Where Are All the MMO Players Going?

Community General Discussion
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The MMO is a dying genre. What new MMOs do you hear about on the horizon that anyone really cares about?

So where are they all going?

Right around the time the MMO started to die, the survival game started to take off.

Now we have this constant surge of survival games. One that suddenly took the world by storm (not one i played myself as it looked awful) was that pokemon rip-off survival game… Can’t even remember the name of it, but it was huge.

Finally… We’re getting to games that are almost a blend of the survival format AND an MMO. If we look at say, Asmongold’s channel… He covers these types of games now; that shows us that there is crossover between the survival and MMO audience.

I forsee the survival-MMO hybrid being the future of the “MMO”. You have people asking for player housing etc… People are basically asking for the perfect survival-MMO hybrid. Games like this do already kind of exist, but don’t really have anywhere near the level of funding blizzard has.

We see games like Paxdei, and to a lesser extent Mortal Online 2. Games attempting to achieve this blend.

The question i would put to blizzard is… Why are they not tapping into this?

Take a look at the progression of the game’s design… The removal of PVP servers was a step away from the survival game format. Instead they add rating to the game… Which is a weird addition in a game with RNG/gear/class imbalance/addons. It is like it is trying to compartmentalize it’s “danger”, it’s survival element into instanced PVP…

When you see PVPers talk, you’ll find what they really want, when it comes to PVP in an MMO, is world PVP. World PVP that really feels like it means something, not this weird half-baked low consequence tame setup we have now.

Like world PVP in WoW doesn’t feel like it means anything… Sure, i fight, but i’m not really taking anything from my opponent, nor am i really losing anything significant. Big losses and big wins in terms of our emotions come from higher stakes.

WoW is just too safe, and that is why i feel like it has been on this downward trajectory. Sure, people still play and hold out hope, but they get on the game and find it quite dull compared to what is out there now.

I would like to see Blizzard try to have a kind of… Survival-esque take on world of warcraft… What i mean is… I want my death in PVP in the world to mean something… I also want a REASON to fight in the world.

Some radical ideas that i’ve seen other games try to great success :

-Uninstanced dungeons; dungeons where multiple groups of players end up in the same dungeon, competing for the same resources.

-Territory that can be captured for greater resources

-Losing your resources upon death (whatever form that may take; i wouldn’t like level losses, but perhaps gear loss or gold? Or some new resource invented for this purpose that you’d use towards gear).

The players should be the main interactive component in your game, this is an MMO afterall. THIS is what survival games capitalize on. It is all about player interactions. The world is merely the backdrop, the side character… It is the in-world rivalries that truly make the experience. Where stories form themselves without the need for any scripting.

In conclusion, the WoW formula is just stale. If they want to keep up with the times, they need to pay attention to which games are siphoning their audience; because they do what WoW does, and they do it better. They may not have the legacy to ride off like WoW does, but if you’ve played games like this, you’ll know WoW as it is can’t really compare.

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And yet we have World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy XIV, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars the Old Republic, Star Trek Online, EVE Online and that’s only naming the major IP brands, not even looking or naming the lesser brands.

I was originally interested in Ashes of Creation, but since their main focus became PvP, I’ve dropped all interest in that. Dune Awakening currently has my interest.

Nowhere. They are still playing all their games, cycling between period of activity and inactivity. Or switching modes such as playing Remix, or playing something else to take a small break.

Stopped caring about survival games.
They tend to start out fun, but almost always devolve in a slog of repeated grinding and no more variation or just end up on goals/challenges.

Ugh…

Why, because Asmongold said so?

So you want to enforce PvP everywhere, that it?

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I don’t really agree with this because I love survival games, but the only other player I want to see in my survival playthrough is my wife, where we build something together (Green Hell, Sons of the Forest and so on).

Survival game is fun when you watch your non-gamer wife waddle happily around while you min-max the game so hard that it becomes survival for the bad guys.

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Imo there’s just more choice at the market, and that is a good thing with more innovation in game tech creating new games it means it forces developers to be creative with their games and pricing to offer a sustained fun experience for people.

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All those games you mentioned are OLD. Like, really old…

Notice, nobody is making new MMOs. There are some, but they are met with skepticism. Like ashes of creation, which is taking an eternity. I’m not sure it’ll ever come out, or come out soon enough.

There is a reason nobody is really making new MMOs; not like they used to anyway.

Also, SWTOR, STO are all basically dead btw. GW2 and EVE aren’t looking so good last i checked, especially EVE.

You have WoW, and FF14, those are your MMOs, maybe even BDO. WoW and FF only really do well during their expansion releases, but dip massively inbetween. People are not playing them like they used to.

They are all old games, but ESPECIALLY WoW.

Where are the players being siphoned off to? Survival games, and now… The new survival-MMO hybrid is proving massively popular.

I don’t think they’ll be able to keep up with this stale safe formula they’ve got going. I’m bringing this up because WoW is a good franchise, i like the world they’ve made, but i just don’t think they’re capitalizing on it fully.

Also, i don’t care what Asmon says, most of his takes are bad, but his popularity is a byproduct of him representing his audience’s interests.

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Nowhere, i’m sticking to WoW as my main game until the end whenever that may be :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Because companies and players forgot what an MMO is these days, they forget its a massive multiplayer. The players treat newcomers with hostility and the devs treat the game like a job.

I like grinds but recent MMO’s have taken the grind to the extreme and then almost all of them also moderate that grind and timegate the hell out of it in order to keep people artificially playing longer. If you already addicted, thats great but a new player generally looks at it without the rose tinted glasses and nope out.

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Exactly… I don’t think the people who’ve only played WoW realize what else is out there.

The things they love about WoW exist in other games now, but are better, more refined. WoW feels like it rides off it’s early success, and the devs are complacent, i think they’re in for a shock if they don’t mix it up in the upcoming expansions.

They tried to copy the Souls-like formula a little with the mage tower, and i will say, they were fun, but again… It was such a side piece… There was no core implementation…

They’re so stuck in their ways they can’t make a bold move anymore.

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The MMO players aren’t going anywhere. We certainly don’t qant to be forced into PvP and have all our instanced content away.

MMOs are still selling. We are still playing them. They come in a variety of settings and have their own systems.

If you have outgrown MMOs there are plenty of other games you could try. However, I do not welcome the destruction of this MMO or any other.

Some day World of Warcraft will come to an end. That is still a long way off.

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So because they’re old they don’t count?
It’s what people are playing ?!

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Look, i think you know the MMORPG genre is losing popularity. They may still sell, but the MMO novelty is commonplace now.

Massive numbers of players playing together is normal for a lot of games now. We have to compare what WoW’s core gameplay offers in regards to that… It is just really dull and stale by comparison; very limiting.

Also, instancing is antithetical to an MMO. If you’ve ever played a game where the dungeons are not instanced… It is quite simply hilarious and a lot of fun… It adds an element to the experience that you can’t necessarily prepare for.

I’d simply say to those who’ve never played games like this : don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. My worry for the players of WoW, they’re afraid of change, and so the game will simply stagnate. If they went out on a limb and asked for something bold, they might be pleasantly surprised… IF the developers do their research.

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MMO genre will never die. It just surpassed the peak and for now is just an established niche genre. Bigger playerbase will always flow from one hype genre to another. As it was with MMO which was dropped because MOBAs became a thing, and then they were dropped too because battle royales became a thing yada yada yada…

There is one core problem that impacts MMOs the same way it impacts other online games – content bloat. Same thing happens with every major-patch-based games (e.g. League which is almost impossible now for new players to dive due to gigabloat of champs and mechanics), but it affects MMOs more than anything else because not only mechanics are changing and all the stuff, but the world itself bloats heavily. The more content and lore is left behind, the bigger knowledge base becomes - the harder it will be for newer player to approach.

I can see all the stuff with Remix and SoD being a test field for recycling older content as WoW is becoming too big to bloat it further and second global world revamp asked by many players will not help it at this point. Though if played right, even outdated contend can be fun and playable unlimited amount of times in proper implementation. Classic, SoD and the whole private server scene is a good example.

Aside of that…it’s just life. Core playerbase of genre is aging and leaving the MMO games because life, work, duties, kids. And MMO as a genre is too niche to draw attention of younger playerbase from higher-tempo nowadays’ session games (man do I sound like a boomer lol). And this is also the reason why the bigger companies don’t do the new big MMOs anymore. Because why would you build slow-selling huge tank when everybody buys cars and electric scooters?

So there’s it, and there’s a big possibility that the MMO market will just freeze with the same games that we have now, recycled and reimagined with dedicated smaller playerbase, as it was with, say, OSRS. It is what it is.

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Funnily enough we do play other games. There is a reason this is my main game. I like it. I enjoy playing.

Your proposed changes would make me go play a different MMO that actually still felt like one. What you propose doesn’t sound like any MMO I’ve ever played.

It honestly sounds like you don’t like MMOs and want something different. Best of luck with your search.

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I despise PvP, I despise survival games. I want nothing of the sort in WoW and it can stay in the other games. Leave WoW as it is, let there be different games with different genres.

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Warcraft scratch an itch now and then
but there’s soo many amazing games on the market now, like baldurs gate

its without doubt that players are learning to move onto better things

im hoping the Dune MMO is half decent … might sink couple months into it

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When the MMORPG genre peaked back in 2010 or so, it would easily have had 100 million players.
If it can scrape together 20 million players today, then that would be an achievement.
Phil Spencer mentioned at the Xbox show that Call of Duty has more than 100 million people playing every month.
Fortnite reported a similar number of 100 million people playing following its new Season back in November.

So the MMORPG genre is slowly going the way of the RTS genre or the point-and-click adventure genre. Not dying or dead, but just fallen out of popularity and become niche genres for conservative audiences.
In some way the MMORPG genre is already well on its way toward that. All the games are clones of WoW and the audience is oldschool veterans who favor existing design tropes over innovation. So again, exactly the way of the RTS and point-and-click adventure genres.

The companies seem to know this, as they’re no longer investing in the genre, but rather just milking the remaining customers for whatever money they still have on hand.

Phil Spencer noted in an internal mail many months ago the struggle of triple A games and Live Service games and the necessity for big companies to fall back on their strongest franchises to compete against the rest of the market.

I don’t know what Blizzard’s plans are.
They cancelled their own survival game project. So they’re not going to get in on that genre.
If they don’t have a new major flagship in the works, then what’s the future of the company even?!

Players go elsewhere. Not because WoW and other MMORPGs are bad per se. They’re just old and stale and more of the same. At the same time the newer games are fresh and exciting and amazing. There are some really crazy-good games coming out these days.

I think the future of the PC-driven online world type of game leans more heavily into the survival genre where you can interact with the world, modify it, build within it, change it, and where there’s a stronger gameplay focus of “this is what this game is about” than having a theme park experience with 20 different random activities.

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Genuine question.
Are these numbers ACTUAL playing people, or simply the amount of accounts created?

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Those are actual people playing.
For Fortnite it was number of poeple who played at some point during November, i.e. the month following the start of their new Season. MAU as Blizzard would say.

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Do you play them?
because I do and those servers are bustling, Not like 10 years ago, but far from dead.

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If you ask a StarCraft player if StarCraft is dead, then they’ll say no, the servers are bustling. Not like 10 years ago, but far from dead.

But anyone looking from the outside can see that it’s a veteran audience in a niche genre playing an old game.

That also holds true for SW:ToR and STO and WoW and all other MMOs and MMORPGs.

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