"The neckbeards aren't gone... they're WAITING."

[Clone]

I had the opporunity to sit down with Asmongold yesterday and talk about Classic WoW and MMOs in general (link is in my signature).

He brought up a very interesting point about the MMORPG audience not being dead, but simply waiting in the wings for the next hardcore AAA MMO to release. I wanted to know how you guys feel about that; Do you think the MMORPG market is still alive and well, but dormant? Could we see another resurgence of the genre with Classic WoW?

Where were they during Vanguard Online and Wildstars?

[Malikath]

Wasn't W* going to revive the "hardcore" (whatever that means) MMO? That one worked well!

no, wildstar was entirely what wow has become, you occasionally do a shallow brain-dead "raid" with no threat of killing anyone with a pulse and then you go back to your player housing and wait for the next one.
the only thing you have to leave your house for once you hit endgame was daily quests or auctions.

wildstar died because it was cataclysm but with bunny-girls instead of werewolves.

[Mokrath]

Too much nonsense to read through but I think everyone is really missing the biggest detail of all... WoW was the go-to MMO for the casual and solo player when it was released and it part of why it has had so much success. Before WoW, MMORPG's were generally "group or die" beyond the first few levels, unless you played a certain class and could kite like a champ. WoW gave birth to the single player MMO experience as we know it today.
People aren't waiting for the next "hardcore" MMO, they are waiting for the next new thing.
Even Classic, as "difficult" as it is compared to Retail, won't break the mold on that single player experience because that was a huge draw during Vanilla. It was an MMO anyone could play, not just the hardcore players with active groups or guilds.

[Malikath]

Where were they during Vanguard Online and Wildstars?

same place with bless, not buying a crap product from a trash developer.

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Too much nonsense to read through

this part kinda sums up your post.
wow was the casual MMO, but it was still an MMO where communal effort mattered, now it's a time-gated treadmill that relies on RNG to lengthen your time invest required.

[Molis]

This is not true and has been debunked by more than anecdotal evidence. (WildStar)

Maybe there is 10,000 neck beards but that will not support a subscription game.

Why do people whore for this Asmogold dude so much?

[Deleted]

I am 35 years old. I was 22 years old when I purchased WoW the year it was released. The guild I joined in TBC which I remain in to this day were, some, older than me by 5 years. Me and those people have moved on, we have full times jobs and families, WoW is a distant memory and those people are no longer thinking about WoW. Its bills, pensions, and the upcoming mid life crisis expansion

I myself personally am excited for WoW Classic, I am excited to relive it, but at the same time I will not be reliving it the same way I did as an unemployed art student 12 - 15 years ago. As WoW got older so did I.

Most of those that I have spoken to in my guild no longer play WoW and are not interested in Classic when I asked them, some said they'll dabble but others don't even have time for the current game anyone let alone a more heavy time consuming game like Wow Classic.

Of course I don;t speak for everyone and I haven't spoken to everyone, I am aware that most people started playing vanilla WoW at probably 12 years old, a lot younger than I was when I started. Which would make them around 25 years old right now, the age I was when TBC was released lol. So for them I do believe they are waiting to relive that 'childhood nostalgia' or that game they can no longer play.

I don't believe all of those people are 'waiting in the wings' as most of those people have grown up and moved on, they are in their early 40 and late 30's. I am sure there are those in their 20's who are probably waiting for classic WoW with more time to play it. And maybe there are even a few 30+ year olds who have the time to maybe play, who knows, but that number isnt as big as we think. Nor do I believe Classic WoW will kick start the MMO Genre out of is sleep induced coma, it'll have a big turn out I bet but I don't think all those 12 million + players who left after Cata are waiting to join WoW Classic in the long run.

Lest us not forget that even on private servers the reason it was so huge, the reason there was so many people was because it was free. WoW Classic isn't going to be free, so taking what I said before about the age issue, the sub requirement may even restrict less people from wanting to play. So that's another chunk of people left out.

But I don't wan to be all doom and gloom, there will be a good turn out, I do also expect a good number from those that have never played vanilla before and want to play. So with that in mind I do think the release numbers will be big but not as big as some people may expect.

As with another MMO giving us that feeling. I don't know. The reason I played WoW in the first place (my first MMO), was because of my love for Warcraft, Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 3. As well as Blizzard games at the time. So I was already introduced into the World of Warcraft before going in, so I already had that investment.

Getting into another MMO (for me) is hard because I need an investment before going in, I tried other MMO games, Guild Wars 2, Black Desert Online, Age of Conan, Wildstar, Elder Scrolls Online and Lord of the Rings Online and none of those games despite two of which I loved the lore too I couldn't get invested in them as an MMO, WoW had that certain pull that very little MMO's have managed to capture. And it may be because I loved Warcraft and its other games, I enjoyed the lore and so my love for WoW was nearly instant. Where as others failed to capture me. So maybe this is more of a personal thing for me, I realise that sort of effect wont be everyone

If we are waiting in the wings for another MMO then it's got to change the game so drastically from what we know about MMO's, really reinvent the wheel of you will.

EDIT: Also noticed this was necropost, god dammit, there needs to be sell by dates on forum topics

[MoanaLisa]

To try and add some reality to this thread--which while it has been quiet for some months still bears some relevance--whatever "neck beards" are defined to be and it's not a term I use I think there probably is an audience out there for a more hard-core experience in an MMO.

The problem comes that after all these years, that audience, which is likely much smaller than people imagine, has fragmented into their own very specific idea of what a hard-core MMO looks like. Obviously that's not going to work as a commercial product if your customer base is all over the map and dismissive of anything that doesn't match up to their imaginary standards. Never mind the many, many issues of developing such a thing and funding its ongoing existence. Subscription based? I think that's a really hard thing to do in 2018/2019. Without a subscription it certainly would signal that it's not hard-core enough because funding the game would likely involve a store and all the other stuff that fits under the category of transactional gaming.

And that doesn't get into the significant problem of how you start a new 50-60 level MMO that will have less than half the game inventory of more established players.

I still think the really big missed opportunity for Blizzard was pristine realms. That proposal was for the entire game inventory of World of Warcraft toughened up and stripped down to be much like the better days of the game. From a historical standpoint I'm glad they're doing Classic WoW but I hope they don't shelve the idea of pristine realms forever.

[ro9ue]

I had the opporunity to sit down with Asmongold yesterday and talk about Classic WoW and MMOs in general (link is in my signature).

He brought up a very interesting point about the MMORPG audience not being dead, but simply waiting in the wings for the next hardcore AAA MMO to release. I wanted to know how you guys feel about that; Do you think the MMORPG market is still alive and well, but dormant? Could we see another resurgence of the genre with Classic WoW?

Hey man, I'm a fan of the classiccast podcast. My thoughts are 1) yes, there are a ton of people waiting for the next big MMO, but 2) MMO devs aren't delivering. What players want is something that felt like the next step. I went from EverQuest to WoW. WoW was so much better, it was easy for me to leave behind EQ, and all my characters and investment.

But every single MMO since then has just been... a shittier version of WoW. That's not enough to get people to walk away from their investment. They need the new thing. An MMO where as soon as you step into it, WoW feels old. It's so much better you can't go back. Not just WoW with some tweaks and a new setting.

Not to mention Blizzard has, imo, some of the best artists (illustrators, sound designers, concept artists, musicians, etc) in the industry, and it's going to be hard for 90% of the game developers out there to touch the quality. So the bar is high, but I think just by virtue of aging, eventually the bar WoW has set will be easier to get over.

[Cyrops]

New generation of gamers just aren't into the long effort, the grind, the working towards something, playing long sessions without a palpable reward.

It's more a matter of fast games, instant gratification, low time commitment. And that's fine.

So i doubt any sort of MMO will reach WoW's level, ever. It was a 'freak storm' of circumstances that lead to its success.

So true, main reason why 'battle royal' is exploding in popularity. I am an old school gamer, I'm 33 and played from beta WoW, had many breaks over the years, thought I quit in Legion for good, went whole year without WoW, now playing BfA and loving it. People talking how shit the BfA is made me come back and see for myself.

[Akka]

Wasn't W* going to revive the "hardcore" (whatever that means) MMO? That one worked well!

Yeah, I'm sure that because game A failed due to a whole array of reasons, it means that its genre is dead !
/facepalm

[Nomads]

Also, the game was pretty garbage too, so I'm not sure that helped!

Wildstar did a lot of stuff right. I like it a lot. Like a lot, a lot. It was painful to see it die. But it did for 2 main reasons.

1) It was overly tuned, so that if you had a less than perfect connection, you automatically sucked because you couldn't dodge the telegraphs fast enough.

2) It was all about raiding... Raiding is fun, but is an incredible time sink in the traditional format. Wildstar came out right as raid finder went in to WoW... they clearly missed the memo, that casuals (people with families and obligations) want to raid too.

[Kaleredar]

If this audience were to actually exist, you'd think one of the hundreds of MMOs that has come out since WoW's release wouldn't have just fallen into obscurity.

And it's equally folly to think that WoW was ever driven by the "hardcore" crowd. They never constituted more than a single-digit percentage of WoW's playerbase at any point in its history.

The vast majority (talking 80% plus, here) of the community wasn't going out and farming mats for pots for several hours a day before settling in for their scheduled nightly raid run to attune their new tank so they could gear him up through BT. They were leveling toons or casually running dungeons or saving up their badges to buy an epic.

So even if you were to make some MMO that catered perfectly to the harcore WoW crowd, and assumed that every single person that raided harcore in WoW still had the time to do it and put into it, you'd still only be picking up a sliver of WoW's market.

[Rapti]

To be honest - I dont know.
I guess WoW will prove this, while still there have been plenty of HC MMO games in the past failing miserable.

All I know is that I am waiting for Classic and will play it (not as HC as I used to of course).

[voidillusion]

Ahhh Wildstar again... that game that almost everybody wanted to be good but in fact was a hidious experience...

Soon we'll find out if there's a crowd for old school mmorpg or not.

[Thunderball]

I wouldnt say they're waiting. More like playing games like PoE or TCGs.

[klepp0906]

is neckbeard like a catch-word for someone who is willing to put in the work to get ahead in a game, where your not.. so your salty? Or theyre simply better than you?

real question. hate the term.

Ive been called such cause im top AP of my class on my realm, mythic raider, high io score etc. Yet I compete regionally in bodybuilding comps, have a family of 4, and am up at 5am every day for work, and probably had TOO much of a social life pre marriage/family.

- - - Updated - - -

I had the opporunity to sit down with Asmongold yesterday and talk about Classic WoW and MMOs in general (link is in my signature).

He brought up a very interesting point about the MMORPG audience not being dead, but simply waiting in the wings for the next hardcore AAA MMO to release. I wanted to know how you guys feel about that; Do you think the MMORPG market is still alive and well, but dormant? Could we see another resurgence of the genre with Classic WoW?

vanilla wow wasnt close to hardcore. goes to show about subjectivity (and probably generational differences)

[voidillusion]

I wouldnt say they're waiting. More like playing games like PoE or TCGs.

Just in my anedoctal sample circuit of mtg players i hang out with there are 3 players that abandoned BFA and are eagerly wayting for Classic. It's worth what it's worth...

[Irian]

I believe he's right, but classic WoW servers are not going to be what they want.

Classic WoW, as fun as it may end up being, is a retreading of stuff that's been done before. Nothing new or exciting can come out of it. I think there are people out there that want to experience the huge grind again, but many just won't be interested in doing the same content they did a decade ago.

Sadly I don't think the next "neckbeard" game is coming. No MMORPG has been as all-encompassing in appeal as old WoW was, and the MMORPG genre as a whole feels like it's faded pretty far. It may come back someday, but likely in an entirely different form than we're used to. I think there are plenty of people who want to "neckbeard" a game but the AAA gaming market has decided that the only worth of players like that is to turn them into whales.

[Deleted]

I think there is some merit to the thought - since hardcore players are leaving WoW slowly.

But I doubt people will stop playing WoW and dedicate all their time into a new MMO..
The hardcore players need to know their time is not wasted, if the new game flunks after 3 months.

[FelPlague]

I had the opporunity to sit down with Asmongold yesterday and talk about Classic WoW and MMOs in general (link is in my signature).

He brought up a very interesting point about the MMORPG audience not being dead, but simply waiting in the wings for the next hardcore AAA MMO to release. I wanted to know how you guys feel about that; Do you think the MMORPG market is still alive and well, but dormant? Could we see another resurgence of the genre with Classic WoW?

You mean how wildstar was the hardcore AAA MMO that literally just shut down because no one wanted it?

Oh this post is 12 months old, someone necroed this.. well point stands