released in January of 2014.

Link: http://media.wow-europe.com/infograp...fographic.html

At that point it was over 100,000,000 people had tried it (including trial accounts) which is just gobsmacking if you think about it for more than two seconds. The whole infographic is pretty interesting.

Yes, churn has always been high. Well over 90% of everyone who has ever given the game a look have quit. That makes these threads which attempt to pin the issue on one thing mildly ridiculous. It's the way of things.

[Seranthor]

No, it wasn't proven to be a lie.

Wasn't proven as accurate, or inaccurate... its an unvalidated data point.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I don't think MMORPGs are really dying per se, I just think that the market is stagnating because it is saturated, at least in the west. In the east you have tons of people playing the even shittier mobile versions, which I guess even makes sense since for many MMORPGs were glorified chat programs in the first place.

[Stormspellz]

MMOrpgs are hardly dying, wow clone versions sure they are doa, but things like BDO and FF are doing great.

[Lane]

I think more than MMOs being dead, end game raiding centric MMOs are dead. If any new MMO comes to dominate any time soon, it probably won’t be designed to funnel its entire playerbase into max level and raiding won’t be the content of choice.

Instead, I believe the future of MMOs looks something more like a blend between Breath of the Wild and Fable, where you have a massive, seamless, sandboxy world full of soloable content that’s a lot more fun when played with others.

Wildstar's Executive Producer, Jeremy Gaffney, was quoted as saying, "And solo players are tragically underserved in most MMOs – something like 65% of players tend to play largely solo (Massively Single-player, as it were). So we can use that same tech to give them frequent updates of new solo story content for the cap frequently – advancing our world story and giving you more to do than daily quests or reputation grinds." (Instead, they did the opposite and we see how that worked out for them.)

MMOs were niche before WoW made it casual and accessible, essentially completely soloable until max level which generally wasn't possible in its predecessors. Now there's a clash between those who yearn for the community dependency of yore and those who are only interested in a persistent game world without necessity of playing with others. It doesn't seem like any MMO knows how to cater to both effectively (ESO might be the closest) with most leaning toward pressuring players into group content.

Side note that WoW isn't particularly solo friendly. People strangely seem to think it is because you can solo queue for group activities. Legion in particular was horrible about this because it made dungeons mandatory for progression and a raid required for flight.

[Kyanion]

Wildstar's Executive Producer, Jeremy Gaffney, was quoted as saying, "And solo players are tragically underserved in most MMOs – something like 65% of players tend to play largely solo (Massively Single-player, as it were). So we can use that same tech to give them frequent updates of new solo story content for the cap frequently – advancing our world story and giving you more to do than daily quests or reputation grinds." (Instead, they did the opposite and we see how that worked out for them.)

Pff Wildstar had many other issues, mainly being a steaming pile of shit and trying to cater to hardcores with ridiculous grinds and boring dungeons. Dodge the random parallelogram attack. Such fun. Much wow.

[Deleted]

Wildstar's Executive Producer, Jeremy Gaffney, was quoted as saying, "And solo players are tragically underserved in most MMOs – something like 65% of players tend to play largely solo (Massively Single-player, as it were). So we can use that same tech to give them frequent updates of new solo story content for the cap frequently – advancing our world story and giving you more to do than daily quests or reputation grinds." (Instead, they did the opposite and we see how that worked out for them.)

MMOs were niche before WoW made it casual and accessible, essentially completely soloable until max level which generally wasn't possible in its predecessors. Now there's a clash between those who yearn for the community dependency of yore and those who are only interested in a persistent game world without necessity of playing with others. It doesn't seem like any MMO knows how to cater to both effectively (ESO might be the closest) with most leaning toward pressuring players into group content.

Side note that WoW isn't particularly solo friendly. People strangely seem to think it is because you can solo queue for group activities. Legion in particular was horrible about this because it made dungeons mandatory for progression and a raid required for flight.

Oh cmon... that is ridiculous. Sure, there should be more solo content (i'm a big fan of dynamic events that create multiplayer content tnat doesn't require grouping), but "pressured to group up" is entitlement. If you joined an mmo and only want to play single player and not even queue solo for group activities then you simply shouldn't be playing an mmo. Single player RPG's exist and are for that very purpose.

If you play an mmo you have to come in expecting to interact with other players. There is absolutely no point for the online infrastructure if players don't want to interact.

[RuneDK]

The MMO genre as a whole is dying. Until they can make things more interesting combat and quest wise....It won't die off right away, but it's a slow bleed...which actually benefits the genre more though. They have a chance to right the ship so to speak...by changing things...the downside of that though is nobody is willing to take risks in the genre. Everyone tries to clone world of warcraft and ends up failing miserably...Final Fantasy did well enough to change it up from the wow formula but im not sure what their sub numbers are now...my guess is around a million.

[Tic Tacs]

The MMO genre as a whole is dying. Until they can make things more interesting combat and quest wise....It won't die off right away, but it's a slow bleed...which actually benefits the genre more though. They have a chance to right the ship so to speak...by changing things...the downside of that though is nobody is willing to take risks in the genre. Everyone tries to clone world of warcraft and ends up failing miserably...Final Fantasy did well enough to change it up from the wow formula but im not sure what their sub numbers are now...my guess is around a million.

Yes MMORPG genre is less relevant nowadays but this has nothing to do with how good the game is.

I can bet you a million dollars if you make the perfect MMORPG to compete with WoW right now, BR will still be the most popular type of game.

[Lane]

Oh cmon... that is ridiculous. Sure, there should be more solo content (i'm a big fan of dynamic events that create multiplayer content tnat doesn't require grouping), but "pressured to group up" is entitlement. If you joined an mmo and only want to play single player and not even queue solo for group activities then you simply shouldn't be playing an mmo. Single player RPG's exist and are for that very purpose.

If you play an mmo you have to come in expecting to interact with other players. There is absolutely no point for the online infrastructure if players don't want to interact.

Entitlement to what? People can enjoy a persistent game world and being surrounded by others without wanting to engage in team sports with them. Like I said, WoW opened this door by making the bulk of the game soloable. Nothing's keeping MMOs from returning to their roots and only offering group content, but they'll arguably lose half their audience if they do. Since we're discussing are MMORPGs dying, I feel that's worth bringing up as a contributing reason.

[Deleted]

Nothing beats Wow when it comes to the world over 5 continents and lots of things to do.

[Deleted]

Entitlement to what? People can enjoy a persistent game world and being surrounded by others without wanting to engage in team sports with them. Like I said, WoW opened this door by making the bulk of the game soloable. Nothing's keeping MMOs from returning to their roots and only offering group content, but they'll arguably lose half their audience if they do. Since we're discussing are MMORPGs dying, I feel that's worth bringing up as a contributing reason.

Entitlement to rewards that require grouping due to the mmo design. Your whole point was that people want all the goodies without any of the effort (flying in your example). I call that entitlement.
Just cause part of the game is soloable it doesn't mean all of it should be. The soloable content is there for convenience. So, you can log in and have something to do if you don't have time to group. It's not meant to completely replace group content.

[Lane]

Entitlement to rewards that require grouping due to the mmo design. Your whole point was that people want all the goodies without any of the effort (flying in your example). I call that entitlement.
Just cause part of the game is soloable it doesn't mean all of it should be. The soloable content is there for convenience. So, you can log in and have something to do if you don't have time to group. It's not meant to completely replace group content.

No, my point was more than half of MMO players are soloers and agreeing that the next big thing will likely be a solo-friendly MMO. Flying has never had anything to do with instanced group content. I assume LFR isn't luring enough players into raiding so now Blizzard has to make it mandatory to get participation numbers and/or to discourage people from getting it, either way it's a win for them.

[Eon Drache]

No, it wasn't proven to be a lie.

Blizzard came out and said it was a lie. It would mean that 106% of ALL players preordered the game. The API leak also wouldn't have included china. Since when is stating information considered true before its considered fake. Here. Let me do this for you.

WoW has 20 Million subs. There. Now pass that off as "Real"

edit: I know, you're just going to say "Blizzard never lies, right"?

[Kokolums]

No, my point was more than half of MMO players are soloers and agreeing that the next big thing will likely be a solo-friendly MMO.

That's the exact wrong approach. WoW began its life as a very social MMO and just kept growing like a weed UNTIL they destroyed server play and went on an antisocial bender. Its hard to say just how big the game could have gotten had they not done that....it was still growing. Once they destroyed the social aspect, subs kept dropping. Its probable that of the tiny fraction left playing WoW, more than 50% want a solo MMO, but that's shutting out the millions that were flocking to WoW for social play.

[MoanaLisa]

Wildstar's Executive Producer, Jeremy Gaffney, was quoted as saying, "And solo players are tragically underserved in most MMOs – something like 65% of players tend to play largely solo (Massively Single-player, as it were). So we can use that same tech to give them frequent updates of new solo story content for the cap frequently – advancing our world story and giving you more to do than daily quests or reputation grinds." (Instead, they did the opposite and we see how that worked out for them.)

Gaffney let the secret out of the bag that MMO developers will simply not talk about. The fact that his MMO was designed along traditional principles instead of using the very clear evidence they collected about the preferences of solo players has always struck me as interesting. Wildstar failed in a spectacular way for a number of reasons but the constant beating of the drums before launch about how it would bring back the days when more difficult content would be an attraction instead of a detriment did nothing to encourage pre-sales which were anemic. Most people play to relax.

Side note that WoW isn't particularly solo friendly.

No, it's not although their experience with Warlords woke them up to the fact that ignoring solo world content was a losing proposition for them. As the game gets older I'm expecting them to find ways to make most of their content available to solo players one way or another. It won't be soon but despite the grumblings of those who think otherwise it's probably inevitable. They can't exert any control over problem players and their efforts to prod players into playing socially aren't working out. For what it's worth I don't consider grouping up with total strangers a social activity in any sense.

The fact is that people don't care much for playing with strangers and there's no literal analog to it in real life. Even work life which often features teams features loose relationships because people have to deal with each other face-to-face, either in the office or via remote. It simply doesn't work very well in entertainment settings. Like I said a few paragraphs ago, most people play to relax. That means for many either alone or with people they know. Doing difficult stuff with total strangers is anything but.

[kamuimac]

Blizzard came out and said it was a lie. It would mean that 106% of ALL players preordered the game. The API leak also wouldn't have included china. Since when is stating information considered true before its considered fake. Here. Let me do this for you.

WoW has 20 Million subs. There. Now pass that off as "Real"

edit: I know, you're just going to say "Blizzard never lies, right"?

unlike some anonymus internet SJW blizzard / activision is a stock comapny so they simply cannot lie about stuff like this

look what happened to Elon when he spoke bs about Tesla

but ofc SJW will spread anonsense about evil corporations and other bs.

[Eon Drache]

unlike some anonymus internet SJW blizzard / activision is a stock comapny so they simply cannot lie about stuff like this

look what happened to Elon when he spoke bs about Tesla

but ofc SJW will spread anonsense about evil corporations and other bs.

I think you misquoted? I'm not saying blizzard is lying. I'm saying they aren't lying?

[Deleted]

No, my point was more than half of MMO players are soloers and agreeing that the next big thing will likely be a solo-friendly MMO. Flying has never had anything to do with instanced group content. I assume LFR isn't luring enough players into raiding so now Blizzard has to make it mandatory to get participation numbers and/or to discourage people from getting it, either way it's a win for them.

That's a misrepresentation of the flying ability. They wanted to remove it completely. To satisfy the community, they compromised. You can't then tell us it was cause they wanted more people doing LFR. They want people doing all sorts of content in the game. Not only group one.
Anyways, i disagree. I think the kind of game those people want already exists. It's called a single player RPG.

I agree that solo players should be taken into account. No doubt they are an important part of the community. But the solo content isn't there to say mmo's should be completely soloable. It's there to give something to do and to give these solo players the time and comfort to take the step into engaging with the group content.

The conclusion to this is that a middle ground as we have it is the right place to be in. It's inclusive to all players but does not give any one kind of player everything without engaging in all types of content. It doesn't pressure anyone. It gives venues if you feel compelled to pursue them. If one feels pressure, they are undoubtedly being entitled.

For example, i hate Arena PvP. Theres a really cool hippo mount atm that i'd love to have. But i either take the step to become a PvP player and get it or i don't and i accept it's a reward that isn't for me cause i am not willing to put in the effort. It rewards effort, and that is the whole point. You differentiate your character through the content you chose.

[CptEgo]

Yes MMORPG genre is less relevant nowadays but this has nothing to do with how good the game is.

I can bet you a million dollars if you make the perfect MMORPG to compete with WoW right now, BR will still be the most popular type of game.

Dude, most younger people don't even know what MMORPGs are. The genre is long dead and burried. WoW will be the last great MMORPG.