3/11/16 The Mmorpg Apocalypse.

udinthrik

not really, but damn! I log on this website daily, and I've never seen so much bad news / headlines for layoffs, cancellations & etc.

It's a little bit scary, but also exciting. Something has to give eventually I suppose.

kjempff

Yeah somehow today is the day I have to admit what I already knew - mmorpgs are dead. EqNext was my last tiny hope for this genre, although we all knew at the time SoE was sold to daybreak that EqNext was a dead fish. Pantheon yeah well so far it is a eq remake and not showing any signs of moving the genre anywhere, and the rest of the upcomming indies are all fixated on pvp, and I am so very done with the railroaded story driven themepark formula.
I really see nothing in the horizon that can raise my interest, except if CU unexpectedly would offer some good pve game, or if Pantheon secured a funding deal so they can implement enough content to really matter. D E A D.

mgilbrtsn

How are they dead.  Maybe for you, you, and maybe you.  There are a ton of MMOS in existence.  Even some that are doing very well.  There are also a lot that are coming out. You might like the choices.... nor you.... and you don't ever like anything, but that doesn't equate to MMOS are dead.

TiamatRoar

....it's an MMO apocalypse because they announced a bunch of stuff everyone who was remotely objective knew already for like, the past year?  (death of wildstar, death of EQN.... wow much surprise)

Kyleran

mgilbrtsn said:

How are they dead.  Maybe for you, you, and maybe you.  There are a ton of MMOS in existence.  Even some that are doing very well.  There are also a lot that are coming out. You might like the choices.... nor you.... and you don't ever like anything, but that doesn't equate to MMOS are dead.

Shhhh..we're talking MMORPGS here, the virtual world kind, and not MMO "games"

Big difference, and a definite dearth of them on the horizon.

Gaming.Rocks2

Can't really call an apocalypse based on a failed project laying off people and a sold out company canceling a project.
If EQN was made it could potentially change the industry, but its cancellation affects nothing. 

Kilrain

For those of us looking for a good mmorpg it is looking pretty grim. I'm not as easily amused as some of the other people in this site, so...... Opinions happened. 

Quizzical

Because the MMORPG industry was so much better when only a few of them released each year and hardly anyone played them?

Distopia

Raawwr! <--- simply seemed the direction this was going, don't mind me.

iixviiiix

Wrong date , wait until WOW remove it MMORPG label .

bartoni33

DMKano said:

Kilrain said:

For those of us looking for a good mmorpg it is looking pretty grim. I'm not as easily amused as some of the other people in this site, so...... Opinions happened. 

  Chronic(what)cles of Elyria

That actually made me laugh out loud!

Seelinnikoi

DMKano said:

What a defeatist mentality.

When you have a cup full of blueberries and 2 of them are bad - you throw away all of them and go cry how there's  no more blueberries? 


\facepalm 

If you have a cup full of blueberries and I tell you two of them in there are filled with poison, would you risk eating any blueberries?

Loke666

It was not a good week but there have been others. Like when the SWG players   got the news that the new expansion they bought the week before werem now useless, when WAR cancelled 4 of it 6 main cities together with a lot of features due to budget cuts and that it would released with a hastily done endgame, When TR got cancelled... TORs player numbers month 2... The cancelation of a bunch of projects....

The thing is that it could have been a lot worse. We do need a new large MMO, preferably one that doesn't play like any other game but few thought EQN would be that game. That Carbine fire a lot of people s hardly a surprise to anyone and that one guy quit Arenanet is no disaster.

Life goes on...

Shana77

While MMO's in general may not be dead, what seems to have died is high profile, big budget themepark mmo's. 

Indies seem to be doing great, if the classic big budget themepark is coming back it will probably have to be trough an innovative indie developer schocking the gamers and the market with a title that takes the next step. 

The money and the hype right now seems to be in the MMO-light genre with titles like Destiny and The Division. Not your classic "fathers" mmo but titles that seem to be single player games with elements of MMO dropped in here and there, shared zones, pvp areas, etc. 

I personally think that the VR revolution now has the biggest possibility to revive the MMO genre and take it forward. Often persistant worlds have been described as virtual worlds that we live in, and VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and Vive could make that promise real. 

makasouleater69

mgilbrtsn said:

How are they dead.  Maybe for you, you, and maybe you.  There are a ton of MMOS in existence.  Even some that are doing very well.  There are also a lot that are coming out. You might like the choices.... nor you.... and you don't ever like anything, but that doesn't equate to MMOS are dead.

I dono, they are pretty much dead lol. He is def right, there are no more major MMOs planned. The ones that are out, will eventually close down minus a few. The ones coming out are more than likely just a cash grab. The last one is gonna be when star citizen fails... Then hopefully no one will be stupid enough any more, to go dump 200+ dollars into "BETA" access, or kick starter games lol. 

I think what would of fixed it, is a MMO for the wii U. Or a MMO for the pc, that made its own controller like the Wii U, so you could have Tilt, Swinging, ect, like the wii u has. 

RavingRabbid

After the bad news of World of Darkness Online cancellation and SWTOR "de-leveling" characters on planets was almost the final nail in the proverbial coffin. ESO, Marvel Heroes 2016, Smite,  and World of Tanks has helped me pull the nail out slightly. The only thing for me on the horizon for me is Warhammer 40k: Eternal Crusade. Everything else.....ppppfffffffftttt.

** Raving Rabbid fires a plunger at JapanStudio for being killed too many times in Bloodbourne dlc. Luckily for him Charlotte McKinney was there to soothe him**

k61977

This is probably lining up with a lot of companies Q1 reports. 

k61977

RavingRabbid said:

After the bad news of World of Darkness Online cancellation and SWTOR "de-leveling" characters on planets was almost the final nail in the proverbial coffin. ESO, Marvel Heroes 2016, Smite,  and World of Tanks has helped me pull the nail out slightly. The only thing for me on the horizon for me is Warhammer 40k: Eternal Crusade. Everything else.....ppppfffffffftttt.

** Raving Rabbid fires a plunger at JapanStudio for being killed too many times in Bloodbourne dlc. Luckily for him Charlotte McKinney was there to soothe him**

Hopefully you have been really keeping up with Warhammer 40K:  Eternal Crusade as they have taken the game in a totally different direction that it was originally planned.  It is pretty much a crap of a FPS shooter now compared to the promises that they made.  No siegeing planets now etc.....

Phry

Seelinnikoi said:

DMKano said:

What a defeatist mentality.

When you have a cup full of blueberries and 2 of them are bad - you throw away all of them and go cry how there's  no more blueberries? 


\facepalm 

If you have a cup full of blueberries and I tell you two of them in there are filled with poison, would you risk eating any blueberries?

So if thats some kind of analogy, are you seriously suggesting that if there are a few bad games out there, that you should give up on gaming altogether because you can't tell the difference between a good game and a bad game?
Actually it kind of puts the OP's post into perspective.

Jermzy

But we still have Star Citizen...../chuckles

Nicco77

The whole genre is on a downward spiral,I don't think that crowdfunded MMORPGs will save the day,too much development time and too much promises done in order to get founds.

azarhal

k61977 said:

This is probably lining up with a lot of companies Q1 reports. 

Yes and no, some are Q1 financial reports, like Wildstar. But others are more start of the year project evaluation and exec deciding if they should still invest money or pull the plug on a project.

Monday, Microsoft cancelled Fable Legends (and closed Lionhead Studio along a bunch of other teams) just a few months before release. That was a re-organization.

Wildstar fired lots of devs (included design leads), more quit earlier this week as well and there are rumor the game is going to get closed down soon (that would explain it never coming to Steam when they announced it would).

EQNext was cancelled a few weeks/days ago because it was judged unsalvageable (around when Darrin updated his linkedin probably). That gave them a good 3-4 months of internal testing to decided if it was worth it or not (they setup internal test servers in September last year).

Arenanet lost more leads this weeks as well.

And all that while the Division being heralded as the future of MMORPGs by Ubisoft...

A really crappy week.

Quizzical

Seelinnikoi said:

DMKano said:

What a defeatist mentality.

When you have a cup full of blueberries and 2 of them are bad - you throw away all of them and go cry how there's  no more blueberries? 


\facepalm 

If you have a cup full of blueberries and I tell you two of them in there are filled with poison, would you risk eating any blueberries?

Because playing a mediocre MMORPG is likely to kill you?

Besides, it's not that hard to figure out that a lot of the games released are clearly bad and avoid those particular games.

mgilbrtsn

A lot of people seem to be equating whether the MMO genre is in apocalypse mode or note based on AAA games being developed.  I don't see it this way.  There seem to be a few non AAA games that have as much depth and complexity of AAA games.  Budget size shouldn't be the basis of judgement.

and while current AAA developers may be pulling back, if some prove successful, there is a good chance that many will put the profits into making bigger and better MMOs that they believe will be more successful. We need to remember that this genre along with every other business is evolutionary by nature.  The modern cell phone didn't just materialize.  There is a long evolution that had winners and losers along the way.  We can still make calls, however, it's much different than in the past.

Kazuhiro

Seelinnikoi said:

DMKano said:

What a defeatist mentality.

When you have a cup full of blueberries and 2 of them are bad - you throw away all of them and go cry how there's  no more blueberries? 


\facepalm 

If you have a cup full of blueberries and I tell you two of them in there are filled with poison, would you risk eating any blueberries?

That's a damn good analogy. Though I'd change it to be a bowl of 100 blueberries and 95 of them are poisoned.

Little-Boot

I for one am glad that the AAA WOW clone era is over; because the genre had become tired and derivative. Let a few smaller scale indie developers test the water and see what new innovations work.