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Is every MMO dying?
chilly15450
Member Posts: 16
Every MMO forum I go to. I see every other game been called dying off. So what is a dying MMO? I remember some MMOS that been called off by a lot of people dying. Been years later it still gets updates and expansions and people still play.
So why is it that there so many people saying that this MMO is dying, but really its not? The thing that makes me kinda of angry that people say a MMO is dying when really its not. It brings the message to new players that this MMO is dying. He or she going to think that why would I want to play a dying MMO. It discourages new players from coming in.
Comments
An mmo getting updates and not closing for a few years doesn't mean it's not dying, it just means it's dying "Slowly".
The only mmo that's not dying in any form way or capacity is Eve Online, it's the only mmo that's getting more subs/players compared to every mmo in existance which is losing players/subs.
Lineage 1 is doing fine too
EQ2 fan sites
I think when WoW started losing subs instead of gaining was when the mmo genre started to slowly decline. There are way too many mmo's out there right now.
I personally haven't played an mmo in a very long time just because i'm bored with the genre. I went back to my roots and play rts and fps games. I find myself playing more and more mobile rts games over pc games.
Everyone and everything is born dying.
Entropy, man, heat death of the universe, and all that...
I was going to say something along these lines. All video games, regardless of genre go through the same cycle. Initial adoption, plateau, then decline. It's just that with MMORPGs it's a much more visible process.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
If the game is on a general consistent decline I'd say so, yeah. IE it doesn't matter if you drop an expansion and get 50% more players back if a couple of months later you are below what you had before the xpack or big patch or whatever and continually dwindling.
The game can also be dying if the population is stable, if it's so small it can't support the game and just waits for the plug to be pulled.
As I have stated here before, I feel that there are too many new MMO's being cranked out and it's thinning out population numbers in our MMO of choice. When WoW was at its peak, there were not a lot of good MMO's to choose from. Now, MMo's are a dime a dozen and people jump from game to game. I think that is why we are seeing population numbers in WoW decline. I honestly think it's going to get much worse before it gets better...IMHO.
This.
My computer is better than yours.
That's your problem right there. You're going to MMO forums.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
LOL, that's very good.
Once upon a time....
I suspect it may be a little deeper than that, lol
"The game is dying" becomes a convenient excuse to explain why they're not playing the game when so many other people seem to be. A great many people apparently need these justifications for why they behave the way they do in MMO's...
When we say a MMO is dying, generally we don't mean that we dislike the game or even that the population is declining -- though, admittedly, many people rationalize their sense that the game is dying by pointing to these. What is really meant is that the game is going out of style (or in the case of far too many modern MMOs, that the game was never in style from the start). It is hard to argue using objective measures, yet nevertheless intuitively we sense when this is happening, when a game no longer feels cutting-edge or innovative, when it no longer reflects well on your image of yourself as a gamer to admit that you are playing that particular game.
The reason most every MMO feels this way is that the entire genre seems to be "dying" -- i.e., going out of style, and each individual MMO participates in the fate of the larger genre. There was a time when playing MMOs put you in a class of elite gamers -- which was due to the combined impact of how hardcore old school MMOs were (demanding a great deal of time and skill from gamers) and their innovative use of the internet as a form of social interaction which was cutting edge at the time (this was before social networking). Today, on the other hand, MMOs are a bit more of a joke genre. Online social gaming no longer seems like a particularly innovative technology, and most MMOs are extremely dumbed down to be essentially the opposite of what they used to be (i.e., now they require very little time and very little skill). Modern MMOs compare to old-school MMOs the way late-80s glam rock bands like Poison compared to old-school rock bands like AC/DC.
When each new MMO is released, they essentially steal the majority of their essence from existing models in the genre, and then tack on some innovative concepts at the end. But because the genre itself is going out of style, everything they steal from that genre is also going out of style. And since all that stuff represents the meat and bones of the new game, it is already going out of style from day one . . . even if initially the population rapidly rises or if many people claim to like it.
This was not always the situation. Some people argue that all games are dying from the moment they are released, albeit slowly, like an aging human being. I disagree. Just like a young person is growing and developing until their early 20s, a game goes through this same process. In the case of a very successful game, like WoW, this actually continues well after their release. WoW didn't actually reach its pinnacle -- after which point it began its slow decline -- until years after its initial release. WoW was considered extremely "cool" at release, but this "cool" factor only increased with time, and eventually it became so popular even mainstream culture had heard of the game. Then it slowly started to become less cool, and now you are almost looked down upon if you admit to playing WoW.
People say mmo's are dying because they get bored of the game and want to start trashing it on boards. Never listen to these people or better yet stay away from the games forums. 90% of the post are people complaining.
Wushu is growing across the world.
Some games go into extinction for a variety of reasons, but MMOs aren't dying as a genre.. Players, on average, seem to have become a bit more jaded and cynical.. Its hard to point to a single reason why this is.. Boredom, higher (or even impossible) expectations, anger towards a certain company, too hard/too easy, etc..
Yes, it sucks that forums get overrun with negative comments.. Posts that don't end up helping the game progress or survive.. Will it stop? Sadly, no..
..because we're gamers, damn it!! - William Massachusetts (Log Horizon)
or atrophy, for that matter.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
And this is a problem because?
WoW deserves this fate. They were making a Billion dollars a year in revenue and 400million + in profits and couldn't be bothered to put more then 20 million or so (guesstimate) in the expansions - and didn't even spend the money to upgrade the engine. The rolled out a paltry few dungeons in Cataclysm - made some of them hard for the randoms - and then dumbed down the rest of the game because the bored 'casuals" couldn't face roll them..
It is interesting to see Anarchy Online in terms of discussions such as this. It has been around since 2001 and has seen content updates aplenty through the years.
I believe they are getting the Age of Conan and Secret World engine soon as well.
Not really playing the game at the moment but I remember I enjoyed it at one time. Anyway, it may actually start a trend of re-visiting older MMO worlds. Ultima Online has some interesting parallels here too.
Any game that a poster is not playing is dying.
Doesn't matter if they are doing expansions, and making money. He/she isn't playing it so it must be dying.
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
Its much like saying we as people start to die the moment we stop growing (young adulthood?), this doesnt mean we are in our deathbed, or even that our best years are behind us. Just the opposite, there is still potential for us to keep going and have a great life of fame and fortune, live in obscurity but happy, or die in a tragic accident from poor judgement.
So much like MMOs, the MMO launches (is born), reaches peak subscribers (Like cellular replication until maturation), then it peaks (Young adulthood) and from there it can live a long and healthy life (WoW) or die from making poor life decisions or fateful accidents (WAR, Tabula Rasa, etc.).
The only true state of death for a game which renders it unplayable because of players is when the game is no longer accessible at all, and dying is when the game is officially given notice of shutdown (like an impossibly perfect Doctor saying you have X months to live).
To stick with the human health comparison, when people say "such and such" game is dying thats like going from a medical diagnoses to getting a fortune teller to give you a medical diagnoses lol.
Lol thinking about it, MMO gamers have this crazy gangland, or religious cults/fanatic mentality (On these forums especially). If they played a game at anypoint and dont like it, or even just dont like how it looks alot feel the need that the game deserves nothing short of death.
So they begin picking it apart, in what I can imagine, is the hope to convert people to their belief, and/or snuff out the competition...and subsequently join their ideal game to ensure its success and ongoing survival. and they look for its death signs in every place possible.
This is totally normal, look at human fanaticism in sports teams, religious, political views, social views, brands, and anything else really...quick example of gaming fans going at eachother over nothing is how crazy arguments get between Xbox and PS3 superiority...where one side is always claiming the other is obsolete (dying)