General News - Bleak Future for MMO's?

Is the future a bleak one for MMO's? Galleon Gaming says "probably not.".

Since World Of Warcraft’s release in late 2004 the MMO market has exploded into the world. The game has been running for almost 10 years now with a large player base and constant updates throughout the years but now times are very different from what they used to be. With the game having very little innovation since its launch and predictable updates many players have become bored with WOW’s repetitive nature and flocked from it to find a suitable alternative, but is there one?

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An audience who want to play games that require no wits and no intelligence will always exist.
Puzzles are out, thinking is out, reading is out, studying rules is out...
Grinding is in.

Then there are people who want to be in trend, doesn't matter if it's good or bad, they need to feel they belong to something.

And then there are millions of people with shit taste.

The future for MMOs is far from bleak. In fact, for MMO developers, so much potential audience feels like christmas.
Oh wait. It *is* christmas.

So Merry Christmas.

For me it is bleak. I use to be a huge MMO fan and played many of them. Now I have zero interest in them. I keep trying most of the new ones that come out, that sound interesting to me, and none of them hold my attention anymore. I still have hope that something cool will come out that I like. For me the major death blow is the free to play but we will kill you with micro-transactions that has become the current model for MMO's

I'm not sure about it. Isn't any recent CRPG just a slightly better copy of another CRPG that was made about 10 or 15 year ago? Isn't any book just a copy of another book that was written hundred years ago? Isn't any song just a copy of another song that was created a thousand years ago? And it is only based on musical seven notes, so to speak. Like any MMO is based on exploring, crafting, housing, raiding, talking, etc...

joxer said:

The future for MMOs is far from bleak. In fact, for MMO developers, so much potential audience feels like christmas.
Oh wait. It *is* christmas.

So Merry Christmas.

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Thank you, Joxer, for always lifting the mood. You don't always need to be so cheerful, you know.

Well, I still like LOTRO and the Secret World, mostly due to the setting (Angmar! Moria!). But I play them mostly as single player.

pibbur who hasn't reached end-game levels yet (yes, he is a very inefficient gameplayer, can't wait to retire.)

Yes, it's difficult to create a good RPG story that works for 10,000+ would-be heroes, all participating at the same time.

pibbur who said:

Well, I still like LOTRO and the Secret World, mostly due to the setting

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Hey I still waste time on League of Legends so, noone I guess is clean of addiction…

But not because setting. I just like 5vs5 teamfight mechanics.

rjshae said:

Yes, it's difficult to create a good RPG story that works for 10,000+ would-be heroes, all participating at the same time.

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Unless they are all trying to compete with each other in PvP, or vanity stuff.

It's been bleak for the past ~10 years because of the desire to copy/paste WoW mechanics and gameplay. Lately, however, there's been a resurgence of the sandbox subgenre, so I have *some* hope, but I'm not holding my breath.

The MMO field has three major problems, IMO.

1 - It is a highly over-saturated market. When WoW came out, there were only what, 3 other titles of any note? Now, there are a half dozen for just about every niche imaginable (except Eve Online, which pretty much everyone can download a copy of Libre Office for free and do all the spreadsheets they want).

As such, any new title not only has a smaller pool of customers to draw from, but the ones they do get are more likely to head to another game if there's something that they don't like.

2 - It is a high-cost game genre, even relative to the already high cost of AAA or AA game development. MMOs (and I'm counting DOTA-style games in this) are unique in that they company has to constantly pay for and maintain a rather massive infrastructure, just in order to do business.

3 - Because of the early success of WoW, which was as much to do with timing as anything else, far far too many developers simply try to copy the WoW formula (yes, I know EQ did it first, but they never had 10 million EQ players either). So there is a decided lack of innovation or even uniqueness in the genre, save occasionally in setting.

To be honest, I don't see the situation as bleak because of dropping numbers, but I don't ever see another WoW level of success coming along. I see a number of games shuttering, and the devs are going to have to pare down costs somewhere. Which means even lower quality titles coming out. So I don't see the AAA market ever going back to the old days.

I think where the best stuff will come in the non-AAA scene, once we have some devs taking a few risks and also understanding that they will never see 10 million subscribers. The game industry in general always overplays their sales, then when it fails to reach that expectation it's always piracy and doom's fault.

azraelck said:

2 - It is a high-cost game genre, even relative to the already high cost of AAA or AA game development. MMOs (and I'm counting DOTA-style games in this) are unique in that they company has to constantly pay for and maintain a rather massive infrastructure, just in order to do business.

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Really depends what AAA game you are comparing it too. Most of them have multiplayer components with dedicated infrastructures to pay for now and developers/publishers like Ubisoft are now using 800+ devs team which is a lot more costly than the 200-300 devs team that worked on the last few AAA MMOs (SWTOR, GW2, ESO).

I don't think the future is bleak at all. When Everquest 1 came out it was a revolution because you could finally live in a fantasy world in 3d with other people around you. I believe once VR is mainstream (and I think it will be in a few years), a new MMO fully utilizing VR's capabilities will come out and do what Everquest 1 did in 1999.

joxer said:

Hey I still waste time on League of Legends so, noone I guess is clean of addiction…

But not because setting. I just like 5vs5 teamfight mechanics.

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Funny you mention a game that requires now wits or intelligence.

I started a run in SW:ToR and for me the way they do the storytelling is innovative enough for me to get a couple of months of sub and see it all (SP style tbh). I used to be a WoW subscriber for many years but I won't be going back, it's just all the same and PVE exploring and levelling just isn't the same anymore.

joxer said:

Hey I still waste time on League of Legends so, noone I guess is clean of addiction…

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You really ought to come to Dota2 already

I will play Lost Ark when it comes to Europe i.e. somewhere in 2017

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