"The MMO market is dying" is an awful excuse/argument

[Katchii]

But it IS dying

Literally every MMO that isnt WoW and to a lesser extent FFXIV is struggling.

Wildstar failed, Skyforge failed, Rift failed, Tera failed, Blade and soul failed, Black desert failed, Archeage failed. Guild wars 2 is on life support and EA is sharpening their axe to chop Swtors head off. If the 5th biggest mmo doesent have the income to make a STORY focused expansion last longer than 3 hours something is off

Only phenomenon is Eso as they are pumping out shitloads of content. Their problem however is that they never innovate. If you look at right now and at launch there is literally no difference in gameplay save new classes

Same way ever RTS that isnt Age of Empires and Starcraft is dead

Wildstar did fail, however the rest of them are doing fine and are still receiving updates. Whether you enjoy them or not is an entirely different conversation, however they are all still alive and doing well enough to receive updates...which is the opposite of failing.

SWTOR isn't going anywhere any time soon, which is good and bad. It's certainly not dying, but it's not receiving updates very quickly either, and the updates aren't substantial as you noted, but again...it's FAR from dead.

[Marrilaife]

Tbh it's a valid argument and should make Blizzard realize 2 things:
1. It's more important to cater to existing players than trying to broaden your audience because there isn't that much potential to expand anymore
2. Extreme timeconsuming and grindy games are very, very niche and also that niche is mostly taken by korean / chinese mmos, so no point trying to copy these

[Kokolums]

One, D3 hardly played like an MMO,
Two, WoW hardly plays like and ARPG.
Three, games need to evolve or else they stagnate.

An ARPG is defined as ACTION. Tons of stuff on your screen whizzing by and you exhausted trying to keep up. Loads of monsters that can be killed in a few hits (and they can kill you in a few hits). You have few skills. The game is about macro: trying to herd and handle massive amounts of enemies at once.



An MMO is defined as the opposite. Its you vs 1 mob. Both have huge health pools. Combat involves a huge array of skills that you use with either a rotation or priority system or a cast sequence. For example in Classic WoW, you level up in the Barrens and fight one quillboar and have to be VERY careful to not aggro another or you die, plus watch out for stealth or you die, plus kill it before it flees or you die. Combat is slow. Its a more thinking man's game. Its about micro. Social community is a huge thing.



It was never a question of "evolving". Its more like they are two VERY different playstyles. The design is such that you play World of Warcraft for a while until you get bored of slow play, then you swap to Diablo 3 for a while to get frantic play that has you on the edge of your seat, then when you are exhausted you go back to WoW. When you mix genres, when both Diablo 3 and Wow are half MMO and half ARPG, it becomes all samey-same. It kills incentive to have BOTH games. If WoW is doing both things and becomes an MMOARPG, then there is no need to make Diablo 4.

[Tident]

I would argue wow hurt itself in the long term by trying to open its game up to people without much interest in mmos.

Every expansion for the most part feels like a different game besides raiding as it struggles to reinvent the wheel by making it square...

[Flurryfang]

The MMO playerbase is larger than ever before and that just means there is more opportunity in the market aswell. The thing is, that there is just SOOOO much more competion in the MMO market, that it is really hard to break through with a quality game, that can suck up a larger part of the market.

So yeah, not only is saying "the MMO market is dying" a direct lie, but also a proven bad thing to say when it comes to valueing a market. People said that old school games were out together with metrodvanias some years ago, and suddenly we have a huge boom in that area with Shovel Knight and Hollowknight. Genres do not die out, they just need a break sometimes and then a great game to respark it.

[Shiza]

An ARPG is defined as ACTION. Tons of stuff on your screen whizzing by and you exhausted trying to keep up. Loads of monsters that can be killed in a few hits (and they can kill you in a few hits). You have few skills. The game is about macro: trying to herd and handle massive amounts of enemies at once. What you mean are hack and slash games, which are a sub-group of action role playing games.

Actually not. An action rpg is defined by being a gamethat emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time while also incorperating typical rpg mechanics, like a leveling system, classes or an equipment system. For example the Dark Souls games and Soulsborne games in general are action games where you predominantly fight single or smaller sizes of opponents at once which emphasizes a more tactical, careful and reaction based playstyle compared to other games in the genre which for example emphasize button smashing against armies of opponents.

An MMO is defined as the opposite. Its you vs 1 mob. Both have huge health pools. Combat involves a huge array of skills that you use with either a rotation or priority system or a cast sequence. For example in Classic WoW, you level up in the Barrens and fight one quillboar and have to be VERY careful to not aggro another or you die, plus watch out for stealth or you die, plus kill it before it flees or you die. Combat is slow. Its a more thinking man's game. Its about micro. Social community is a huge thing.



It was never a question of "evolving". Its more like they are two VERY different playstyles. The design is such that you play World of Warcraft for a while until you get bored of slow play, then you swap to Diablo 3 for a while to get frantic play that has you on the edge of your seat, then when you are exhausted you go back to WoW. When you mix genres, when both Diablo 3 and Wow are half MMO and half ARPG, it becomes all samey-same. It kills incentive to have BOTH games. If WoW is doing both things and becomes an MMOARPG, then there is no need to make Diablo 4.

Not really. A MMO simply defines video games which are designed to play online with dozens up to thousands of other players on a server, as opposed to regular multi-player games which also could be played offline, for example through LAN or a shared console and which consists of a smaller number of players who share the game world with you, regularily 4, sometimes more, sometimes less.

And World of Warcraft are actually rather similar in terms of playstyle, considering how the battle-system in both games is designed around abilities which are placed on an action bar and which are accessed through mouseclicks or a hotkey, which have a global cooldown but also can possess individual cooldown timers, as opposed to more direct combat methods like for example in Dark Souls, which favor a Controller for controls. Diablo is different due to movement being point and click based, while you can move directly with your keyboard buttons in World of Warcraft. They are and always were similar in that regard and the difference was always on enemy density as well as difficulty, where World of Warcraft is still more based on smaller scale fights with at most a hand full opponents in most cases, because individual enemies to this day inflict more damage to the player. The pacing was only increased, but so was also the complexity of the ability rotations.

And while combat in classic was slow, it wasn't that much of a thinkin mans game compared to modern wow. Rotations where highly simple with fights consisting mostly of auto-attacks and happening passively and whether or not you could pull single mobs, multiple mobs were managable or you were stuck with multiple mobs you couldn't possibly defeat was based on the whims of the designer from camp to camp. Classic WoW wasn't hard, it just created the illusion of difficulty by being unfair.

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The MMO playerbase is larger than ever before and that just means there is more opportunity in the market aswell. The thing is, that there is just SOOOO much more competion in the MMO market, that it is really hard to break through with a quality game, that can suck up a larger part of the market.

So yeah, not only is saying "the MMO market is dying" a direct lie, but also a proven bad thing to say when it comes to valueing a market. People said that old school games were out together with metrodvanias some years ago, and suddenly we have a huge boom in that area with Shovel Knight and Hollowknight. Genres do not die out, they just need a break sometimes and then a great game to respark it.

The classical MMORPG markt is decreasing though, due to a broader diversity of online game genres being available and forms of multiplayer games being currently more popular, especially when it comes to younger players. MMORPGs aren't simply that popular anymore as they were during the hight of World of Warcraft. Survival and Battle Royal games are currently the most popular ones. It could change and classical MMORPGs see a come back or they may slowly die out, we don't know, but their popularity certainly decreased over the last few years.

[Nnyco]

Probably because its not an excuse but rather a statement.

[Sansnom]

Not at a blizzcon. mobile gamers aren't gamers, they're people who play games when they have to wait somewhere or shit.

that's why blizz was booed

Wow. You must feel so proud and special to be a gamer then.

[Bladesyphon]

Tell me, if MMOs are in such a decline, why...

a) FFXIV is getting bigger and better with each expansion

This is just factually wrong. We are actively getting less and less content with each expansion cycle, and the content we are getting is becoming smaller and smaller. We've gone from having multiple dungeons per patch to a single dungeon per patch, 8-man raids that actually had dungeons tied to them to circular arenas, and the "new" content we are getting is recycled from previous expansions with a different coat of paint.

XIV is probably the worst example to use in defense of the MMO Market not being on the decline. It's actively getting less content as the years go by, which in fact only helps the counterargument, rather than disprove it.

[Sharby]

This is just factually wrong. We are actively getting less and less content with each expansion cycle, and the content we are getting is becoming smaller and smaller. We've gone from having multiple dungeons per patch to a single dungeon per patch, 8-man raids that actually had dungeons tied to them to circular arenas, and the "new" content we are getting is recycled from previous expansions with a different coat of paint.

XIV is probably the worst example to use in defense of the MMO Market not being on the decline. It's actively getting less content as the years go by, which in fact only helps the counterargument, rather than disprove it.

They stated their reasoning for it, and it had nothing to do with the game being on the decline.




You may not agree with their reasoning, but don't spread misinformation.

[Nihilist74]

I hope the MMO market does die soon. I would much rather have a game just like wow but set for a single player or a single player with bots that I can control. I would like the game to have multiplayer options but not required.

[kaminaris]

The only problem with wow as MMO is that you need 20 people to do any relevant difficulty.

As for MMOs declining people simply gone to other games, so from one goliath we have a lot smaller ones and couple bigs. Nothing wrong with having options.

[DeltrusDisc]

If MMO market is not in decline, where did all the players go from the genre?

Boom, thread. /nuclearbombgif

[Codah]

Wow. You must feel so proud and special to be a gamer then.

This is such a bullshit way to think. We ALL know "mobile gamers" are not gamers in the traditional sense. The idea of power dynamics is such an incredibly bullshit way of restructuring the argument to become inherently invincible to any criticism.

[Onikaroshi]

This is such a bullshit way to think. We ALL know "mobile gamers" are not gamers in the traditional sense. The idea of power dynamics is such an incredibly bullshit way of restructuring the argument to become inherently invincible to any criticism.

I call them gamers, I do quite a bit of mobile gaming myself to boot. Plenty of ACTUAL games on mobile.

[PrairieChicken]

It is a fact that MMO is on decline, and it is not necessarily a excuse for anything.

The older players no longer have time to invest in lengthy grinds, and not enough new players are replacing the bleed.

And companies no longer have an incentive to develop mmos because mobile is much more profitable at a fraction of development cost. Hence wow has no serious competition.

[CostinR]

It is a fact that MMO is on decline, and it is not necessarily a excuse for anything.

The older players no longer have time to invest in lengthy grinds, and not enough new players are replacing the bleed.

And companies no longer have an incentive to develop mmos because mobile is much more profitable at a fraction of development cost. Hence wow has no serious competition.

None of these things are valid excuses and Classic showed that yes people do have the time to invest despite being older and that there are also new players willing to play. Current figures on Warcraft Logs show that there's more individual raiders then on retail and that's for a 15 year old game with loads of issues in design and class balance.

If a company cared to make a good solid MMO with loads of high end content for large groups of people there's an audience for that.

[Chickat]

WoW is the only MMO I liked. Tried almost all other MMOs, they're all trash, tbh.

And my interest in WoW now is at an all time low. When I'm done with WoW, I'll be done with the MMO genre as a whole.

And no, I doubt Activision has the talent and will to turn WoW around. They don't seem to know how to do anything beyond world quests and AP grind with a different name each expansion.

Anima is supposed to be more like Valor in Shadowlands, and they said they are going to be overhauling world quests for a world quests 2.0. We shall see.

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None of these things are valid excuses and Classic showed that yes people do have the time to invest despite being older and that there are also new players willing to play. Current figures on Warcraft Logs show that there's more individual raiders then on retail and that's for a 15 year old game with loads of issues in design and class balance.

If a company cared to make a good solid MMO with loads of high end content for large groups of people there's an audience for that.

For sure, but I seriously doubt the audience would be worth the risk. Its easier to pump out mediocre mobile games and make just as much money as most mmos.

[Rogue Karl]

Activision only cares about money. They don't listen to the forums at all if it's not about something that they can sell to people.

They listened when people wanted Vulpera. They didn't give a shit when people wanted account wide essences, for example. Why? Because QoL features means people play the game less, since they don't have to farm as much, and that means less time spent in the game doing random shit. Can't have that.

A part of me is skeptical of allied races. It feels like a cash grab for race change sales..

[Kokolums]

The classical MMORPG markt is decreasing though, due to a broader diversity of online game genres being available and forms of multiplayer games being currently more popular, especially when it comes to younger players. MMORPGs aren't simply that popular anymore as they were during the hight of World of Warcraft. Survival and Battle Royal games are currently the most popular ones. It could change and classical MMORPGs see a come back or they may slowly die out, we don't know, but their popularity certainly decreased over the last few years.

This is incorrect. MMO developers simply have had no "value add" to draw in customers. WoW is the biggest MMO and its value add was a cutting-edge in-game social community. Blizz destroyed its in-game communities in late-BC, which halted its incredible growth, causing growth to level off in Wrath while the last vestiges of the in-game communities collapsed and then begin its inexorable descent afterwards. All other MMOs were terrible.

Its interesting that Blizzard even screwed up WoW Classic because they made *huge* changes in the social area.

1. they phased all the starting zones to give people a chance to complete quests. But negotiating with others or having small wars over quests early on was fantastic social activity they stripped out of classic.
2. the servers are *massive* in size compared to vanilla WoW, which makes everyone a lot more anonymous and hurts the in-game community a lot.

Not to mention modern WoW server tech is actually *worse* than the 2005 version because it is a virtual server not a dedicated physical server and they actually cannot handle large groups of people on the screen at the same time as well.

When someone actually makes an MMO correctly, the genre will revive.