Will MMOs ever be popular again?
Going to try wildstar today, saw it was on steam yesterday.
Never played or been into mmos so I'll probably uninstall again in a few hours, but it looks interesting.
Its impossible to say what will happen in the distant future, but I don't think MMO's will be popular again for a long time.
>>340831618
the only thing appealing to me is the home builder
>>340831410
its a shame that my favorite race in an MMO is stuck in Wildstar
love those lizard beast whatevers
>>340831410
I'm somewhat glad somebody made a new MMO thread.
>tfw playing Skyforge right now
>it's actually not complete shit and I am surprisingly retaining interest
It will face a resurgence... eventually.
And when it does, it will be with a major one-off game that decided to try and "recapture the glory of MMOs" in a new light, but do it right for once, be a massive hit, and be the next WoW, but won't happen until World of Warcraft dies off for certain.
Then the cycle will return anew, as people emulate this new work to piggyback off of it and do progressively worse over time.
WoW was not the first, but it was "the big one."
There's always another big one on the distant horizon.
Wildstar was so promising, what the fuck happened?
I heard the devs wouldn't listen to the community's pleas for server merges during the first couple months after launch which could have saved the game. This true? Because from what I understand, the servers became too sparsely populated and as a whole everyone left, even after they finally merged shit too late.
It will be popular when something good comes out. Everything that's out ranges from gutter trash to mediocre.
>female mechari
>>340832216
A lot of poor design choices plus a lack of content for casual players. The game was doomed from the start hence why the community wanted server merges to salvage what was left.
Lets be quite clear.
MMOs were never truely popular, they've always been a niche market, WOW was the exception, not the standard.
The biggest problem is that WOW being the 'gold standard" everyone is trying to force tropes into their games that simply don't work anywhere else but WOW, why? Because WOW is a skinnerbox through and through, its already conditioned its playerbase to play it and nothing else for long periods of time, and everyone is quitting because they're starting to realize it (There is so many times you can do the same fucking thing, like raiding, before it simply becomes a job)
Sadly every MMO developer with anything resembling a budget is copying the same tropes that is also killing the game they're trying to emulate, instanced grinds, daily fetch quests, and endless grinding.
>>340831410
only when sword art online type vr becomes a thing
>>340831410
>>340831410
>Will MMOs ever be popular again?
Only if it's another genre besides fantasy with muh bows and arrows and dragons shit.
A racing MMO would be amazing, something like TDU2 and Forza Horizons but actually fucking done right.
Any MMOs that are still active, excluding WoW, GW2 and BDO?
MMO's are still plenty popular, they just aren't good.
>>340832615
this actually make a lot of sense desu
>>340832758
Eh, no it would still be a niche thing.
Generic fantasy acts as a canvas to immerse yourself into another world, with others, that is the strength of the MMORPG, even if the industry fails to realise this now, this is why people are more willing to play older,, extremely dated MMOs rather then try new shit.
>>340832813
>GW2
>active
Shit died faster than the original did.
>>340831410
Even Blizzard won't make another MMO after WoW.
It's a dying genre.
>>340832813
Runescape
>>340832615
This. This so much. As much as I hate the word "tropes"; completely agree.
>>340832813
ff14
>>340831410
No, because execs will soon realize their base will soon die off from type II diabetes.
>>340832615
This is a big part of it. If its not 1M+ (far more than any MMO saw back in the days of EQ and stuff) then its dead and people leave so it becomes more dead.
And everything copying wows not-mmo aspects is cancer
No, WoW is an anomaly. It had an already established universe with clear factions, storylines, villains, locations, classes etc that people were interested to explore. It also hit the genre perfectly with a perfect mix of community interaction and playerbase. There will never be another experience that ever compares to Vanilla to Wrath WoW. No game series will ever establish itself with a big background and a very interesting world and capture people in a massive online setting, elder scrolls and tor had a chance but they were poorly executed.
The weird thing with WoW that separates it from other MMO's is that yes you may get sick of grinding but the idea that you get to see this world that you heard about in novels and warcraft and actually explore it, you get to see these characters and interact with them, even if you hated the grinding there were other elements that were there and you got to explore the deeper warcraft lore.
>>340833161
This really is the best description of WoW's success.
Without the 3 Warcraft games preceding it and the dense lore, the playerbase wouldn't have been there to begin with.
Most MMOs fail because they are IPs with no following until release. They're all doomed to fail.
I think TES really is the only series that could have succeeded in a similar fashion, but as was said, the MMO was executed like shit.
I can't really think of any other series that could possibly pull something like WoW off again.
>>340832615
I quite playing WoW for that exact reason, among many others. But what are new developers supposed to do? I'm not asking you specifically, but it just seems like that's how MMOs work. They need to hook the audience to play for long amounts of time, to stay in the world, and develop the community and economy. One of the only ways to accomplish that is to use boring typical grind tactics. I'm not sure myself. I hope someone eventually figures it out though.
>All these people that never played EQ, UO, RO or CoH
>>340833406
Exactly
If there wasn't warcraft and just WoW I could see WoW being popular for a short period. After playing warcraft 2 and 3 I was in love with the universe. Arthas had an amazing story, there were tons of interesting races and settings. I wanted more and so did so many other people. WoW gave me that and even when I hated the grinding there was always an element pushing me forward and that was the exploration of this universe, the fact it was so fucking big and there were hundreds if not thousands of players halfaway across this world experiencing the same thing as me and I could encounter these people and talk to them or fight them. I got to finally join the horde or alliance that I spent so much time playing as in warcraft. It was an experience that we will never have again as it was so exclusive to the timing and success of warcraft 3. Another great thing about WoW is yes the graphics weren't great but they were just good enough they didn't ruin the experience.
No, they're done; ASSFAGGOTS reign supreme. Wow was a fluke of timing in the early 2000s that many companies died trying to replicate. We've started to see that with mobas already.
>>340832615
However I will say that what WOW did early on to get its initial playerbase was fantastic, it had this world full of lore, books, quests that discribed all this crazy metal fantasy shit going on all around you, and you were curious.
That curiosity was hindered however, not by limited patches like now, but rather difficult, challenging content even the world content experience of early WOW was grating, mobs were constantly way too powerful for their level, regeneration was extremely slow without consumables, so you'd be spending hours and hours finishing questlines, exploring the world, the minimap didn't have autospoilers so you had to immerse yourself morrowind style in order to navigate and finish many quests (or spam general chat and talk to other players)
A lot of the content, especially at the end game, was focused around group play too.
However, WOW was good because it built upon the game design that EQ1 tried and succeeded with before, while removing the stuff that failed, while also applying their 3 games worth of rich lore to this game world.
In order for an MMO to come along and becaome -the- hot shit for everyone to play again, it would have to go back to its roots and an RPG first and formost, focusing more on persistant, open worlds where you build characters and identities in a virtual world, rather then the grating, skinnerbox, repetitive grind that MMOs are now.
>>340831410
FFXIV high pop servers are capped nearly every day, yo.
>>340833794
I agree with all that and you make great points but unfortunately WoW couldn't stay like that forever, it got so big and so many players never played warcraft at all so they had to slowly make the game easier and more accessible to hold onto these players. WoW Vanilla was a fucking gem that i'm glad to have experienced despite its flaws. Probably the purest gaming experience i've ever had, the only time I could ever truly give a gaming experience a 10/10 as I met so many new people and it occupied so much of my time and I loved every second of it.
>>340832813
I bought BDO on launch, did nothing but fish for weeks.
Had good ideas, bad execution, just like EVERY MMO that has failed in the last few years.
The whole "hey buy our game and then we will restrict how much you can do in a day unless you pay us" method is fucking stupid.
Looked good, though.
>>340833542
If you look at the big MMOs that still exist with any semblence of a playerbase, they're usually games that have been around before WOW.
A prime example is runescape, when they created runescape 3, which took a lot of shit from WOW a lot of players quit for private servers of older software, then flocked back to the game after they released Old School Runescape.
WOW as an MMO is really really shit now-a-days, the only MMO aspects still left in the game are minute and almost non-existant, and even the end game scene is pretty much kept together by old blood, and even the mythic raiding community will tell you that getting players to raid with is becoming harder and harder, because anyone who is willing to put in the time has quit due to boredom or other reasons.
In order for me to be excited about a mmo again, it would have to have a really fluid combat system, something like kingdom hearts.
A dynamic world that feels like it changes if your there or not, with varied set peices and lore.
Great comfy melancholy music that makes you feel like you are in a fantasy world.
A non-grind leveling system, with a good loot system as well, each peice of loot having its own feeling of usefulness for certain situations.
A party system akin to ff11 that pretty much forced you to group up with others and actually communicate so you actually bond with other players.
And last but not least it needs a great art style.
This shit will never happen though.
>>340832650
The only correct comment in this thread
MMOs will be popular again when we get a proper VR MMO. It could be a decade until we get something like that.
>>340832650
>>340834529
>they are falling for the VR meme
So excited for these kids to grow up.
>>340834624
Read those posts again.
>>340833542
i really hate 2 faction community split. if you want two playable factions. if its an new ip. dont just lock off 50% of the playable races on either side
With all this talk about WoW having tons of lore being a big part of it's success makes me think a good 40k MMO would also be a huge hit if done right.Too bad Eternal Crusade ended up being basically a 40k Battlefield instad of the MMO it ought to be
>>340834884
The thing with 40k is it's honestly just not as big as warcraft was. It has tons of fans and could work but how would you make it work? Warcraft worked so well because it's easy to contain players to just one planet and one world and not many worlds.
