I remain hopeful, but I am only playing mobile mmos atm. I don't have the time to invest in any other MMOs except WoW, but I am tired of that game quite frankly, even though Legion was well received.
Now Playing: Bless / Summoners War Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
I think you are pretty much spot on; MMOs are still OK (some of them at least), but the more they try to chase the $$ and turn into little more than lobby games the more they lose relevance. Basically, why would I play a 'modern' MMO (with all the baggage) when I can play a good MOBA for a quick multiplayer action / RPG fix?
I don't see it happening any time soon (Pantheon is a big maybe), and WoW (maybe even FFXIV) need to die first*, but I do think true MMOs can thrive** again by offering the social interaction, large world, and persistence that other genres just can't.
* Players, and devs, need to accept that an MMO should be about the journey (not 'end game' loot grinds), that progression should be a million tiny steps (and not be undone by the next patch), and that not everything should be click button and 'convenient'.
** As for being AAA, maybe, it certainly takes AAA dollars to make anything that is going to be 'big', but unless a publisher / investor is going to break from 'the WoW formula' it's probably more likely an indie MMO will do 'well enough' and build up over time.
I think MMORPGs are at a cross roads as the time, technology and social mechanics have changed since the genre was introduced. WoW defined a lot of these attributes but I feel no one has looked at how people play today and evolve those mechanics into something new. Mobile is huge how can you merge that with an MMO experience in a meaningful way?
I think the genre is big enough to support separate niche MMORPGs catering the growing (but separate) demands of MMORPG players. Some people want a world-based solo RPG experience but the ability to play with others in the same world. Others want a return to the older heavily group based experience. Then there are those that want a hardcore FFA PvP.
What I feel is happening is that developers are trying to appease all audiences in one game leading to a bunch of features where none of them execute well.
The idea of having the next WoW or Everquest is wishful thinking, yet that is what most releases (I've played) have been chasing.
LFG game that nothing to do with WoW/F2P/Cash shop LOL :P
WoW was a monetary success that cater to those who could not put the time to play UO or EQ and other titles as the amount of time one need to play to obtain decent gear or get to a level comfortable to play solo and massive group exploration contents or raids..
WoW made easy for people to play and feel their inner opiumness (word I made up from opium and overpower since is a delusion of virtual power lol) it was great for them but not for the one who burn hours and had massive amount of information on the harder games. Once those casual players left for the greener pasture in wow they drag their friends who still playing other games hence player dwindle down guilds lost raid power and so on.. I am guilty of playing wow like it but did not like the player base and their gankfest.. Pretty much most player had lost play nice rules and most felt so op that did not care at all and grouping skills were lacking big time but WoW made possible for this people to succeed and be happy since the game was easy.. Legendary gear drop a dime a dozen.. and if you had a high level friend you could be twink fast..
Even while wow destroyed the old game style.. new games that came to compete against WoW big time not because of WoW but the game community cause most players open the door to hacking, third party tools, and bot software. Which all this eventually let to elitism do to the help of third party tools aka damage meters.. A lot players were isolated because some wanted the cream of the crop. I remember happen when I join Rift Online people were even anticipating the end of the instance runs base on what the parser said. Killing the fun of doing runs for me since I had to be on the magic number or less end up LFG for hours.. Same thing happen in the secret world.. if you did not had the magic number people would dismiss you easily.. Then came the diarrhea dungeons runs people wanting to kill the bosses in 1 second and get top loot.. At times yeah I felt like this people had diarrhea and could not spent the time to do the dungeon properly.. Even in Wushu still the same people want easy challenges and top loot.. Now we got f2p and cash shops.. on top pvp bullying .. drama over crap in world chat.. and the insane nostalgia over WoW and comparing every new game to WoW..
To me is simple Dev have lost the ability to create games from scratch they just copy clone whatever the heck is suppose to be making money now.. Games are not being develop for people to play they are being develop by companies to milk money out players in form of cash shop. Wish it was an original idea but is not is a clone idea from Europe game market.. All this games are eye candy for fools and people prone to violence teaching them how to kill that is the bottom line most of this new games are showing step by step how to kill and most are buying into this idea as fun..The idea of game exploration and the thrill of challenging zones and instances has been lost to murder. People asking for games to include pvp for murdering each other and thinking is fun or antagonizing those who are low level and weak.. that is the sad truth where all this is going.
Games where you have to think and rationalize the challenge to achieve something are no longer made. Some games now even auto walk for you from point a to point b..some even auto play the instance runs.. Back them people complaint about paying 10 to 15 dollars monthly.. now you got spent around 100 monthly may be more to play games that are not even current most of this games have been place in Europe market and we get the backslash of their players coming to be top gamer in our version.
The problem with us old timers is that we were around when MMO's gave you everything. We saw:
- Fully customizable housing - Place-able vendors to sell your stuff - Crafting that was unique to the person doing it - Not being able to tell what class your opponent was by his armor - Having classless, fully customizable characters that only had the skills you wanted to train
We got all that for our monthly sub fee. In todays world, you get almost none of that for your sub fee PLUS you will feel compelled to spend even more in the cash shops.
I can't stress this enough.
Talking about games where thousands of players exist simultaneously in a single instance and mechanics related to such games.
Without Planetside 2 the MMO genre would be over for me, but the RPG MMO is certainly dead for me. Leave questing and story to a good single or co op RPG, not MMOs! Planetside 2, now that' a true MMO, it's all about other players. Pure player driven experience, and just like a football game, no two encounters are ever the same when two side clash. Planetside 2 is a PVP sandbox. Meaning, there are many ways to get creative to approach PVP. The only hard part is learning to have the situational awareness of a Bombay taxi driver in large battles.
I find that the problem is that almost every mmorpg since WoW delivered mostly the same game that WoW had already delivered better. To make it worse most of the effort was put into making it a solo experience that ended after 100 hours which made it much harder to make social contacts within the game.
Since I stopped playing WoW in 2011 I played Rift, Swtor, Tera and TSW, while it was fun for the moment it quickly became more of the same. Until companies can deliver mmorpg that give a different experience I'm spending my money on singleplayer games.
I agree on dark souls, its a great game and I'm doing a replay of ds2 but it lacks the social communication that would make it replace mmorpg.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
Im just burned out on mmo's in general. I think as technology get's better and pc's can handle more demanding worlds, the game developers will just need to utilize it all more. Procedural generation will be the saving grace of mmo's. Right now you need to create every tree and rock, and place it just so. space sims are using it for entire worlds, so it has a base right now, it just needs more mmo developers to see what they can use it for. Game worlds are just too small for me right now. Everyone looks the same too. Armor styles could one day be procedurally generated, instead of just changing the colors with dye.
I'm not holding out for hope in my life time, but maybe VR will show us a new way to mmo. I guess i'm just waiting for technology to open the way to larger fuller game worlds.
In recent years with the rise of quick-match gaming and their obvious profitability many MMOs, even WOW itself, have modified the game play to make it more appealing to the quick-match crowd. IMO this is a fool's errand that seeks to attract those who reject MMOs in favor of MOBAs and FPS in the first place. It's an "if you can't beat them, join them" design mentality.
This is not due to "can't beat them join them" - it's due to HOW majority plays games today.
MMO companies look at the player analytics and metrics and they see that "short play sessions" per player are by far the highest % of how games are played now.
So they've changed the style of gameplay to cater to majority - aka short play session gaming.
So if you make a game hoping to attract millions, provide short scenario PVP and lots of instanced dungeons and make the whole game revolve around that, when you look at your metrics to see how the game is being played the big surprise would be if players aren't playing the way you designed it in order to attract those very players, wouldn't it?
I still find time to actually engage for a couple of hours in ESO PvP most nights... but then I'm not hopping around 10 MMOs at the same time the way you've told us before that you play.... it's probably just me and a few hundred thousand oddballs that do that... certainly not millions.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
In recent years with the rise of quick-match gaming and their obvious profitability many MMOs, even WOW itself, have modified the game play to make it more appealing to the quick-match crowd. IMO this is a fool's errand that seeks to attract those who reject MMOs in favor of MOBAs and FPS in the first place. It's an "if you can't beat them, join them" design mentality.
This is not due to "can't beat them join them" - it's due to HOW majority plays games today.
MMO companies look at the player analytics and metrics and they see that "short play sessions" per player are by far the highest % of how games are played now.
So they've changed the style of gameplay to cater to majority - aka short play session gaming.
So if you make a game hoping to attract millions, provide short scenario PVP and lots of instanced dungeons and make the whole game revolve around that, when you look at your metrics to see how the game is being played the big surprise would be if players aren't playing the way you designed it in order to attract those very players, wouldn't it?
I still find time to actually engage for a couple of hours in ESO PvP most nights... but then I'm not hopping around 10 MMOs at the same time the way you've told us before that you play.... it's probably just me and a few hundred thousand oddballs that do that... certainly not millions.
Self fulfilling prophecy, right?
We don't see much of the data of those fabled metrics, but much more of the conclusions, which somehow run counter to many of our preferences.
Rhetorical question: Is it unsound for us to wonder if confirmation bias is occurring more often in their analyses than publishers and developers would like to believe?
A few years ago the in thing to do was cry for free to play. More recently the in thing to do was to cry for more sandbox games. The current thing to do now is to say we need more group content. Throughout all of this has been the argument back and forth that it's the fault of casuals or it's the fault of the hard core. People thinking they are better than other people.../smh. There are too many lemmings, both in the industry, but most especially among the gamers.
The problem with us old timers is that we were around when MMO's gave you everything. We saw:
- Fully customizable housing - Place-able vendors to sell your stuff - Crafting that was unique to the person doing it - Not being able to tell what class your opponent was by his armor - Having classless, fully customizable characters that only had the skills you wanted to train
We got all that for our monthly sub fee. In todays world, you get almost none of that for your sub fee PLUS you will feel compelled to spend even more in the cash shops.
I can't stress this enough.
Pure P2P model is dead, it cannot be maintained longterm in todays market without a cash shop.
No game can sustain itself for years on $15/month per player alone - those days are forever gone.
The fallacy of what are saying is that you equate P2P with $15/mo. Yes that is how it HAS been but perhaps not what the future holds.
A mere 200,000 players equates to $5,000,000 per month revenue at $25...
Are there 200,000 players that would pay $25/mo for a game they like? I believe so but of course only the future will tell.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I liked what you wrote and I can see a lot of what you wrote is reflective of my thoughts although not as eloquently put.
I can see that many games now look for cooperation and team work and communication in PvP games. PvE has been relegated to the random party and party member experience with no communication aside from the hello and goodbye. I dislike PvP so for me there are no options for cooperative game play. Actually I am seriously looking for some MOBA that is not as hard to get into as LoL or DOTA since I am quite slow with my reflexes and I would actually prefer something turn based. I thought I saw something like that but I cannot recall (lol old age catching up).
I use MMORPGs as chat rooms now. I am playing Black Desert and I don't interact with anyone just chat with them in the chat interface in general chat. That is what my current playing experience has been and quite honestly it is meagre and heartbreaking. I have however learnt to accept it and try to adapt and find joy where I can like when I meet a kind soul willing to help me or spend time myself helping someone. I take my happy moments where I can find them. We should never have taken for granted what we had before but it's too late.
If you asked me 10 years ago how I envisioned MMORPGs would become I would say vast open living breathing worlds, dynamic expanding quest lines with many different variants, more social designs (think bar taverns with player bards, drunken mini games, cards, ect), more interdependence, much more.
Instead, I feel none of this happened. Today I feel the only things that has really changed is monetization, and graphics. Lots of design evolves around convenience which is a huge double edged sword the way I see it. Was my vision for this genre unrealistic? Probably. I hope there is a team out there with big imaginations with the expertise to execute what I envisioned until then I'm stuck with what we have.
Good article. I'm not currently playing any MMOs, and the basic reason is simple: it's a golden age for single player computer games, and to the degree that MMOs are single player experiences now they're strictly inferior to a wide variety of quality alternatives. To pick recent examples, Fallout 4 is a huge sandbox; the Witcher 3 had a ton of quality quest/story driven content; games like Don't Starve in the survival genre do base-building well; Total War Warhammer for online multiplayer strategy play. For competitive play there are first person shooters and MOBAs for the reflex / twitch crowd, and virtually every strategy game (and many RPGs) have viable online servers and co-op modes.
I think that for MMOs to work they will need to figure out a way to play to the strengths in the name of the genre (massively and multiplayer).
I also don't think that people realize just how deadly the intrusive cash shop has been to the genre. I can buy a single player RPG and not have in-game ads bugging me. Given the sheer number of them, I can even just buy things that are a year old for a fraction of the AAA release cost, so I can even play single player games cheaply. It's made MMOs uniquely unappealing to me as a player, and I had played them happily for many years. I'm not alone.
The problem with us old timers is that we were around when MMO's gave you everything. We saw:
- Fully customizable housing - Place-able vendors to sell your stuff - Crafting that was unique to the person doing it - Not being able to tell what class your opponent was by his armor - Having classless, fully customizable characters that only had the skills you wanted to train
We got all that for our monthly sub fee. In todays world, you get almost none of that for your sub fee PLUS you will feel compelled to spend even more in the cash shops.
I can't stress this enough.
Pure P2P model is dead, it cannot be maintained longterm in todays market without a cash shop.
No game can sustain itself for years on $15/month per player alone - those days are forever gone.
Nah. Never say never.
You need a lot of people to make an AAA mmorpg, but not so many to keep it running when it's finished. I see a box+sub=get everything is totally plausible still for future mmos.
Maybe I'm optimistic but it seems the monetization has become part of the gameplay when it comes to mmos, but I bet there are a lot of players that prefer it not to be part of the gameplay. And these players are immediately turned of by this monetization gameplay and won't even touch such a game. And these people are being cheated by companies like the one that did this BDO thing...
This is why I see the industry is in a slump.
Talking about games where thousands of players exist simultaneously in a single instance and mechanics related to such games.
I think what mmorpg.com is really saying is that less developers are willing to pay them for their biased reviews, so surely the genre must be dieing according to them, LOL.
Just because this site is not willing to give fair coverage to all MMOs in development, does not mean the genre is dieing. Sure, the business models are changing, but the genre is fine itself.
MMO's are in a sad state. I hate action combat, the lack of support classes, such as healers are ruining the genre. The fact that WoW is still king of the hill boggles my mind, it's dated and needs to go away.
"Those who play MMO’s have become the whipping boys (and girls) for nothing more than monetary gain."
I think that's a pretty good assessment. In my opinion the MMO-magic got diluted when players were no longer the sum of their in-game activities. Cash shops are surely good for income, but they broke the fourth wall of the fantasy world. Cash shops broke the dependency on other players and in-game progression. Credit cards took their place.
MMO's are dead. The remaining games are ghost towns and need to die. Big corporate has done a fine job driving the genre I loved straight into the ground.
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
Players demanding more things in mmo's is also killing it. Devs are trying to please everyone and failing at it. If you played mmo's in those early days of the genre you see the changes more. For me I'VE been playing them since 1999. So i see alot of things being added that i find meaningless.
So lately the mmo i've been enjoying is not AAA game. Also since i don't seem to stick around for more than two months in any AAA mmo i don't want to pay subs to them either. I'VE tried all the latest games and just find them gimmicky. But that's what appeals to this generation of players. The game i'm enjoying at the moment took me by surprise. It really harkens back to the early days of the genre and i'm fine with it and its F2P on steam and not from Asia.
Comments
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
I don't see it happening any time soon (Pantheon is a big maybe), and WoW (maybe even FFXIV) need to die first*, but I do think true MMOs can thrive** again by offering the social interaction, large world, and persistence that other genres just can't.
* Players, and devs, need to accept that an MMO should be about the journey (not 'end game' loot grinds), that progression should be a million tiny steps (and not be undone by the next patch), and that not everything should be click button and 'convenient'.
** As for being AAA, maybe, it certainly takes AAA dollars to make anything that is going to be 'big', but unless a publisher / investor is going to break from 'the WoW formula' it's probably more likely an indie MMO will do 'well enough' and build up over time.
I think the genre is big enough to support separate niche MMORPGs catering the growing (but separate) demands of MMORPG players. Some people want a world-based solo RPG experience but the ability to play with others in the same world. Others want a return to the older heavily group based experience. Then there are those that want a hardcore FFA PvP.
What I feel is happening is that developers are trying to appease all audiences in one game leading to a bunch of features where none of them execute well.
The idea of having the next WoW or Everquest is wishful thinking, yet that is what most releases (I've played) have been chasing.
One of these upcoming games will get it right.
LFG game that nothing to do with WoW/F2P/Cash shop LOL :P
WoW was a monetary success that cater to those who could not put the time to play UO or EQ and other titles as the amount of time one need to play to obtain decent gear or get to a level comfortable to play solo and massive group exploration contents or raids..
WoW made easy for people to play and feel their inner opiumness (word I made up from opium and overpower since is a delusion of virtual power lol) it was great for them but not for the one who burn hours and had massive amount of information on the harder games. Once those casual players left for the greener pasture in wow they drag their friends who still playing other games hence player dwindle down guilds lost raid power and so on.. I am guilty of playing wow like it but did not like the player base and their gankfest.. Pretty much most player had lost play nice rules and most felt so op that did not care at all and grouping skills were lacking big time but WoW made possible for this people to succeed and be happy since the game was easy.. Legendary gear drop a dime a dozen.. and if you had a high level friend you could be twink fast..
Even while wow destroyed the old game style.. new games that came to compete against WoW big time not because of WoW but the game community cause most players open the door to hacking, third party tools, and bot software. Which all this eventually let to elitism do to the help of third party tools aka damage meters.. A lot players were isolated because some wanted the cream of the crop. I remember happen when I join Rift Online people were even anticipating the end of the instance runs base on what the parser said. Killing the fun of doing runs for me since I had to be on the magic number or less end up LFG for hours.. Same thing happen in the secret world.. if you did not had the magic number people would dismiss you easily.. Then came the diarrhea dungeons runs people wanting to kill the bosses in 1 second and get top loot.. At times yeah I felt like this people had diarrhea and could not spent the time to do the dungeon properly.. Even in Wushu still the same people want easy challenges and top loot.. Now we got f2p and cash shops.. on top pvp bullying .. drama over crap in world chat.. and the insane nostalgia over WoW and comparing every new game to WoW..
To me is simple Dev have lost the ability to create games from scratch they just copy clone whatever the heck is suppose to be making money now.. Games are not being develop for people to play they are being develop by companies to milk money out players in form of cash shop. Wish it was an original idea but is not is a clone idea from Europe game market.. All this games are eye candy for fools and people prone to violence teaching them how to kill that is the bottom line most of this new games are showing step by step how to kill and most are buying into this idea as fun..The idea of game exploration and the thrill of challenging zones and instances has been lost to murder. People asking for games to include pvp for murdering each other and thinking is fun or antagonizing those who are low level and weak.. that is the sad truth where all this is going.
Games where you have to think and rationalize the challenge to achieve something are no longer made. Some games now even auto walk for you from point a to point b..some even auto play the instance runs.. Back them people complaint about paying 10 to 15 dollars monthly.. now you got spent around 100 monthly may be more to play games that are not even current most of this games have been place in Europe market and we get the backslash of their players coming to be top gamer in our version.
Since I stopped playing WoW in 2011 I played Rift, Swtor, Tera and TSW, while it was fun for the moment it quickly became more of the same. Until companies can deliver mmorpg that give a different experience I'm spending my money on singleplayer games.
I agree on dark souls, its a great game and I'm doing a replay of ds2 but it lacks the social communication that would make it replace mmorpg.
I'm not holding out for hope in my life time, but maybe VR will show us a new way to mmo. I guess i'm just waiting for technology to open the way to larger fuller game worlds.
I still find time to actually engage for a couple of hours in ESO PvP most nights... but then I'm not hopping around 10 MMOs at the same time the way you've told us before that you play.... it's probably just me and a few hundred thousand oddballs that do that... certainly not millions.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
We don't see much of the data of those fabled metrics, but much more of the conclusions, which somehow run counter to many of our preferences.
Rhetorical question: Is it unsound for us to wonder if confirmation bias is occurring more often in their analyses than publishers and developers would like to believe?
A mere 200,000 players equates to $5,000,000 per month revenue at $25...
Are there 200,000 players that would pay $25/mo for a game they like? I believe so but of course only the future will tell.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I can see that many games now look for cooperation and team work and communication in PvP games. PvE has been relegated to the random party and party member experience with no communication aside from the hello and goodbye. I dislike PvP so for me there are no options for cooperative game play. Actually I am seriously looking for some MOBA that is not as hard to get into as LoL or DOTA since I am quite slow with my reflexes and I would actually prefer something turn based. I thought I saw something like that but I cannot recall (lol old age catching up).
I use MMORPGs as chat rooms now. I am playing Black Desert and I don't interact with anyone just chat with them in the chat interface in general chat. That is what my current playing experience has been and quite honestly it is meagre and heartbreaking. I have however learnt to accept it and try to adapt and find joy where I can like when I meet a kind soul willing to help me or spend time myself helping someone. I take my happy moments where I can find them. We should never have taken for granted what we had before but it's too late.
If you asked me 10 years ago how I envisioned MMORPGs would become I would say vast open living breathing worlds, dynamic expanding quest lines with many different variants, more social designs (think bar taverns with player bards, drunken mini games, cards, ect), more interdependence, much more.
Instead, I feel none of this happened. Today I feel the only things that has really changed is monetization, and graphics. Lots of design evolves around convenience which is a huge double edged sword the way I see it. Was my vision for this genre unrealistic? Probably. I hope there is a team out there with big imaginations with the expertise to execute what I envisioned until then I'm stuck with what we have.
I think that for MMOs to work they will need to figure out a way to play to the strengths in the name of the genre (massively and multiplayer).
I also don't think that people realize just how deadly the intrusive cash shop has been to the genre. I can buy a single player RPG and not have in-game ads bugging me. Given the sheer number of them, I can even just buy things that are a year old for a fraction of the AAA release cost, so I can even play single player games cheaply. It's made MMOs uniquely unappealing to me as a player, and I had played them happily for many years. I'm not alone.
You need a lot of people to make an AAA mmorpg, but not so many to keep it running when it's finished. I see a box+sub=get everything is totally plausible still for future mmos.
Maybe I'm optimistic but it seems the monetization has become part of the gameplay when it comes to mmos, but I bet there are a lot of players that prefer it not to be part of the gameplay. And these players are immediately turned of by this monetization gameplay and won't even touch such a game. And these people are being cheated by companies like the one that did this BDO thing...
This is why I see the industry is in a slump.
I think what mmorpg.com is really saying is that less developers are willing to pay them for their biased reviews, so surely the genre must be dieing according to them, LOL.
Just because this site is not willing to give fair coverage to all MMOs in development, does not mean the genre is dieing. Sure, the business models are changing, but the genre is fine itself.
I even have a though like " ***k , i going to make my own game" sometime . Not work in gaming field so it's just some funny thought .
I think that's a pretty good assessment. In my opinion the MMO-magic got diluted when players were no longer the sum of their in-game activities. Cash shops are surely good for income, but they broke the fourth wall of the fantasy world. Cash shops broke the dependency on other players and in-game progression. Credit cards took their place.
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes
Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge
Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
So lately the mmo i've been enjoying is not AAA game. Also since i don't seem to stick around for more than two months in any AAA mmo i don't want to pay subs to them either. I'VE tried all the latest games and just find them gimmicky. But that's what appeals to this generation of players. The game i'm enjoying at the moment took me by surprise. It really harkens back to the early days of the genre and i'm fine with it and its F2P on steam and not from Asia.