Does WoW need to die for the MMO scene to rejuvenate?

[MoanaLisa]

What's an MMO really? It's not a trivial question.

Technically MMO means an online game that can be played by a very large number of people simultaneously.

Fortnite is an MMO by that definition. So no, WoW doesn't need to die for another type of design to come along and be successful.

If by MMO you mean something like WoW? No. As others have said MMO's have moved on to different designs and types. WoW has its niche, a very large one. It was a freakish success from the start and no one should expect any other MMO like WoW to be launched that charges $120-$180 dollars a year to play it and be that successful.

============================

Classic will kill retail. This is not hyperbole.

Yes it is. A lot of people will play both in differing amounts according to their preferences. And why shouldn't they? Your idea that Classic is going to be a WoW killer is just as silly as all the other MMO's that were going to come along and be WoW killers. I don't understand why you or anyone else think it's a fucking death match competition in any case. There's plenty of room for both as they are under the same subscription plan.

[Otimus]

I think MMORPG's are inherently a niche genre. Blizzard just tried to shove a few million square pegs into round holes for over a decade and kept jabbing at it.

I think for the casual players, unless the genre fundamentally changes all of it's core values and design ethos, it's never getting them back. F2P MOBAs, progression based FPS's, as well as other genres, and all the like have snatched all the addictive elements of MMORPGs, without all of the baggage that comes with MMORPGss. So everything else is offering the carrots on sticks, without all the nasty rotten food that was gathered around it. (Time gating, monthly fees, strict group requirements, being unable to play modes/areas you want without getting permission from other human beings to be allowed to do it first, etc)

[Steelangel]

MMOs in the vein of WoW are going the way of the RTS game; innovative competitors just aren't there at the AAA level. Even games that tried to replicate the WoW model with improvements and mechanical tweaks--the WoW killers---never succeed. WoW was a game that made the Everquest-style game accessible to a more casual player (as if Vanilla WoW can be considered 'casual' compared to today!) and succeeded by Blizzard's relentless marketing and generally being "not terrible". It was a game that you could play with your 'non-gamer' friends and family, which was really innovative at the time for an MMO.

Nowadays, the gaming community is driven by the short-term experience pioneered by games like Angry Birds. It's a phone app. You have it with you all the time and you can spend 10 minutes killing piggies without too much brain effort while waiting for your appointments.

It's the difference between social drinking and taking crystal meth. Alcohol requires consumption of a sometimes large quantity of liquid to get you buzzed or drunk. Meth hits you with an immediate dopamine rush. Game companies are chasing the latter to capture the whales.

[Trend]

What's an MMO really? It's not a trivial question.

Technically MMO means an online game that can be played by a very large number of people simultaneously.

Fortnite is an MMO by that definition. So no, WoW doesn't need to die for another type of design to come along and be successful..

Very good point. I think the OP is really meaning MMORPG if I read between the lines.

[schwank05]

I think the Survival/ Builder games are basically the new MMO's. Take games Like Ark or Conan, hell even the Forest are all great games with infinite play-ability. Ark especially is amazing and just all around fun. I think this is what most "MMO's" will look like in 3-5 years.

[Blackmist]

The MMO scene is dead. The only thing left is WoW, staggering around like a zombie looking for brains. It's not even an MMO any more. Hasn't been for a decade.

[bufferunderrun]

Before folks start commenting about this being a negative post, telling me to play something else, let me set the record straight.......

I enjoy World of Warcraft for a variety of reasons, and have done since about mid TBC. I raid as much as I want to, in the difficulty bracket that I want to, with a fairly good group of IRL and in-game friends. I enjoy the new expansions and subsequent content patches to varying degrees, and am still a subbed player. I take part in the Beta testing phases, and provide feedback as constructively as I know how.

All that said, every supposed "WoW killer" has fallen by the wayside. Some have been good games, and some not so much. I doubt that it's because all the studios that produced them were bereft of creative direction, and there's more than enough source material out there to make something truly epic in terms of an enduring MMO world out of it.

So the question I'm asking is a simple one. Does WoW need to die for the MMO scene to rejuvenate? Putting it another way, does the very presence of WoW prevent the success of a new MMO IP? In the same way that a forest fire clears the way for new life, would the death of WoW encourage a new MMO, or even several, to rise in it's place?

What are your thoughts?

we need better hardware, probably VR, until we see peoples willing to put hours into a progression game like an mmo

[Fred Skinner]

MMO's themselves are an evolving genre that are all becoming more like mobile games.

MMORPGs are a dying genre and it is likely we will not see any new AAA MMORPGs which will be successfull anytime soon.

[crono14]

MMO's were very different before WoW came along. WoW changed the formula and nothing else has really tried to change the formula since then. Some company will come along eventually and shake things up and revolutionize the genre with something different at some point.

I honestly don't think much will happen until VR really becomes better and more mainstream and also affordable. No MMO in today's market is ever gonna bring the amount of players WoW had without integrating some new technology or advancement like VR into it. There are just simply too many games and genres and things to choose from now.

[Schattenlied]

No, WoW doesn't need to die, people need to hold on to their game and not go easy routes. All the games I could consider WoW-killers, have done their worst by going F2P, P2W or such.

And Warhammer Online got killed by EA pulling their typical bullshit of "force studio to release their game before it's ready, sack the studio when it under-performs".

[Octoberfest99]

MMORPG's are a niche market in 2019. Gaming itself in more mainstream in 2019 than in 2004. Mobile phones brought gaming to a large group of people who previously were not gamers. Many gamers enjoy the fast pace at which you receive rewards and make small but measurable progress in mobile games. They enjoy being able to play games in short bursts and still have fun and feel like they accomplished something. That's not a bad thing at all and has helped make gaming mainstream. However, an unintended long term effect of this phenomenon is that many gamers today lack the patience for the slow burn rewards and progress of classic MMORPG's. The idea that you need to put weeks or months investment into a game just to begin to reap the fruit of your labor is a non-starter for many gamers. I honestly think this is why Blizzard has shifted retail WoW toward faster paced (but shorter lasting) rewards. There will always be some of us who prefer a slow burn, but the mainstream of gaming has shifted to high frequency rewards and shorter games. So I don't think WoW dying would rejuvenate the MMO scene. The market for MMO's is too small now for a AAA developer to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a new IP. Those of us who like MMO's should keep supporting WoW (retail and classic), FF14, SWTOR, ESO, etc. if we want to continue enjoying MMOs.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Very good point. I think the OP is really meaning MMORPG if I read between the lines.

To be fair, people have been using MMO as a short-hand for MMORPG pretty much since the beginning, even if it isn't technically correct. I mean.. just take a look at the site we are currently posting on..

[Jester Joe]

The MMO scene is dead. The only thing left is WoW, staggering around like a zombie looking for brains. It's not even an MMO any more. Hasn't been for a decade.

This is the first time I've ever seen someone claim WoW isn't an MMO.
What else would it be if it's not a massively multiplayer online game?

I've seen the claim that it's not an RPG anymore though.

That being said, WoW's life or death has nothing to do for rejuvenating the MMO scene.
MMOs just inherently are more of a resource sink than other games I would say.

You have to manage servers, provide fast support to players in game, make updates constantly, balance and patch things.
It requires a lot of long term support. Which can burn people out that are stuck working on the same game for 5-10 years like that, and knowing they just have another 10-20 in front of them if they stay.

It requires more support from the community too than a single player game. MMOs live or die by if you have a stable playerbase or not.

For MMOs to be rejuvenated, they would just need to be less risky i'd say.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

No. Because WoW isn't the problem.

Kids don't have the attention span for an MMO anymore, they'd rather get on their phone, play a 10 minute Fortnite match, and get their lootbox.
Adults don't have the time for an MMO anymore, between a job, self-care, and a family they probably only have time enough to log on, do world quests, maybe a weekly LFR run, and then they need to sleep.

Gamers are firmly in the mobile design sphere right now. That's why Blizz is pushing so hard to break into that market.

[smityx]

Nah, WoW alone dying wouldn't help. The only realistic way would be for all big ones to die off or for someone to start out with a small one who grows it considerably over time. The later option would require this to be some insane passion project though. The mmo market is way too fractured, the sheer mass of asian titles alone out there that each hold a few percentage points of the target audience each is an issue. Everyone expects different things from their MMO of choice today. Not to mention that in a global market you'd need to target western and eastern audiences as well. All of that is further shackled down by the burden of long development cycles and incredible production costs and people having sunk 10-20 years into some titles already.

We also kinda ran out of cool gimmiks lately, the next big push would require a new gimmik that propells it above the established titles. And the next generation of players has different priorities for playing as can be seen by the mobile trends. A one to rule them all MMO becomes more unlikely by the day imho (unless you magically propell us into the age of full VR and have the game feature an M-only mode )

Probably not VR but AR (augmented reality) possibly. Just look back at the Pokemon Go craze. Imagine roaming your own town fighting stuff. Joining a group for a raid in your local public park for instance.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I think the Survival/ Builder games are basically the new MMO's. Take games Like Ark or Conan, hell even the Forest are all great games with infinite play-ability. Ark especially is amazing and just all around fun. I think this is what most "MMO's" will look like in 3-5 years.

I gotta agree with that. The next step would be to merge these sandbox games with their mutable worlds and the some of the classical (MMO)RPG themes of themeparks like WoW and create a new step in the evolution of the genre. Personally I would like to see some active DMing instead of just once&done quests. Procedural generation is just not there yet, maybe something community driven could be used in such a space. I don't think there is any other way to satisfy the constant hunger for content otherwise, at least without resulting to grinds and the currently popular mobile schemes. In that regard I'm curios what that Amazon game is going to be like.

[oplawlz]

Every mmo-rpg has had very specific things preventing it from succeeding. BDO for instance had a chance to be amazing, but totally wrecked itself with monetization and reliance on a pvp endgame.

Right now specifically it wouldn't be hard to outshine world of warcraft - publishers just aren't willing to take a chance on making a really good mmo and letting its quality drive their profits.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Probably not VR but AR (augmented reality) possibly. Just look back at the Pokemon Go craze. Imagine roaming your own town fighting stuff. Joining a group for a raid in your local public park for instance.

Hmm, I guess you could do it with your phone like that, but it would be quite hard to make a proper progression there. People would just stop playing the moment their usual habitat no longer has anything to offer. But I think that is still a different niche compared to our classical mmorpg player doing it so for relxation and entertainment at home.

[Eurhetemec]

So the question I'm asking is a simple one. Does WoW need to die for the MMO scene to rejuvenate? Putting it another way, does the very presence of WoW prevent the success of a new MMO IP? In the same way that a forest fire clears the way for new life, would the death of WoW encourage a new MMO, or even several, to rise in it's place?

What are your thoughts?

In a word: No.

Because if WoW died, FFXIV would be doing largely the same thing, in the same way, just with a longer GCD and a really mega-anime plot. Hell, say Blizzard accidentally destroyed WoW tomorrow, unrecoverably, probably 50%+ of the players would head over to FFXIV. So long as there is a game carrying the torch for holy-trinity based (i.e. tank, healer, dps) games with a hotbar, a GCD and structure involving instanced dungeons and raids, that sort of game will exist.

The only way the MMORPG market moves on is with a profound technology change and a game that takes advantage of that technology change to provide an unparalleled experience. At that point it's immaterial if WoW still exists or not.

People saying that MMOs "evolved and moved beyond WoW" though are sadly mistaken. ESO and GW2 are not really "beyond" WoW as much as off to the side of it. They're still all about the hotbars and GCDs, and their endgames are still instanced dungeons and raids.

The true next-gen MMORPG will probably be something more like a first-person VR deal with mechanics like a massive, polished version of Outward or something.

[smityx]

Hmm, I guess you could do it with your phone like that, but it would be quite hard to make a proper progression there. People would just stop playing the moment their usual habitat no longer has anything to offer. But I think that is still a different niche compared to our classical mmorpg player doing it so for relxation and entertainment at home.

Who's to say it has to be on a phone. Looking forward why not some glasshole type headset and gloves for gestures. Eye tracking, etc. Think future tech in the next 10-20 years.