Is the MMORPG dead or dying?

Not dead or dying, there is still a huge market for it but it's extremely hard to compete against the established giants. Just look at all the MMOs that completely failed after a few months.
 
Souness said:
Not dead or dying, there is still a huge market for it but it's extremely hard to compete against the established giants. Just look at all the MMOs that completely failed after a few months.
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I actually kind of disagree on that - I think it isn't that hard to compete, people love new experiences, but you need an atleast somewhat compelling premise and implemented right - I see a lot of failed after a few months ones that just approach it wrong.

Things like permadeath, etc. might sound great to some people but the vast majority of gamers just don't have time for that and are often playing these kind of games because they like to build something that they can put a bit of a personal spin on and have a level of attachment to and trying to justify mechanics that ignore that no matter how cleverly argued doesn't change that fact - there is often plenty of scope for hybrid implementations of these types of mechanics that can satisfy both sides of the coin however.

Basic mechanics and anything the player needs to do over and over needs to fit like a glove - especially if you are competing against a big popular franchise if your UI is clunky and unfinished or it takes 20 key presses to perform a basic action, etc. or movement and responsiveness isn't nailed down players will leave in droves no matter how good the rest of the game might be - likewise trying to force balance through things like restrictions to basic movement tends to turn players away.

Rewards/grind are another one - a lot of developers make the mistake of thinking that over-rewarding players mean they thrash through content fast and leave and drip it out reluctantly - but in most cases the opposite is true aslong as you don't go too far so as to devalue some of the truly high end stuff - look at The Division recently for instance when they increased the drop potential for exotics and div tech - game became a lot more active rather than people collecting all the top end stuff and leaving.

Then you have the developers that spend too much time constantly changing what are or should be established features - especially as a substitute for real new content and/or to nerf bat something into oblivion because it has emerged as the OP setup to go for - you can't just take your customers for granted like that they are engaged with a game for a reason and established mechanics should be touched with as light a hand as possible unless something is absolutely game breaking (and by game breaking I don't mean one specific thing is dominating) and you have no other option - while power creep can be a real issue it is usually better to massage other areas to provide better parity and/or counters and/or add new environments in the game where an OP setup is naturally at a disadvantage, etc.

I could go on and on...
 
Its the PVP bs PVE that ruins every MMO, and not enough end game content, extreme grind for the sake of lack of content.

MMO`s are a balancing act and requires a good couples of years with 6 people locked away in a room designing systems before anything is even coded.


I am still awaiting that golden Sci-fi MMO with entire planets as expansions and old bases/dungeons to crawl through without having to save the world every single time.
 
MMOs are too hard to breach in to for most developers, WoW was a stand out hit which wasn't expected to be as popular as it is, its popularity has carried it years enabling it to grow masses of content and have a nice hefty budget.

MMO players expect a game that isn't up to 40 (if you're lucky) hours of content like most AAA games, they expect hundreds if not thousands of hours of content in the game, they get bored if they don't have that and quit. People quitting means the funds for the games development diminish, so it doesn't have the funds to grow the content fast enough to keep the rest of the players from quitting, so more quit and the cycle goes on.

The scale of an MMO is so mammoth barely any companies can afford to output the amount of content for its player base that it requires and it's just not sustainable. Think how much it costs to develop a normal AAA game that's just single player and has a story which lasts like 30-40 hours and think how much more content is required from a person wanting to sink hundreds of hours into your game.

The only business model I can see working for an MMO is F2P with a cash shop, to get the initial player base in high, and hope people buy stuff from the cash shop. People are less likely to quit if a game is free, because they're not losing anything by waiting for more content. A game being monthly payments and then changing to F2P doesn't work either, because they see the game as 'dying' so won't bother to sign up, so you won't get your numbers in.
 
I think the best kinda mmorpg is one you csn log on, fully lootable, fully craftable, but you have a safe zone for your stuff. Rust and Arc are pretty good, only you have to server wipe or your base gets destroyed so all that time and effort is wasted. UO was amazing, always played a private server as OSI was a bit far fetched with all the stuff.

I just want a game wirh murderers and goid guys, crafters, traders and things between. Problem is you have people who can sit all day gathering resources and the common player who doesn't have time, and to balance an economy around that is hard
 
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It's self-fulfilling if you always want there to be stuff to strive for you create such a vast gap that a new player can't hope to close.

EVE added capitals, then super capitals, add that to the skill points system, and it's impossible for a new player to get close. Plus this game is just brutal due to the devs thinking PVP is the holy grail.

Wow let's you skip levels, but there's so much junk in the game it's hard to figure out what's important to do and what's clutter.
 
Aedus said:
MMOs are too hard to breach in to for most developers, WoW was a stand out hit which wasn't expected to be as popular as it is, its popularity has carried it years enabling it to grow masses of content and have a nice hefty budget.

MMO players expect a game that isn't up to 40 (if you're lucky) hours of content like most AAA games, they expect hundreds if not thousands of hours of content in the game, they get bored if they don't have that and quit. People quitting means the funds for the games development diminish, so it doesn't have the funds to grow the content fast enough to keep the rest of the players from quitting, so more quit and the cycle goes on.

The scale of an MMO is so mammoth barely any companies can afford to output the amount of content for its player base that it requires and it's just not sustainable. Think how much it costs to develop a normal AAA game that's just single player and has a story which lasts like 30-40 hours and think how much more content is required from a person wanting to sink hundreds of hours into your game.

The only business model I can see working for an MMO is F2P with a cash shop, to get the initial player base in high, and hope people buy stuff from the cash shop. People are less likely to quit if a game is free, because they're not losing anything by waiting for more content. A game being monthly payments and then changing to F2P doesn't work either, because they see the game as 'dying' so won't bother to sign up, so you won't get your numbers in.
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I totally disagree with the F2P model you state, all it does is turn around investment numbers for the bean counters rather than a constant steady income. The business model for MMO needs to be on min sub required to maintain content nothing more than that. So once you initial release is covered your design team /wage is bill is reduced and then you are down to content creation and paying for expansions (which also need to be route mapper with systems built in)

Profit margins need to be reduced to the 5-15% realms with more coming from expansions.

Then we have the EVE syndrome but it happens in all MMO`s and again could be down to bad design is that players which are late to the party are always going to be at a disadvantage.

Still they do offer game-play experience like nothing else hrs upon hrs of working out how to kill a raid boss etc some of best gaming times i have had (long live Tainted souls AOC)

Hopefully when i retire VR will be good enough, i can already see complex hand waving to cast a magic missile :)
 
SPG said:
Then we have the EVE syndrome but it happens in all MMO`s and again could be down to bad design is that players which are late to the party are always going to be at a disadvantage.
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City of Heroes had some good systems to address that - I can't remember the exact mechanics but for instance you could sidekick a lower level player which boosted their health and damage output, etc. to just below your own level (but they wouldn't have the abilities of a higher level player) and if you did a mission it would boost the hardness (and hence rewards) of NPCs more than if you did it solo but not as much as if you did it with 2x high level players - so it was actually quite useful for both players. Could also do it the other way around if you wanted to re-visit lower level content and have your powers decreased temporarily to fit in with a lower level team though that way around didn't quite work properly as some things got a bit broke.
 
A few people have mentioned WoW being too big for anyone else to fit into the marketplace. WoW has gone from 12mil subs to less than 5m subs.

That is a pretty sharp decline.
 
Remember guys it could be worse, all MMO could be like a gambling simulator dressed as an MMO like Entropia Universe. I shamelessly put thousands of hours in to that game and hundreds of pounds but fortunately cashed out at the right time and made a profit.

I remember at one point i was one of the top 10 ore traders in that game trading with $5000 of org mates money who i didnt know outside of the game, all based on trust lol. Turning over $5k a night on weekdays and upto $15k a day at weekends earning anywhere from 6% to 10% profit before paying dividends
 
lokiss said:
Ashes of creation: https://www.ashesofcreation.com/
New world: https://www.amazongames.com/games/
Dual Universe: https://www.dualthegame.com/en/



You already can in OrbusVR:) https://orbusvr.com/
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Oh hell no, not with that cutsey graphic style i am not :) just looking at that rabbit thing with red ears makes me want to vomit and rip its head off with my teeth both at the same time.

But i would play another sub-based MMO at the drop of a hat, just needs to have all the lessons learned from the past 10 years of MMO`s at its core.
 
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Ohh true, I passed on Orbus for that very reason. There's very much a realisation from everybody playing it that they're waiting for somebody else to come along and do it better. On the flip side, people are glad somebody has.

If any half decent MMO came to VR it would be a game changer if it ran ok and had some touch interactions. I play several open world games where I lock myself in the world and time goes missing like it did 20 years ago, id gladly pay a subscription to have a MMO of quality give me more of that.
 
It doesn't seem as popular as it once was, but I think the market has changed. Kids look to stuff like fortnite rather than MMOs because who wants to put effort into gaining things?

I've just been reunited with my old guild mates off WoW, who haven't been together since our Cataclysm days. Almost all of the core group are back too, surprised me as I expected far less. We found that it was simply lacking in content until BfA. It looks as though we might go back to raiding together too, used to be great fun. :)
 
To this day I’m still annoyed wahammer online failed.

The trailers for that game were awesome but the graphics and animations in game really let it down
 
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