Who shall be the one who will take back and conquer this genre?

Kopogero

We have not have a conqueror for over a decade now. Not that it's needed, but I'm sure it wouldn't be minded. After all, who here doesn't want to be blown away, amazed at the product they've been fortunate to experience before their life goes away?

Blizzard has left the throne, pursuing other "lands" to conquer. They are clearly as weak like Macedonia was when it was left behind after Alexander choose to conquer Egypt and all the way to India. Their Legion is only here because they themselves know it will sell due to its brand and lack of a good challenge in the B2P/P2P market.

This genre is vulnerable right now ready to be conquered. There is not a clear winner in this market where consumers can easily flock to. There is an OPPORTUNITY for this market to be conquered. So, when and who do you think will finally claim the throne left behind by Blizzard? Does this individual or company currently exist or are we going to see it happen by 2020 or 2025? Will it be some bold kid to build his own MMO out of boredom after inheriting 50-100 millions? Will it be a company created out of individuals who are not afraid to make their own, truly original product?

Blurry.Face

It will be a company that exists currently, but that is relatively unknown at the moment. But it will happen.

Ammon777_new

I think its bound to happen. I wish they would make a new Ultima Online though.

Avanah

Chronicles of Elyria!
You heard it here first.

Charlie.Cheswick

Greed Monger.

Cyrael

I think I would rather see a paradigm shift rather than a single conquering game. Of late, I've been beginning to think that a Neverwinter Nights-type mode (one shared base game, with privately run custom servers based on it) may be the way to go.

Dullahan

If anyone is to truly "conquer" the genre, they will need to create that epic sandbox foretold in legends that will offer enough variety and depth to appeal to players from both ends of the spectrum and everyone in between. A fantasy sims type game that killers, achievers, socializers and explorers can all call home.

Anthur

Ahem, the market has already been conquered. You just have to face the truth that the former MMORPG market with games like EQ, UO, SWG, even WoW has been replaced by other types of MMOs.

I doubt anyone will develop such games anymore. The big companies see their profit elsewhere and the independant ones lack either money, organization, capability or just all of those.

Time to face the truth, times have changed. But you can still play those old MMORPGs. At least I do.

cameltosis

I think the paradigm shift is going to come from console developers moving into the MMO space, closely followed by a "conquerer" based on a big console IP. 


We've already seen consoles moving into persistent online games (Destiny, The Division). We already have a couple of MMOs on console and pc (FFXIV, TESO) and the console market has shown us that they are ready for that sort of game and are willing to spend good chunks of money on it. 


I personally think the winner is going to be Assassins Creed Online. Ubisoft, through The Division, now have enough experience of online technology and made enough money to justify a fully blown MMO set in the assassins creed universe. They have a massive fan base who will likely jump all over it, so even if they went b2p they'd probably still make a profit on development within the first month. The style of combat in assassins creed is well suited to consoles but also has enough potential to extend the system to something a bit deeper too. The AC games are also reasonably good examples of sandparks and I firmly believe that the future of MMORPGs is hybrid sandbox / themepark. 


Only problem i see with an AC mmo is city size / concurrent connections. They'd have to have a world much bigger than any existing game in order to cope with 5k-10k players per server which could be too expensive to make. 

Kyleran

DMKano said:

The idea of a single game or product conquering is a false premise.

It won't be a sudden change over night - the market is too big and the interests are too varied.

It will be a gradual evolution into the next generation of games

Didn't this sort of happen already? If we think of MMORPGs as "online games" then I'd say the evolution into MOBAs, card games, large scale shooters such as the Division which are all big moneymakers is the change you are talking about.

As you said the market conditions that spawned WOW no longer exist and if more traditional MMORPGs continue in the future probably they'll appeal to a much smaller niche than even the 1 million figure you quoted. (EVE's like success is more likely)

I don't believe there ever will be another "one", at least not for any style of game that we would recognize today.

Dullahan

Kyleran said:

DMKano said:

The idea of a single game or product conquering is a false premise.

It won't be a sudden change over night - the market is too big and the interests are too varied.

It will be a gradual evolution into the next generation of games

Didn't this sort of happen already? If we think of MMORPGs as "online games" then I'd say the evolution into MOBAs, card games, large scale shooters such as the Division which are all big moneymakers is the change you are talking about.

As you said the market conditions that spawned WOW no longer exist and if more traditional MMORPGs continue in the future probably they'll appeal to a much smaller niche than even the 1 million figure you quoted. (EVE's like success is more likely)

I don't believe there ever will be another "one", at least not for any style of game that we would recognize today.

Apples and oranges. If MMORPGs evolved into MOBAs then automobiles evolved into lawn mowers.

Kyleran

Dullahan said:

Kyleran said:

DMKano said:

The idea of a single game or product conquering is a false premise.

It won't be a sudden change over night - the market is too big and the interests are too varied.

It will be a gradual evolution into the next generation of games

Didn't this sort of happen already? If we think of MMORPGs as "online games" then I'd say the evolution into MOBAs, card games, large scale shooters such as the Division which are all big moneymakers is the change you are talking about.

As you said the market conditions that spawned WOW no longer exist and if more traditional MMORPGs continue in the future probably they'll appeal to a much smaller niche than even the 1 million figure you quoted. (EVE's like success is more likely)

I don't believe there ever will be another "one", at least not for any style of game that we would recognize today.

Apples and oranges. If MMORPGs evolved into MOBAs then automobiles evolved into lawn mowers.

If we think of MOBAs (ARPGs, MMO Shooters) as simplified online games, then a more accurate analogy would be that a majority of the market decided to ride motorcycles which have fewer features but are still solid transportation none the less.

One can even argue motorcycles are superior at things such as handling, off road use, and storage/ parking vs autos due to their specialized design. Same is true for online games.

The mass market isn't looking for a better auto to return to, the only thing that will get them off their motorcycles is flying cars. (or teleporters) 

Again, same with online games, probably going to have to take VR to the point of jacking directly into our heads to really revolutionize the market.

Come to think of it, even if we had flying cars people probably would abandon them once personal jetpacks came out. 

Loke666

Blurry.Face said:

It will be a company that exists currently, but that is relatively unknown at the moment. But it will happen.

Possibly, but it could also be that one of the larger companies that don't make MMOs would get into the genre. Rockstar making a "Red dead..." MMO for example would have the potential to do it, and the money and talent for that matter. After all wasn't Blizzard a MMO company before making Wow so it is certainly possible and companies like Valve, Dice and Rockstar do have their fans just like Blizzard do, they are likely to give a new game from their favorite company a shot.

Or it could be that one of the lead designers from a large company jumps off and start their own, Arenanet started that way and there are several crowdfunded projects by experienced devs (even though I doubt any of them will make it that big).

It could also be that a company we havn't heard of but is big in other parts of the world make it, like one of the Japanese MMO companies that so far mainly focus on the local market.

It will happen, I agree there but I am not sure it willl be a fantasy MMO either. For some reason are almost all MMOs fantasy with a few exceptions while no other genre I can think of is that limited in the setting (besides sport games). It would probably be easier to make a hit game if it is nothing like Wow at all, there have been far too many similar games the last 10 years.

Loke666

Kyleran said:

Didn't this sort of happen already? If we think of MMORPGs as "online games" then I'd say the evolution into MOBAs, card games, large scale shooters such as the Division which are all big moneymakers is the change you are talking about.

As you said the market conditions that spawned WOW no longer exist and if more traditional MMORPGs continue in the future probably they'll appeal to a much smaller niche than even the 1 million figure you quoted. (EVE's like success is more likely)

I don't believe there ever will be another "one", at least not for any style of game that we would recognize today.

It is certainly possible but it is pretty likely the genre will spawn more spin-offs in the year to come. Also, new technology could change everything.

And not just VR, in the near future will harddrives and ram be the same thing which mean you suddenly could start making huge beutiful seamless worlds again.  There are experiements with AIs that can design dungeons and maps at several universities, if one of them really starts to work you can suddenly make truly massive MMOs on a low budget, that in itself isn't enough for a huge game but it would mean that people with good ideas would have far easier to get the funding needed for projects that is different from the usual stuff. And there should be far more new and interesting tech in the making, it is always hard to predict the future, even the near future.

I do agree with you that whatever it will be it will be far from Wow, at least the next 10 years. We do have seen nostalgic genres bloom up again with games like turned based strategy and platform games and I guess that could happen again, maybe Wow 2 might be huge in 2030...

I think the basic idea of MMOs (lets take P&P RPGs and turn then into a computer game with many people playing in the same world) is too good to die but the mechanics of them will most likely change a lot. Even tabletop RPGs is very different today from the 70s both mechanic and playstyle wise and it is likely MMOs need to change as well, they have alreadyy tried with action combat and it is impossible to say which mechanics future MMOs will have.

DKLond

CIG

Maurgrim

OP you are living in the past.
When WoW came it was the perfect timing for a Warcraft MMO, first Blizzard allready had millions of fans to start with secondly MMO market at that time were  niche and the MMOs you could play at that time you could count on your one hand.
So of course WoW became such a huge success.
Fast forward today, we have thousands upon thousand of MMOs to pick from, there won't be a game as you put it conquering the market it have become to big and mainstream.

DKLond

Maurgrim said:

OP you are living in the past.
When WoW came it was the perfect timing for a Warcraft MMO, first Blizzard allready had millions of fans to start with secondly MMO market at that time were  niche and the MMOs you could play at that time you could count on your one hand.
So of course WoW became such a huge success.
Fast forward today, we have thousands upon thousand of MMOs to pick from, there won't be a game as you put it conquering the market it have become to big and mainstream.

People don't have much imagination these days, it seems.

All it takes is vision, talent and the resources to pull it off. Sadly, that's quite rare - but it does exist.

Today, we have a much larger potential audience - so if you actually do something original and evolve the genre more than a few millimeters, it could happen.

Quizzical

The genre will be conquered by people willing to pay for new games.  So apparently not you.

Purutzil

It won't likely happen again given the market unless its done in VR or some other form of technology. Even then I don't think it will hold dominance as much since theres a lot more studios around who are creating games and MMos in particular. Still I could see possibly if its good enough and stands out coming out early on some MMO coming to be prominent and 'dominate' just never to the extent WoW had in the past.

Theocritus

The genre really needs to get away from the quest mentality and get back to the days of exploration and giving us a fun virtual world again

Maurgrim

Theocritus said:

The genre really needs to get away from the quest mentality and get back to the days of exploration and giving us a fun virtual world again

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/soulboundstudios/chronicles-of-elyria-epic-story-mmorpg-with-aging/description

Your welcome.

Promet

I think Camelot Unchained can "conquer" a lot of market. It obviously won't be as successful as Wow, but it should bring quite a lot of novelty to the genre. In fact this is the only project which I feel can achieve that at the moment.

vandal5627

Man, I'm surprised OP didn't add his epic streak not paying for an MMORPG in a long time in his post.

Distopia

Theocritus said:

The genre really needs to get away from the quest mentality and get back to the days of exploration and giving us a fun virtual world again

IF it were just a simple matter of moving away from questing and offering exploration we'd have already seen something "great" come along IMO, as that removal would shorten the development time of a game significantly. Without questing or something similar you basically have nothing but a world with things to kill in it. IF this was a logical design they'd be popping up left and right. 

You need a lot more than a world and combat to make for a good game in this day and age, there's no novelty left in playing with other players in empty barren worlds.. There's just nothing special in that, like there was in 1999-2003. 

Questing has simply been an end to a means, it has offered something to focus on as well as occupy time with, it was the logical evolution at the time it became a thing...

It's appeal has also lost it's way, at least in the way it has been handled thus far. 

I honestly think the logical evolution now, is non-linear storytelling that is built around the idea of multiple players taking part, as well as feeds into the worldly aspects of a game. Tasks that unlock elements of lore for everyone, as one example, dungeons that are uncovered through puzzles that encourage community wide exploration as well as effort is another. Live GMs running story events that all in an area can take part in, etc..etc..etc..

There are many creative ways storytelling could be handled in these games, ways that incorporate the benefits a MMORPG brings in design, basically lots of players taking part and guiding the story aspects of the game, their effort dictates the way the story of the world is unraveled, as well as how that world moves forward.. I believe EQnext was trying to go that route.

Maquiame

Nobody, for the next generation, Niche is king. There won't be one conqueror, there will be several appealing to smaller groups. The Jack of All Trades/Master of None days are over. Besides a conqueror in your eyes OP means that they have to appeal to the "casual" market.

No thanks.


Personally I've hopped on the Elryia and Crowfall bandwagons.

filmoret

mmo's are over and slowly dying.  They are being replaced with smaller versions that only support 40-80 players per world.