Why don’t imported MMO do well?

[Cracked]

"For skills and abilities, repetitive use and comprehension, then read tooltips after that. Ask other Japanese players how it works. For quests, "watch" the quest log and pick the word they know, and deduce. We can complete quests, just track objectives."

Haha, well, to be honest, I knew very few words of English when I started playing WoW (at the age of 11) and "pick the word they know, and deduce" is what I attribute 90% of my ability to speak English today at the age of 27.

[Mister K]

go fuck off and play your battle royal, kid.

Well you went from 0 to 100 real quick din't ya mate.

MMO's aren't as popular as they used to be. There has been 0 innovation in the industry and it's usually the same rinse and repeat mechanics other MMO's use. Also WoW is just too big to go again'st so it will need to destroy itself more to pave a way for something new.

[Skorpionss]

Lineage's success kickstarted the current trend of grindfest and cash shops. While everyone here in the West emulated WoW, everyone in Asia emulated Lineage.

It also doesn't help that when a big Asian MMO gets brought to the West, it's usually by... Nexon, who I need not say how absolutely terrible they are.

If you wanna talk about emulation, Lineage 2 had WoW beat by miles for a while, both in number of servers or population wise. And I'm talking about the west here. I used to play L2 on a server (back in tbc days) that had peak players online in the 10.000+ mark. And there were several others around that same mark. Which is weird because the actual official servers weren't that popular, as in, I never encountered anyone that said they played on officials and just don't have the money to pay for it anymore so they play on private servers, or anyone that even ever tried the official servers at all.

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I mean WoW's ongoing popularity has been grandfathered by the early success it had, and that was on Wrath and earlier where the artstyle was more general fantasy than the current nonsense with laser beams coming out of pendants and whatnot. Look at Samwise's and Metzen's art for example.

Still you can't compare WoW's style with it's main competitor FFXIV. One obviously looks like a weeb game and it is not WoW.

Problem is that the game looks less and less like that and more like if disney made wow... with a few exceptions I guess in Shadowlands, and some older characters like Illidan/Arthas. I really truly dislike the new character models, especially for humans and undead.

[VinceVega]

P2W kills every game for me.
And anime games are nearly always brim full of annoyning fanservice like huge tits. Armor is not armor just an excuse to see half naked pixels... it is just annoying.
Also male characters most of the time look like women without breasts...

FF14 was the only i have seen that i don't have a problem with. But they have some of the most horrible Quests i have ever seen. Like finally getting to a big bad villian but wait. Now plan and prepare a big feast for 5 hours... fuck that^^ That was the point i quit FF14 the first time.

Or worse lolis which i just can't approve of.
Game has lolis. I am out! And it should be forbidden. Sick stuff honestly.

[korijenkins]

I don't think your last and second last point are at all unrelated - I've personally often looked for MMOs to try out thinking the market is empty, only to find out that there are many very active ones that I've never heard about. Generally this was more a few years ago as I'm aware this is the case now, but I can imagine many in the west are/have been in the same boat.

Games like GW2 and SWTOR still have a very strong following, but people assume they're dead simply because they don't play them.

[Jonnusthegreat]

In Korea, MMO are Great. Why, then, do they fall flat on their faces when brought over to the US? Is it the anime art style? The pretty graphic intensity? The pay-to-won aspect? Why do imports fail in the west?

I will never play an anime art game. I will never seriously play any pay to win game.

[Segus1992]

Games like GW2 and SWTOR still have a very strong following, but people assume they're dead simply because they don't play them.

Very little is heard or seen about these games outside of dedicated fansites and subreddits, which is partially what my post is about. Is SWTOR dead? Did it ever get any expansions? Did it improve on the disastrous launch? I'd have to google it to find out because I genuinely wouldn't know squat about it unless I looked for the information.

I guess that's a problem with the MMO genre in the west in general? The only expansion-type advertisements I ever see are for FFXIV and WoW.

[Baconeggcheese]

They follow similar trends.

~Pay 2 win
~Lack of end game supplemented with infinite grinds to get power purely for the sake of it
~"Anime" art style is stigmatized in western audiences. This is so widespread that people even call FF14 an "anime game" even though its art style isn't at all.
~Lots of very janky unfinished games
~Games tend to only come over to the west after they're years old and often dated by that point (PSO2 is only just now coming soon to the west).
~They're often rampantly filled with bots and gold sellers to a much more egregious degree, and your accounts aren't as well protected.

I played archeage unchained with some friends when it launched and they couldn't even handle the servers properly at launch. Was a miserable experience, easily the worst I've had during a game launch.

[Irian]

A lot of times my issue is the complete disconnect from the developers. As an english player a lot of the game's developers likely don't even speak my language so any chances of any concerns voiced about game design are going to be totally lost on this side of the playerbase.

In general, western releases are often thrown out and kinda forgotten for these MMOs. I don't really want to invest a huge amount of time in a game that is likely to forget their western market even exists.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I don't agree. For example, you can play BDO for a very low price (I think the box is $10?) or even with a free trial. The cash shop is there, of course, but it's not P2W exactly.

So I did try it - and it was fun.. until I got to the point where everything I could do to progress my character was go out to a farm spot, farm, go sell to AH, go back to the farm spot, go AFK fishing until I want to play again. Everything about that game is great, except there is no real content. It's not sandbox and it's not themepark. So I dropped the game about 5 days in.

Truth is, there are just no new MMOs that are worth spending the time, period.

In case you don't know what the "content progression" in BDO looks like: You get to a level + gear level, there is a farm spot tailored to that. Once you make enough money to buy new gear and level up a bit, you move on to a slightly harder grind spot. And so on and so forth. There are no raids (other than very easy world bosses), there are no dungeons, PvP is a clusterfuck, there's just no goal. You "win" the game by being able to grind the latest and hardest grind spots, after farming 20 similar grind spots for days before. Your reward for grinding is more grinding. No directions, no overarching progression.

I think it is easy to find specific examples and say hey.. this one isn't.. so how can it be the case. The problem is when you cherry pick it is usually a sign of individual examples and less every tree in the forest type of situation.

[The Butt Witch]

Maybe if it didn't take longer to translate the game into English, than it takes to actually make the game from scratch.

[ro9ue]

Only speaking for myself personally - art style. Ultra flashy, way over exaggerated animations, .... awkward female character design... to say the least. Just completely unappealing. If I'm not visually attracted to the game or my character, I don't want to explore and I don't want to invest time into a character I think looks stupid.

If the eastern MMOs had more of a Metal Gear Solid or Resident Evil art style then they'd be speaking my language. The newer Final Fantasy stuff is a huge turn off for me.

[crakerjack]

It's because they typically have stupid features like player housing and over the top cosmetic options. If an MMORPG isn't atleast 90% raiding, dungeons and PvP, then it's not an MMO-RPG I want to play.

[Malix Farwin]

Still doesnt make it better final fantasy is utter garbage

Again an Opinion. if you are going to reply to me with statements like this that has nothing to do with what i am talking about i'd rather you just say it individually without quoting me.

[SinR]

1) Cash Shops that offer Pay to Win options
2) Eastern Devs thinking grindfests are a good thing for Western audiences
3) Eastern Devs completely ignoring the Western audience and their Western Distributors
4) Endless Money Sinks of some kind (think: Skin Transfers for the Cash Shop stuff, high as fuck repair bills, upgrading weapons or whatever)
5) Eastern Devs thinking everyone in the world plays like the Koreans do

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Oh I forgot one: Thinking PVP is the *ONLY* End-game option

[Gref]

heavy pay to win aspect. I just cant keep up man. I cant pay 99 dollars for shit every week.
give me a sub option I gladly pay your 15-20 bucks a month. I played blade and soul for a year, but even than I could not keep up with all the upgrades. too much pay wall.

[LilSaihah]

I think it's mostly an issue of IP.

FFXIV has a pedigree in the other FF games. WoW has a pedigree in Warcraft games. SWTOR is obvious. LOTRO is obvious. TESO is obvious.
The main exceptions to these rules as I see it are GW2 and EVE.
The only Korean MMO that I can think of that is still relevant in the west is Black Desert Online. I don't know why, but it is.

I think another big part of it is community engagement with the development staff. Community/development engagement looks like it could be a big part of developing that high-engagement playerbase sets the pace for every bracket of engagement beneath it.

The pay-to-win crap is obvious I think.

[BeepBoo]

I hate most imported MMOs for a few reasons:

1) usually no good raid scene at end-game.
2) I hate immense grinds. I want to get BIS and enjoy it for a little while before the next tick of the carrot chase.
3) I have super flashy combat animations and over-the-top armor styling. The anime aesthetic is not my jam for MMOs.

[Jinpachi]

Pretty simple, they suck.

None of them have a world as interesting as Azeroth.

None of them have dungeons as good as WoW.

None of them have raids as good as Wow.

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No they are not, we just a lack a good one outside of WoW. Classic is a huge success, as will Shadowlands be (even if it sucks) MMOs are not dying at all, go fuck off and play your battle royal, kid.

Also, the stories are trash. I don't give two shits about any of the stories in those games.

[Nihilist74]

Blizzard made world of warcraft a pretty good game right from the start. They have also been enhancing the world of warcraft for at least 15 years? It's going to be really hard for any MMO not to look like crap compared to that.
Personally I hate anime art style from Asian based games and their themes.