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

[Adamas102]

It seems a lot of people around here just assume that there’s a massive group of gamers who WANT to play the same game for 5, 10, 15, 20, etc years. That’s what the MMO market demands, lifelong subscribers.

If anything, WoW was a flash in the pan, bringing in a huge number of people early on due to the popularity of their IP and a relatively low learning curve. The decline after WotLK (I think) is less indicative of a decline in the quality of the game, but rather the threshold that most gamers are willing to dedicate to a single game (1-5yrs).

The longer the game goes, the more people will drop off until you’re left with only the people willing to play WoW for the rest of their lives. I know I’m not one of those people. 15yrs is already pushing it, I’m not excited about SL, and I’m not even one of those people who think WoW has greatly declined over the last decade.

[Relapses]

Oh yeah, I too remember those games that followed wows best design and gained millions of subs.

I'm pretty sure the dude you're quoting does not understand the concept of sarcasm. It's a dangerous tool to use in these parts, be careful with it.

[Candy Cough]

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

[Steelcryo]

It isn't that MMO's are dying is used as an excuse, but it's a fair reason why WoW doesn't have the sub numbers people expect anymore. Sure, a lot of game design choices have pushed some players away, but that's always going to happen. You can't make something that pleases everyone and as people lose interest in MMO's, it's harder and harder for the good design decisions to claw people back.

WoW could come out with the best expansion it's ever had, it could be praised by every critic and players alike, but it still won't draw back people that just aren't interested in MMO's anymore, which is more and more all the time. Now, I'm not saying people losing interest is the only problem here, Blizz has definitely made some questionable decisions, but it's a much bigger part than some people give it credit for.

[cparle87]

Either one can be a delusion, there is no telling which one is really the case. Most often I see people argue that the MMO market is dying because despite the recent releases over the past decade, fewer and fewer are doing well enough to justify continued development. Additionally, wow reaching 12m subscribers might have been somewhat of a fluke, because despite some more historically popular IPs, no other MMO has come close to the success of wow at its peak.

Everyone knows WoW was a perfect storm of popularity, accessibility, and market conditions. It's not something that can be sustained, or likely ever repeated.

[Usernameforforums]

Fortnite is the world of warcraft of this era, change my mind.

[KaPe]

Fortnite is the world of warcraft of this era, change my mind.

It pretty much is. Some people have apparently missed tho MOBA craze, replaced by the Battle Royale craze and who knows what will come next. Their popularity crushes whatever miniscule growth FF14 might have had, if any. Do they even post official numbers? WoW certainly doesn't, but people still keep spouting random numbers which supposedly prove their point.

[GreenJesus]

There's GW2, ESO, FF14 competing for MMO subs now. It's not just the lone giant anymore. And MMO's themselves are trending much older.

[Eurhetemec]

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

They got old. Simple as that. New ones did not replace them in sufficient numbers (because other games have filled the social game/trendy game niche that MMOs previously did). This isn't even arguable (at least the getting old isn't).

MMOs themselves are still, in many cases, trying to chase a 16-26-year old market that made total sense in 2004, but makes little sense in 2020, where even that 16 year old is 32 and has a job, kids, and so on. WoW has done better than some, but is still overly focused on lengthy grinds and misunderstands it's own audience, in that it puts stuff that the older players engage with behind barriers the younger players more easily deal with, even though the younger players are less interested in it.

Islands are a good example - who the hell thought making them something you need to grind hard, which has little in the way of interesting rewards, and which are on a timer which require you to play in a GOGOGOGOGO way was remotely a good idea? These could have been appealing to an older, more casual group of players, but instead they were focused at a more pushy, competitive, younger group, who are bored absolutely stiff by them.

[Nnyco]

Sadly, they don't. Hence the 1.5 mill active subs.

And out of which arse did you pull that number?

[ghays]

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

They returned to the ether from whence they came. If they were ever truly here at all.

[Wangming]

There's GW2, ESO, FF14 competing for MMO subs now. It's not just the lone giant anymore.

This. And this is literally the opposite of the market dying. Finally there is a market not just one complacent game with a monopoly on the genre. There is an incentive to really improve. You give your all in Shadowlands or subs go bye bye.

[Eurhetemec]

Fortnite is the world of warcraft of this era, change my mind.

I agree. MOBAs were a bit different, they ate an audience which could potentially have gone into MMOs, but they were never a "social game" in the same way, like you didn't tend to play them with people you knew IRL (exceptions exist, but as a rule...). Whereas Fortnite? That's completely eating the players who would naturally gravitate towards MMOs, as it's a low-skill, high accessibility, social game that people talk about and that you play with people you know. Fortnite also skews less male-centric than many game genres (whereas MOBAs skewed more), just like MMOs.

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All true.

Still there are quite some new ones in the works

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdejpEYw1Ug&t=28s

...and even Amazon games is taking a shot

Amazon's effort is basically a reskin of Conan Exiles, as far as I can tell, not an actual MMO.

[Dziubla]

It may be an awful "excuse", but that doesn't make it any less true.

Which person do you think cares more about the game, the one who thinks the MMO market is dying and WoW is in decline because of it and there's nothing that can be done to save it, or the person that thinks some better game design decisions can still turn the game around?

Pick your battles wisely.

Not sure how it has anything to do with "caring about the game". I care about the game a lot. I've been playing it since the very beginning, and I know I will play it till the end. And yet I'm a fucking realist, and I utterly despise your attitude which is basically denying reality, and I realize that yes, MMO genre IS dying, and there's nothing to be done about it. I also know Blizzard WILL continue investing in WoW for as long as it brings them money, and it will continue bringing them money for quite a while, so...I'm not worried. Not for at least another couple of years.

[Polarthief]

It's most definitely not dying, the creators of most MMOs are just not developing them well. They either try too hard to emulate WoW (and fall short), or are WoW and are just fucking up royally with bad designs.

FFXIV is okay and I love the different amount of things to do, but the combat system is horribly flawed and the Dungeons/Raid philosophy feels very outdated. Majority of my last sub on it was spent leveling alt classes by just doing daily Duty Roulettes.

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

Went to genres that have better developers. WoW's dev team is choosing to be horribly incompetent and not listen to feedback at all, or the higher-ups are forcing them to have such awful designs that, again, do not listen to feedback at all. Whatever the case, this kind of shit doesn't happen to plenty of other companies.

[BeepBoo]

It's a pretty standard type of response from a business person who has no idea what they're talking about, because they're ultimately assuming it's not possible to deliver the product people want at the price people are willing to pay.

Then someone comes along and does everything the person who said that garbage line was incapable of doing, and "Oh my god! A sudden, unexpected resurgence!"

The proper thing to say in most of these cases is "we can't figure out what customers actually want well enough to keep them around or bring in new ones"

[Nebron]

Yes, it's probably in a decline and is nowhere near 12 million subscribers like Wrath had, that was quite literally an almost impossible feat and achievement for WoW and should be commended.

But if you continuously tell Blizzard that the MMO market is dying and that's your reasoning for why WoW is in decline, you might as well be telling them to stop investing money in WoW. They are a business after all, and if they think a market is dying off, why would they continue spending money on development of a game for a dying market? If you care about the game at all, stop saying this.

If you think that WoW is in a decline because of some bad game design decisions, then you still believe the game can be turned around with some better game design decisions and not be in a decline anymore.

Which of these opinions do you think is more helpful for the game? Which person do you think cares more about the game, the one who thinks the MMO market is dying and WoW is in decline because of it and there's nothing that can be done to save it, or the person that thinks some better game design decisions can still turn the game around?

Pick your battles wisely.

Okay, so first of all I don't see anything wrong in saying that MMO in general is in decline. Altough I have absolutely no data and statistics to support it, I would guess that's the case. Since WoW's greatness, many new genres have been explored, especially MOBA games which in my opinion are the greatest competitor to MMO.

MMO games take a lot of day time and I guess stricte PVP games like League of Legends, CS, HotS and and card games are much more rewarding. On top of that, I have seen an article that treated about 'millenials'. One of the points was that young people are much more impatient that previous generations. Most of the playerbase are children and teenagers in fact, so the sense of reward for them needs to be fulfilled as quickly as possible. That's precisely the reason why so many people are against Classic WoW and so much for 'boosts' and faster leveling.

I truly think that MMO genre is dying slowly.

On top of that, I wouldn't say that by stating that MMO is in decline, people do not care about WoW whatsoever. If that is a fact, then people just point it out - and I am one of them. I would love to enjoy WoW as I did before, but there are lots of indie games that get popularized immensively nowadays, that it's hard to me not think about WoW as a waste of time.

Another factor is that people got burnt out. Popularity of WoW is mainly associated with ot being something new. Now, that the 'core playerbase' is no longer intrested in playing this game, there is no chance to continously attract new players. It wouldn't be far-fatched to say, that 'ups' in playerbase, whenever a new expansion/patch is launched, are due to old players returning for a while.

WoW, apart from it's content quality, is not as much appealing to people as it has been a few years ago.
Just because 'the market is dying' it doesn't mean they won't invest, since as you have already pointed out - Blizzard is a company - and it's main goal is the profit. As long as there is money in this game, they will invest. None does it just for 'good intentions' really

That's the reason for so many microtransactions in WoW. They try to diversify the profits. It's nothing wrong in making as much profit from your game as possible. It only becomes a problem when it truly affects the game. By the way, it's also a PR problem.

So, I would love WoW to become a better game in terms of quality and polishing, but it's hard for me to belive that it would ever happen again. I might be biased though. But for me they simply rehash the same ideas every single expansion since Legion. I don't see any deep development in this game. Nothing is really innovative that much - at least nit as much as I would wish for

[FelPlague]

Sadly, they don't. Hence the 1.5 mill active subs.

oh shit they released their numbers!?
if you could link those please i would love to see them.

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As far as I know, none of the big guys have any ongoing projects, and not every person who worked at Blizzard at some point was a genius.

Yes, a fair few of the big guys worked on this game called.... wildstar.
A fair few of the old team are still at blizz/work on wow.

and what is it "not everyone who worked at blizz at some point was a genius" or "The original blizz guys were the best" which is it?

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Mobile gaming isn't really that big of a thing in the West.

yes it is, it is the biggest market world wide.


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I didn't even get to raids. I got bored around level 30. The game was just MEEEEEEEEEEEH for me.

so i guess the original blizz devs wernt that great after all?

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Yeah, current WoW isn't remotely near 12 million subs. They appear to be around 2 million subs (50% due to Classic).

oh shit did blizz leak their sub numbers? you should link them to me!

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What? The market is ABSOLUTELY dead.

WoW IS essentially the MMO market in North America/Europe. FFXIV exists, but WoW still dominates it in the west.

A market is an "Area". A gathering of vendors. How many MMO distributors do you see popping up in 2020? ESPECIALLY Western MMO developers? The 2000's saw MMO after MMO launch, and all of them failed when going against WoW.

this is overly true, and its sad, but game genre's are very specific time wise.
Everyone remembers the legendary days of platformers right?
Now adays how many platformers come out that are popular?
Mario... and...? what else? anything? no, its just mario really.
Racing games too, Now adays you have mario cart, you have a racing game or 2.
back in the day of racing games you had like 8 racing games every 6 months. diddy kong, donky kong, mario, sonic, crash bandicoot, need for speed, tokyo drift, etc etc.

MMO's used to be HUGE, we had tons, maplestory, runescape, star wars galaxy, toontown, wow, everquest, eve, Fallensword, and many other browser based "social mmo"
Game genre usually are popular based on either
1. real life effects- for example in the last 10 years people on average have less spare time then normal, people are also more depressed then normal. meanign that games that allow you to be in action constantly, and allow you to just drop in and out, with little grinding, are some of the most popular.

2. Trends- we get one really big game that lots of people enjoy, and then suddenly for the next few years EVERY company tries to copy that, and players love the original, and they play the copies, but as time goes on it slows down.
Example, minecraft, when that came out there wasnt really sandbox games like it, then suddenly it was EVERYWHERE it was on the news, it was being shown in classes, everyone knew about it, and for many years after tons of games copied it, and with this gained large following, but as time passed it lowered, minecraft has mostly fallen out of public eye, only recently popping back up again recently with another resurgence. (mostly brought on by pewdiepie) and now adays there is far less games like it being made, people got their fix with minecraft, and so now we no longer have "Another minecraft-like is coming out" every single month.

i could list tons of more examples why we have these years of "This genre of game is suddenly huge" but could go forever.


we left the MMO stage awhile back, why no mmo in the past few years has been able to survive. The only ones that are surviving right now are ones that came out MANY years ago, and still updating, but are nothing like how they used to be in legendary days past.

tell me in the past like 8 years, an MMO that released, and is still doing good to this day? ya cant, cause every mmo that has released in like the last 10 years has died off. the only ones that are staying alive are doing so because of their long histories.

[Shiza]

This. And this is literally the opposite of the market dying. Finally there is a market not just one complacent game with a monopoly on the genre. There is an incentive to really improve. You give your all in Shadowlands or subs go bye bye.

Though the market is probably by far smaller than during the 00 years and the early 10 years. Back then, MMORPGs where the biggest genre when it comes to online gaming and World of Warcraft held a near monopoly with the exception of the oldschool ones with a niche audience, because the expectations where so ridiculously high and anything below a few million subscribers and being the WoW killer was deemed a failure and put on life support. MMORPGs are not the biggest online genre anymore, battle royal games are and the entire online gaming market is by far more diverse now and a more social experience accross most genres, when back in the Day MMORPGs where the kind of games where you build a community, hang out with friends and make new ones. Combined with the smaller audience, there are a few steady competitors nowadays, with Teso and FF14 being the biggest. They are still nowhere near as big as WoW, but they have their numbers and they have reached a point where they are going nowhere, looking at the history of FF11, FF14 will probably be updated until the entire story is finished and the next Online Final Fantasy is on the way.

[rrayy]

Sadly, they don't. Hence the 1.5 mill active subs.

Link proving that sub number, please.