Originally Posted by
Sliske
Because there isn't any other option for an MMO. If Xbox raises its price too high, people just go to Sony, who already are dominating the current generation of consoles.
Xbox on the other hand have been the laughing stock of this generation - even Nintendo are releasing better exclusives.
Now look at the MMO market. What do you have? WoW, FF ... maybe BDO, GW2 and ESO?
So right off the bat, FF just looks and plays worse than WoW, which is i know hard to believe seeing as WoW is much older.
BDO appeals to two kinds of people - east asians and weebs.
GW2 has insane content drought and no traditional end game. Only people that play it are collectors/achievement hunters.
ESO is a Bethesda style RPG which have died faster than blockbuster in a post Witcher 3 world. Their RPGs simply don't stand up anymore. They're still using bows and arrows while everyone else is firing lazer guns at them.
On top of all of the above, lets look at the actual most important thing - perception. Hardly anyone even knows any of those games i listed exist. None besides WoW. Your parents know what WoW is. They probably don't even know what Final Fantasy is, let alone its MMO. The closest one in terms of sheer perception is ESO, but as ESO launched in such an abysmal state, it has become the same as pretty much every MMO besides WoW - a game attempting to climb out of a hole.
Don't know what i mean? Lets have a look through the years.
WoW - launches to enormous success.
Aion - launches to immediate poor reception, likely closed?
GW2 - launches to immediate poor reception, is now massively overhauled and has a somewhat decent endgame, but who is around to play it?
Wildstar - launches to immediate poor reception, is now closed.
ESO - launches to immediate poor reception, is in the same state as GW2.
FF - same as GW2 and ESO.
BDO - same as GW2, ESO and FF.
SWTOR - same as GW2, ESO, FF and BDO.
If theres one thing that is a near guaranteed thing, its that a product almost never gets a comeback story. Nobody cares that Heroes of the Storm right now is a great game. Nobody cares that Heart of the Swarm got balanced and is not just cheese now. No one cares that Halo got better after its low point.
It takes extreme amounts of marketing and overhaul in order to revitalize a product. An example of this is Resident Evil. Most people would say Resident Evil was dead after the 5th game. It just became a shitty action game - zero horror. Now its back and better than ever and YOU know about it, because they marketed the fuck out of it.
Who is going to give a marketing budget to BDO or SWTOR or ESO? No one. No one cares if they're good or bad. People *think* they are bad and thats that.
So, all of this is a round about way of saying - WoW can milk your wallet because it has a monopoly. If you aren't playing WoW, you aren't playing MMOs.