MMO Genre fading

[Ghul]

nono, theres enough innovation out there! but! innovative features that have been crappy developed are still worse than the good old stuff that already got fleshed out pretty well. blizzard said so themselves: innovation isnt always a good thing!

---------- Post added 2012-05-09 at 01:29 PM ----------

To be honest MMO's Scare me now.

Now that i'm older, I can see how much of a waste of life and time these games are . Does anyone else feel this way?

im not exactly scared, but im more like "so im doing this and that for a whole week to get one piece of armor? screw this!"
the amount of work you have to do in mmo's is just way to high and it really feels like a hardtimesink instead of a soft one.

[hulkgor]

More then being tired of the MMO genre, i miss the competitiveness of first person shooters. Having played fast paced RTCW\ET and Team Fortress Classic before that, i really miss those type of games, having been completely forgotten and neglected by developers. CoDs\CS are round based, which i hate (trying to be 'realistic'), and Quake 3 is long gone...

Every developer is trying to cash in the mmo cash cow with subscriptions, and few original and exciting titles are coming out. Skyrim was amazing, and now they're going to Elder Scrolls Online... whyy.

Oh well, good riddance to MMOs.

[Falling]

To be honest MMO's Scare me now.

Now that i'm older, I can see how much of a waste of life and time these games are . Does anyone else feel this way?

When I play Team Fortress 2 I get this feeling like fuck, and it's damn scary... Just doing the same thing over and over and I just suddenly get the feeling "why am I doing this? It feels like such a waste of time..." Why do we get concerned about time more and more the older we get

[Venziir]

I hope so, EVERYONE is making MMO's these days! It just screams up money-grabbing.

---------- Post added 2012-05-09 at 01:35 PM ----------

When I play Team Fortress 2 I get this feeling like fuck, and it's damn scary... Just doing the same thing over and over and I just suddenly get the feeling "why am I doing this? It feels like such a waste of time..." Why do we get concerned about time more and more the older we get

Because the older we get, the less time we have.

---------- Post added 2012-05-09 at 01:36 PM ----------

More then being tired of the MMO genre, i miss the competitiveness of first person shooters. Having played fast paced RTCW\ET and Team Fortress Classic before that, i really miss those type of games, having been completely forgotten and neglected by developers. CoDs\CS are round based, which i hate (trying to be 'realistic'), and Quake 3 is long gone...

Every developer is trying to cash in the mmo cash cow with subscriptions, and few original and exciting titles are coming out. Skyrim was amazing, and now they're going to Elder Scrolls Online... whyy.

Oh well, good riddance to MMOs.

While I agree 100%, I'd like to point out that it isn't Bethesda who is making Elder Scrolls Online, but some company called Zenimax or something, which was founded in '07 by a bunch of people from Mythic.

[Cyclone Jack]

It is the same cycle that we see with many other genres before it. With Doom came the hundreds of FPS clones, none of which really tried to add or change anything, just try to make a FPS that made the money id Software made. With C&C and WarCraft, we saw hundreds of generic RTS games, none of which tried to add or change anything, just try to make an RTS that was as popular. MMO's have fallen into that rut, though we are just now seeing a few MMOs that are trying to break the EQ mold, such as TERA, GW2 and TSW.

One thing to note is that, IMO, MMOs were much more...interesting pre-WoW. Many were much more open-ended and sandboxy. WoW was, IMO, both a blessing and a curse to the genre. It opened it up to millions of new players, but it left us with years of zero-innovation design. It didn't help that those few games that tried to change things up all ultimately failed. Ironically, it wasn't design that failed, as many of these games had interesting concepts and were fun, but its the bugs that killed the games. Whether this is due to the developer or the publisher is up for debate, but one thing is certain: You cannot release a buggy MMO these days.

[Venziir]

So there are currently 10 million subs to WoW, 2.5 million in Aion, 1.3 million to SWToR (Source http://mmodata.net/)

Where are your numbers from 5 years ago that indicate we had significantly more players in MMOs? If you look at the timelines in the source I quoted, I see nothing to support your claims.

---------- Post added 2012-05-09 at 03:40 PM ----------



How dare people do this. The outrage!

Abusing a hype to get away with making shit just to make money is pretty outrageous.

[ScottsdaleHokie]

No, the population is spreading out now that WoW has become a complete joke. You are going to several MMOs now with healthy populations instead of just one and that's a good thing.

[Prag]

Before The Burning Crusade, MMORPG was a pretty small niche in the gaming market. WoW in general just attracted people who would otherwise have ignored the genre altogether.

Over the last few years, that population has grown significantly smaller (in number of people, not percentage) and those people are looking for a "happy medium". A game that lasts longer than 30 days but doesn't have you sitting down for 10 hours a day to be competitive.

The genre is just going through a purging in a sense.

[Tekkommo]

im not exactly scared, but im more like "so im doing this and that for a whole week to get one piece of armor? screw this!"
the amount of work you have to do in mmo's is just way to high and it really feels like a hardtimesink instead of a soft one.

This is one of the major problems developers come across. People will always complain as they can't keep the entire market happy.

Lots of people complain about everything getting handed to them, but here you are complaining that it's too much effort.

It's a lose/lose situation, as people who complain are heard louder.

[Bristae]

No, the population is spreading out now that WoW has become a complete joke. You are going to several MMOs now with healthy populations instead of just one and that's a good thing.

over 10 million subscribers will agree that your statement about a joke is an opinion and it's an opinion that they all disagree with. A good number of players, me included, play more than one game and find enjoyment in most. The healthier population MMOs are going to be the ones the do things right and offer a balance between the "hardcore" and the "casual". Warhammer Online. Gone. Too PvP focused only. I can sit here and list them out, but most people here can figure them out.

SWTOR will balance out where they are now, they may grow some or may go down in the future. But they have somewhat of the Hardcore/casual balance. but they need more endgame casual stuff to do. That, IMHO, is their weakness right now. WoW shines right there. So much stuff to do endgame for everyone. Easily too. Now with pet battles being added. Even more. Blizzard gets it. Think what you will about WoW being a "joke". But WoW is still there scrapping after the hit of Cataclysm, which i didn't see as all that bad personally, and even if they do lose over time to other new MMOs, MMOs can still be success and profitable with 1-2 million subs.

[Deleted]

I think the market is just ridiculously oversaturated at this point.

There is just far too many games competing for the same amount of players, and the games are far too samey.

I do like the choice i get now, i pretty much played WoW because it was most polished, it was the smoothest and it (used to) have the best content and my friends played there but ive never been a fan of the fantasy setting or their storytelling now i get a decent choice of what setting i want to play whether its LotR universe or the star wars one, or as a super hero, having so many choices is great.

But the choice has come at a price the choices are just a different lick of paint, with the nuts and bolts underneath and the content being the same general gist. because of the rising price of developing a game, companies arent taking risks and just churning out the by the numbers MMORPGS just with a different theme.

Right now im playing Star Wars and enjoying it because im a star wars junkie, how long will that last, i dont know, definatly not as long as i lasted on wow (played from Beta vaniall, left after cata, made quick comeback for dragon soul), unless they add something truely new and unique.

I can definatly see me taking a break from the genre, as things like TSW, GW2 and Tera, look fine productions, but they just arent interesting me like back in the day, i used to get really excited at the prospect of a new MMO (i was even excited at MxO yes back when the Matrix was cool!!!), maybe i do need that break.....i'll see how long star war holds me, then maybe give the genre a rest for a while.

[hulkgor]

People keep bragging about 10M subscribers, but nearly half of that, 5M are asian accounts without subscriptions. That number is such a fallacy, its one of those things that after being repeated so many times, turns out to be 'known' as truth.

As for the topic, MMO are getting stale, and most of all, their 'durability' is very short due to high expectations and general aptitude from the players. People ate up WoW's early expansions that lasted for years without complaint, now, after a couple of months of new stuff, either wow new content of new games, people just steamroll through it, and it doesn't have lasting value.

Hence, MMOs aren't holding up as they used to. SWTOR lasted 2 months on his prime, Firelands and Dragon Soul patches lasted the same, let's see how TERA\GW2 fare, i guess GW2 will last a bit more due to the PVP focus and WvWvW.

[Fencers]

I get the feeling it's slowly losing steam and not quite as popular as it used to be. Am I the only one who thinks this or are general numbers going down because there are way more MMOs than there used to be? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the genre.

There are like 20 MMOs coming out within the next year or so. Which doesn't include the myriad AA MMOs in-between the AAA titles.

The market has wider options and more fragmentation than at any other point in the genre's history. I would the "MMO genre fading" is 100% personal perception in light of actual evidence.

[achaeon]

People keep bragging about 10M subscribers, but nearly half of that, 5M are asian accounts without subscriptions. That number is such a fallacy, its one of those things that after being repeated so many times, turns out to be 'known' as truth.

As for the topic, MMO are getting stale, and most of all, their 'durability' is very short due to high expectations and general aptitude from the players. People ate up WoW's early expansions that lasted for years without complaint, now, after a couple of months of new stuff, either wow new content of new games, people just steamroll through it, and it doesn't have lasting value.

Hence, MMOs aren't holding up as they used to. SWTOR lasted 2 months on his prime, Firelands and Dragon Soul patches lasted the same, let's see how TERA\GW2 fare, i guess GW2 will last a bit more due to the PVP focus and WvWvW.

Those 5 million asians are still paying subscribers. They pay differently, but they pay none the less. And last I checked, Asians count as much as anyone else.

[hulkgor]

It isn't a case of Asians not mattering, its a case of not being an active subscription as they announce it to be on the calls. Many people think wow is a 13$€\month affair worldwide. It is not. So, not every account is the same, hence the 'number' manipulation.

That was a silly response, and tbh, i didn't appreciate the insinuation that i made a racist remark.

[Gasper]

MMO's aren't dying. Just the people that play them are probably tired of seeing the same game repackaged and resold.

Hoping that in 10 years new unique MMOs will come out that actually have thought put into them. Not the same thing that we have been seeing for the past 10. >_>

[Deleted]

Those 5 million asians are still paying subscribers. They pay differently, but they pay none the less. And last I checked, Asians count as much as anyone else.

thats the thing they dont count as much as anyone else the Asia subs bring in far less money, far far far less.

[Bitlovin]

God, I hope they do, I'm sick and tired of "mainstream" MMOs. Back in a day when MMOs were niche, there was something interesting about the genre - the idea of seamless persistent world where your character gets to "live". Now we have the same damn theme park model repeated ad infinitum, and even the idea of persistent worlds is gone with rampant instancing everywhere. MMOs used to be LIVING BREATHING WORLDS, now they are glorified lobbies for instanced raids and instanced pvp.

I miss Ultima Online's glory days, and from what I just read, I get the feeling you do too.

[Gasper]

To be honest MMO's Scare me now.

Now that i'm older, I can see how much of a waste of life and time these games are . Does anyone else feel this way?

Its a waste of life and time if you get so absorbed that you ignore the outside world for the game. And yes, people do this. But if you play the game to relive boredom or stress like a regular video game, then there really isn't too much of an issue.

[Deleted]

To be honest MMO's Scare me now.

Now that i'm older, I can see how much of a waste of life and time these games are . Does anyone else feel this way?

Yes! And no. I didn't have an easy few years from say age 11-15, this might sound pathetic but the only thing that probably stopped me from falling apart all the time was pouring every possible minute into Runescape, which I did. Nowadays, yes, if I was gaming for those lengths of time I would consider it a total waste, and probably get bored too, but life is very different now to back then, and I don't look back at that time thinking that I wasted it, just that I got obsessed and tunnel visioned in a difficult situation.