Does WoW need to die for the MMO scene to rejuvenate?

[Toxuvox]

Before folks start commenting about this being a negative post, telling me to play something else, let me set the record straight.......

I enjoy World of Warcraft for a variety of reasons, and have done since about mid TBC. I raid as much as I want to, in the difficulty bracket that I want to, with a fairly good group of IRL and in-game friends. I enjoy the new expansions and subsequent content patches to varying degrees, and am still a subbed player. I take part in the Beta testing phases, and provide feedback as constructively as I know how.

All that said, every supposed "WoW killer" has fallen by the wayside. Some have been good games, and some not so much. I doubt that it's because all the studios that produced them were bereft of creative direction, and there's more than enough source material out there to make something truly epic in terms of an enduring MMO world out of it.

So the question I'm asking is a simple one. Does WoW need to die for the MMO scene to rejuvenate? Putting it another way, does the very presence of WoW prevent the success of a new MMO IP? In the same way that a forest fire clears the way for new life, would the death of WoW encourage a new MMO, or even several, to rise in it's place?

What are your thoughts?

[Unholyground]

MMO's themselves are an evolving genre that are all becoming more like mobile games.

[Grevmak]

The time of "just copy WoW LUL" is long gone. Sadly, the time of MMORPGs being the big money maker genre is also gone. Many AAA devs would rather make their FIFAs and CoDs and Mobile games that make money for sure than risk it all on a game that takes 4 years to make, hundreds of highly skilled people, and a clear vision to be successful.

MMORPGs being good is pretty much a miracle in its own right. MMO fans are also incredibly needy, rush through your game in seconds like locusts, and thus devs have to make the perfect, everlasting game without bugs, lags or anything.

The only thing that'll rejuvenate the MMO scene is a new MMORPG coming out and making mad cash. That's the only way to get many developers to try again - sadly, most of them will just try and copy that big game instead of making something original. Currently we gotta hope that some of the kickstarter MMOs aren't scams and wind up being actually decent, which is a gamble in itself.

Unstructured rambling over.

TL;DR: No, WoW's long past its glory, free to play gacha games make more money so that's what devs do. Gamedevs don't care about MMOs anymore, it'd need a big one being successful to make MMos popular again.

[Zenfoldor]

I miss the genre. I still love Dark Age of Camelot. I think the games are too expensive to fail so few companies even aspire to develop them, but hopefully some developer will take a chance and succeed again one day.

[Aggrophobic]

MMOs evolved and moved beyond WoW along time ago. What Blizzard does with WoW does not matter that much anymore.
So no, WoW does not need to die.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Nah, WoW alone dying wouldn't help. The only realistic way would be for all big ones to die off or for someone to start out with a small one who grows it considerably over time. The later option would require this to be some insane passion project though. The mmo market is way too fractured, the sheer mass of asian titles alone out there that each hold a few percentage points of the target audience each is an issue. Everyone expects different things from their MMO of choice today. Not to mention that in a global market you'd need to target western and eastern audiences as well. All of that is further shackled down by the burden of long development cycles and incredible production costs and people having sunk 10-20 years into some titles already.

We also kinda ran out of cool gimmiks lately, the next big push would require a new gimmik that propells it above the established titles. And the next generation of players has different priorities for playing as can be seen by the mobile trends. A one to rule them all MMO becomes more unlikely by the day imho (unless you magically propell us into the age of full VR and have the game feature an M-only mode )

[Battlebeard]

I don't WANT more mmorps nor better ones. I play almost only Blizzard games and have no interest in going to another developer.

Instead, WoW need to improve to make sure it remains the ONLY really good mmorpg.

[sosleapy]

Classic will be a savior for me. I played vanilla when it was current content and I rushed so hard thru it. Yeah wasnt fastest in the world but when it first released on my prot warrior it took me 21 days to level and that was pushing. I think this time I will take alittle more time. MMO's this day are like others said just rush rush rush. It is extremely boring.
I was a hypocrite to classic but the more and more i watch it the more i am dropping retail and just going to focus on classic. To some people it will be like a brand new mmo. I know my sons have never gotten the chance to play it, they play retail and find it extremely boring, and they are looking forward to classic.

so IMO and yes it is my opinion, retail wow just needs to die off. the game has not been that enjoyable since MoP. the main reason i still play it is social aspect of the game. If I didnt have friends to chat with i wouldnt be playing it. Look what Runescape did. I think that will happen to retail wow for the most part. maybe not as extreme but it will still happen. There was just so much to keep you active back then compared to right now but also know people want fast rewards they dont want to work for rewards.

Just my take but all in all i think classic will just increase the bleeding of retail.

[Lochton]

Before folks start commenting about this being a negative post, telling me to play something else, let me set the record straight.......

I enjoy World of Warcraft for a variety of reasons, and have done since about mid TBC. I raid as much as I want to, in the difficulty bracket that I want to, with a fairly good group of IRL and in-game friends. I enjoy the new expansions and subsequent content patches to varying degrees, and am still a subbed player. I take part in the Beta testing phases, and provide feedback as constructively as I know how.

All that said, every supposed "WoW killer" has fallen by the wayside. Some have been good games, and some not so much. I doubt that it's because all the studios that produced them were bereft of creative direction, and there's more than enough source material out there to make something truly epic in terms of an enduring MMO world out of it.

So the question I'm asking is a simple one. Does WoW need to die for the MMO scene to rejuvenate? Putting it another way, does the very presence of WoW prevent the success of a new MMO IP? In the same way that a forest fire clears the way for new life, would the death of WoW encourage a new MMO, or even several, to rise in it's place?

What are your thoughts?

No, WoW doesn't need to die, people need to hold on to their game and not go easy routes. All the games I could consider WoW-killers, have done their worst by going F2P, P2W or such.

[Gurluas]

MMOs are still evolving and iterating. Some have become P2W messes like Swtor, others like ESO and FF14 have come into their own and become quite advanced and deep.
Tbh I do wish wow died so we could get a wow 2 with full voice acting, more immersive storytelling, more coherent lore, a bigger more detailed world, etc.

Wow keeps stagnating and making stupid changes that ends with people quitting.

[Mirishka]

Before folks start commenting about this being a negative post, telling me to play something else, let me set the record straight.......

I enjoy World of Warcraft for a variety of reasons, and have done since about mid TBC. I raid as much as I want to, in the difficulty bracket that I want to, with a fairly good group of IRL and in-game friends. I enjoy the new expansions and subsequent content patches to varying degrees, and am still a subbed player. I take part in the Beta testing phases, and provide feedback as constructively as I know how.

All that said, every supposed "WoW killer" has fallen by the wayside. Some have been good games, and some not so much. I doubt that it's because all the studios that produced them were bereft of creative direction, and there's more than enough source material out there to make something truly epic in terms of an enduring MMO world out of it.

So the question I'm asking is a simple one. Does WoW need to die for the MMO scene to rejuvenate? Putting it another way, does the very presence of WoW prevent the success of a new MMO IP? In the same way that a forest fire clears the way for new life, would the death of WoW encourage a new MMO, or even several, to rise in it's place?

What are your thoughts?

My thoughts are, WoW is more relevant than it has been in years because of the Classic hype train. It is in no danger of dying, and the idea that it must die to somehow rejuvinate the MMO genre in general is absolute nonsense. If other devs can't create compelling MMOs that other people want to play, that is on them - not Blizzard.

[Marrilaife]

I think MMOs that did not try to copy WoW's formula and did their own thing like GW2 and ESO were more successful than "WoW killers" like Rift and Wildstar

Well said. GW2, ESO and FF:ARR are doing "their thing" instead of trying to be a wow clone. And good they live and wow clones died because copy pasta should never be a recipe for success. Same thing with mobas, battle royale and zombie survival games - the first ones to explore the genre are fine, but having a flood of cheap knock offs because a couple of games were successful in that genre is pretty disgusting. Invent something of your own instead of parasiting on someone else's successful idea.

However I think we're past the flood season in all 3 of the above by now, and definitely in the "wow clone" section that basically had its period during wotlk to mop. Since then mmo market shrank and wow isn't as big anymore that everyone rushes to make a copy of it.

Now if only we stopped having inundation of crappy looter shooters as well... (cough, cough, Anthem). How about first make a good game and not barely playable paid beta / early access sold as full game and then only monetize, monetize, monetize (same stuff that happened with PubG).

[ceall]

If wow would close its doors tomorrow, the genre as we know would die with it.

No other mmorpg will ever gain the popularity wow had (and still has). Everything left would be the pay2win Asia mmos that bore the shit out of you halfway through the leveling process and are overly complicated with upgrading your piece of gear 20 times, while having a 70% chance to fail and reduce your upgrade level.
Oh and most of them don't really have any endgame content.

But blizz wouldn't be blizz if it didn't have an ace up their sleeve when shutting down wow.
When wow dies, they'll give us Warcraft heroes. A dungeon/raid crawler with today's quality.


And while we're at it with wow killers. There has been 1 game that had a potential to be a direct contender to wow. Wildstar. But they took the wrong path. Instead of going the "we want to be the ultra hardcore mmo that attracts wow's Raiders that want to have this hardcore experience", they should have gone the route of being a fun game (which it was) that concentrates on challenging (not hardcore) small group content (with raids being 15 people max).
Their mistake was that the era of ultra hardcore was already over when the game launched.

[Queen of Hamsters]

World of Warcraft is the most profitable MMORPG on the market. If anything it's letting other studios know that the genre can still bring in the big bucks.

[cface]

I don't WANT more mmorps nor better ones. I play almost only Blizzard games and have no interest in going to another developer.

Instead, WoW need to improve to make sure it remains the ONLY really good mmorpg.

Why limit yourself to Blizzard games? 10-15 years ago I could sorta understand it, cause they where kings, but no king rules forever, and this king sold its soul.

[Nobleshield]

Yes and no. I think the issue is that the "WoW Style" is seen as the only way to be profitable due to WoW's success, so you see people trying to copy that or risk only attracting a tiny subsegment of MMO players. I do think that WoW has changed the genre from the sort of games that existed before it burst onto the scene, but whether that's good or bad is up for debate.

There does seem to be this idea that a MMO can only be successful if it copies the WoW style of gameplay when this has largely been shown to not be true (if it's too close to WoW, why wouldn't I just play WoW instead?)

[Cosmic Janitor]

MMOs are still evolving and iterating. Some have become P2W messes like Swtor, others like ESO and FF14 have come into their own and become quite advanced and deep.
Tbh I do wish wow died so we could get a wow 2 with full voice acting, more immersive storytelling, more coherent lore, a bigger more detailed world, etc.

Wow keeps stagnating and making stupid changes that ends with people quitting.

None of that is guaranteed. Heck, I'd argue that a WoW2 would be an even shorter lived quick fix to people's MMO-cravings compared to current WoW. Nothing prevents the current game from being fully voice acted besides the obvious issue of file sizes (which also won't be fixed any time soon in any game). Maybe a new engine could utilize a few more complex event triggers for world interaction, but looking at the bland mess that i the whole Blizzard portfolio, yeah doubtfull. The world would also hardly be bigger. A nearly 5 year dev cycle like the original game had is practically impossible to handle in today's world, especially when your company is owned by shareholders and other companies. The world would be slightly larger and equally detailed to what we currently get per expansion, that is just the reality of the industry today.

Edit: Blizzard also has complete controll overthe lore. What makes you think that the writers at Blizzard could produce anything of substance if they were offered a fresh start. They'd still be held by the confines of the Warcraft universe and it would be the same writers that gave us faction war 2.0 - electric boogaloo. They could write in a time skip if they wanted of make us go back in time and live in the past if they wanted. All of that shit is possible.

[A Chozo]

Kinda hard to make mmo-rpgs rise again.

Socializating with randoms online became an negative point, and people noticed that the long grinds are not necessary for satisfaction.

[Itori]

Wow isnt holding up the mmo market right now there are lots of mmos with their own pros and cons. I think WoW needs to die so blizzard can move on with a fresh story though, their story is just becoming bland and uninteresting, dungeons aren't surprising us anymore, and content becomes stale in days. They just need a new engine, with fresh ideas to rejuvinate the staff imo.

[Gasblossom]

Classic will kill retail. This is not hyperbole. The retail design team is lost and confused and once players start grinding their Classic characters they will abandon the retail ones and once they fall behind in all the daily and weekly rare farming, which is all that game is now, they will fall out of the habit and never go back. The log in addiction will move to Classic.