There are a few factors, and they add up to a serious problem for the genre, The initial draws for MMOs were huge worlds, elaborate quest lines and lore, small and large group co-operative play and competitive play. When MMOs were invented these things were far, far more restricted in other computer games, or they didn't exist at all. I'd contend that the best features of the original MMOs are now found in other genres, and the MMO genre has turned in a direction that has become both very different and far less appealing to people like me.
We now have much more sophisticated single player games. You can have large worlds (e.g. Skyrim, Fallout 4). They can have environments that you can modify - the Bethesda games are virtual playgrounds - and they can have rich story lines (Witcher 3, Pillars of Eternity.) Even simpler games like Mindcraft and Don't Starve. MMOs have a structural problem - namely, that in a space spared between many players, there is limited room for any individual player to modify the game world.
The second big change is related to the game play. Early MMOs were heavily focused toward group co-operative play, and the encounters that you ran into *when you started the game* could be technically challenging. With a long term player base, however, MMO leveling became a chore, and game design was driven strongly towards chasing more players (to deal with attrition), padding the game (thus simple, repeated mechanical tasks) and to making the early game much, much easier (see above.) I think that the payment model changes - from subscription to cash shop - follow this evolution in the player base. The focus on casual play gutted the ground co-operative version - you will "level up" by yourself, without facing any real need to use your character skills, in almost all MMOs now. (Yea, yea I know : "the game starts at level cap." Asking people to drop a hundred hours into simple mechanical solo play is not a good introduction in that case, no?)
As far as pvp goes, there is a fundamental conflict between long-term character development - a core MMO feature - and a truly competitive game. That's why MOBAs have gotten so huge - you don't *want* long development times and unequal contests. Short matches, even playing fields - this has really drained away players. Even group co-op gaming is now possible in some (mainly) single player games, and I expect this trend to continue.
I have to close by noting the uniquely toxic role of cash shops. They represent the logical consequence of a lot of trends in the genre. But they have had, in my view, terrible consequences. In any other competitive game, you wouldn't play if other people could get an advantage before the match starts by dropped money on the table. We do, however, tolerate people simply having more experience playing a game than we do. The original MMO formula respected that distinction, and cash shops erase it. "But it's pay to advance!" Again, no - people don't pay to skip things that they enjoy. This encourages game design that actively punishes people who don't pay. And, of course, at the magical "end game", people with strong gear will have advantages all around too. Add in that gambling can be an addiction - and I have an actual moral problem with cash shop games.
In terms of where to go, there are a few options. You could take a page from single player games and basically insert "resets", e.g. you start fresh in each version of the fallout series. This directly solves the problem of games where only secondary characters are below the level cap.
You could take advantage of procedural world generation to make truly vast worlds where players could have a real impact on their surroundings. Character advancement in that case could be less about adding elaborate new combat abilities and more about world-building and adding in-game status in other ways. Meaningful group activities are another area where MMOs could shine.
What won't work is ignoring the challenges to the genre from other types of entertainment, which currently just do a better job at the things which MMOs were designed to do in the first place.
Basically, some here cannot handle the fact that the old EQ/WoW type online game design is no longer as popular as they were,
I'm not even sure if that's true unless we're talking about % of the total online game playing population.
We are talking about gamers who play online games. Just look at WoW (the biggest one). How many are still playing WoW?
Wow has gone from a peak of 13-14M to what now? 3M? Now look at the growth of MOBA, shooters like Overwatch, and TCG like Hearthstone.
WoW at its peak had very little competition in the MMORPG field. Add ESO. FF, SWTOR and all dozens of others to the mix and you probably have many more playing today than were playing at the time WoW had a virtual monopoly.
The growth you're talking about isn't just the growth of a few cherry-picked titles. It's the growth of online game play as mainstream entertainment that coincided with that. You think there were actually 100 million people playing online games when WOW was at its peak? Well there are that and more now.
Besides... WoW? Really? The decline in sub numbers of a game that is more than a decade old proves that MMORPGs are played by fewer people now? Nah... show me real numbers.
"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”
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“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Always has been a niche genre. The anomaly being World of Warcraft.
This isn't changing. The genre isn't dying, there was never the interest to begin with in the masses.
I think it was The Jace Hall Show: Evercracked that pointed out for example Everquest had a peak population of 75k. Which is still a big number in today's standard for MMO's.
Basically, some here cannot handle the fact that the old EQ/WoW type online game design is no longer as popular as they were,
I'm not even sure if that's true unless we're talking about % of the total online game playing population.
We are talking about gamers who play online games. Just look at WoW (the biggest one). How many are still playing WoW?
Wow has gone from a peak of 13-14M to what now? 3M? Now look at the growth of MOBA, shooters like Overwatch, and TCG like Hearthstone.
WoW at its peak had very little competition in the MMORPG field. Add ESO. FF, SWTOR and all dozens of others to the mix and you probably have many more playing today than were playing at the time WoW had a virtual monopoly.
The growth you're talking about isn't just the growth of a few cherry-picked titles. It's the growth of online game play as mainstream entertainment that coincided with that. You think there were actually 100 million people playing online games when WOW was at its peak? Well there are that and more now.
Besides... WoW? Really? The decline in sub numbers of a game that is more than a decade old proves that MMORPGs are played by fewer people now? Nah... show me real numbers.
Ok, so ESO is a nice case study because they just announced that 10 million people have played ESO, and that they have made 8.5 million retail sales. This is great because we can extrapolate numbers from Steam. So below are steam numbers extrapolated into actual genre numbers.
Game
Total Players
Steam Sales
Steam last 2
weeks
Est. Activity
Last 2 weeks
Activity as %
of Total
Notes
ESO
10,000,000
1,232,266
133,762
1085496.151
10.85496151
FF
5303254.33
653502
110596
897501.0266
16.92359013
Sales listed as 6
million June 2016
EVE
9648525.562
1188955
51370
416874.2788
4.320600864
Based solely on steam
owners
GW2
5000000
534985.8751
10.6997175
No Steam stats
Neverwinter
15000000
4839219
60435
187328.7818
1.248858545
Steam+news activity
STO
13679911.64
1685729
32433
263198.0433
1.923974731
Total
3385384.157
Ok, so obviously it's not concrete, but these are the Alphas in the industry (minus SWTOR because they are very tight-lipped and not on steam). So the estimated activity across all these games in the last 2 weeks is like 3.5 million. That's not insignificant, but it's also not significant. Also, it would support the idea that maybe WoW is finally actually losing subs to other games, or players are simply moving around between different games instead of sticking with one.
So the real question is what is the actual size of the industry? Is it much above the 13 million that WoW once was? How many people are actively playing MMORPGs? It could actually be less than that. Of course that also depends on how flexible your definition of MMORPG is
@Keushpuppy - I never got a chance to play Asheron's Call, but I like some of the features it had. The fealty system, magic being challenging and rare, and a seamless open world without the need to load zones all sound cool to me.
They also had content patches everymonth. Awesome loot system where you had a chance to get the best items off any kill.
Um, a lot of people only respond in this thread by reading title ALONE, read what I wrote also before responding.
Usually a good idea to make sure your title is somewhat reflective of the point your trying to make in the OP because yes, many only respond to the title especially when it's a well worn subject.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
This forum is a hoot sometimes, while mmorpgs are in their golden age and booming, everyone convinced mmorpgs dying, now that its on the decline, mmorpgs are growing.
All the major players have pulled out of the mmorpg game. The only existing games in development seem to be crowdfunded indie games, of which there is little history of success, and well amazon i guess has so much money they can make one regardless of profits.
MMORPG's became too expensive. From 2000-2008 everyone was using a massive playerbase in EQ and WOW to get investment, i mean on paper it looked good...how many million were willing to pay $50 and $15 a month back then? Granted mmorpgs were really the only game on the block for interactive online gaming...beyond death match shooters.
All the various aspects of mmorpgs were split off into specific games that succeeded, pvpers got mobas, and mobas were more fair and better at it, removing the RPG bs....sandboxers got server based builders like minecraft and now games like ark...removing the BS from the mix....so on and so forth.
So why would anyone invest hundreds of millions on an overpriced genre whos sum of all products are done poorly due to needing to balance everything, pve/pvp/building/storytelling/reasons to play past endgame ect....when you can break off each piece for $40 and be done with it no need to develop indefinitely....and people are far more happy with an OK co-op arpg for $40 than an mmorpg with cash shop or sub. MMORPG needs to get everything right, and even then people will get bored after a month or two...
The problem with mmorpgs is they were a fluke in good timing for online gaming. It was only them that existed and many tried to recreate the first gen mmorpgs, which were all so new of an experience, once everyone got their taste the next generations all declined while becoming insanely expensive to make and maintain.
I mean name one AAA major studio making a mmorpg? If it was 2008 or before (maybe even 2010) you could have named 5 maybe 10....the fact that most have been canceled and the list of good mmorpgs consist of games nearly a decade old now tells you all you need to know about the state of mmorpgs.
I knew the second blizzard pulled titan....that was the writing on the wall...then when EQNext was cancelled, that was the last nail in the coffin. I hope the indies do well and revive but theyll never be like it was 2004-2008 when big money was flooding into the mmorpg world.
Personally, I feel like MMOs are too slow. I can play Overwatch or LoL and get right into the action or spend 1 hour doing fetch quest ... no thanks.
MMORPG is just not your genre then if it's too slow. Also overwatch and LoL.. really? Like atleast pick good games LUL
Overwatch is 91 on metacrtiics. You may not like it, but clearly it is a good game in the eyes of the critics.
And yes, MMO is not my genre .. but they seem to be dying to attract more players who are not core MMO players (more actiony gameplay, more soloability). So may be it is morphing into something that is no longer your genre.
User Interface in modern mmorpgs has really improved to a large degree. I do have to give developers credit for that. Though a lot of that improvement was already seen in 2004 with EQ2 and WoW. More recent games have simply refined it. I also prefer reticule targeting to tab targeting.
Roleplayinn.com - New forum for people who love role-playing of all kinds - tabletop/pencil & paper, live-action, and role-playing in mmorpgs.
User Interface in modern mmorpgs has really improved to a large degree. I do have to give developers credit for that. Though a lot of that improvement was already seen in 2004 with EQ2 and WoW. More recent games have simply refined it. I also prefer reticule targeting to tab targeting.
something to think about
2004 was 13 years ago. you speak to it like it was just a few years ago. time flies
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
MMO gameplay has not gotten better since WoW. The genre will continue to rot until developers give us something noteworthy.
They have moved on. There are plenty of noteworthy online games like Overwatch, and the upocming Destiny.
It is just that either a) they are not MMOs (according to the diehards here), or b) they will be claimed as MMOs by the websites who need traffic and don't care about what is and is not one.
I see the opposite. We have so many MMOs in different genres doing classic themepark to full blown sandbox yet some people says MMOs are dying, I would like to know why, because I don't see what they see.
Because you don't measure the health of an industry by the number of firms, you measure it by the number of consumers.
Name a single MMO that has a longterm trend of growth at this point. Also, even if you are measuring by the number of firms, how many MMOs have you seen released in the past couple years?
I'm sorry, but people saying this industry is doing just fine are clearly living in a state of denial. It is not. It's been slowly shriveling and dying for years now.
Now you can say "I think things are about to turn around because _________." and potentially have a point. But right now in 2017 the MMO market is in a clear tailspin.
As to the other interpretation of your question, what is causing them to die. Lack of innovation and the fact people are fed up with grinding.
Name a single MMO that has a longterm trend of growth at this point. Also, even if you are measuring by the number of firms, how many MMOs have you seen released in the past couple years?
Name a single MMO that has a longterm trend of growth at this point. Also, even if you are measuring by the number of firms, how many MMOs have you seen released in the past couple years?
Destiny .. at least until Destiny 2 comes out.
Source? Please make sure it's a longterm source too. As least a year worth of data, preferably five.
Name a single MMO that has a longterm trend of growth at this point. Also, even if you are measuring by the number of firms, how many MMOs have you seen released in the past couple years?
Destiny .. at least until Destiny 2 comes out.
Source? Please make sure it's a longterm source too. As least a year worth of data, preferably five.
lol .. Destiny was released in 2014 .. unless you have a time machine, there is no 5-year worth of data.
But we do have one year. Heck, one is "long term" enough for me.
and i quote "Destiny has nearly 30 million registered players. As previously reported in November 2015, the game had 25 million players. Activision said during the call to investors that each players has logged over 100 hours on average playing the online shooter."
So a growth of 5M players from 2015 to 2016 ... a 16% increase .. i would say that is pretty good.
Name a single MMO that has a longterm trend of growth at this point. Also, even if you are measuring by the number of firms, how many MMOs have you seen released in the past couple years?
Destiny .. at least until Destiny 2 comes out.
Source? Please make sure it's a longterm source too. As least a year worth of data, preferably five.
lol .. Destiny was released in 2014 .. unless you have a time machine, there is no 5-year worth of data.
But we do have one year. Heck, one is "long term" enough for me.
and i quote "Destiny has nearly 30 million registered players. As previously reported in November 2015, the game had 25 million players. Activision said during the call to investors that each players has logged over 100 hours on average playing the online shooter."
So a growth of 5M players from 2015 to 2016 ... a 16% increase .. i would say that is pretty good.
Destiny has nearly 30 million registered players. As previously reported in November 2015 the game had 25 million players. Activision said during the call to investors that each players has logged over 100 hours on average playing the online shooter.
This is saying registered players went up by 5 million and that the have played an average of 100 hours but they did not say anything to the affect of: "They have played an average of 100 hours during the past year."
Deceptive data. I registered to play LOTRO years ago, and have most certainly put in over 100 hours of play into LOTRO.
So I am a registered player who has put in 100 hours. Of course I haven't touched LOTRO in over 5 years. By these standards all games are growing, because you never lose registered players.
Do you have any kind of average server population graph we can look at?
I see the opposite. We have so many MMOs in different genres doing classic themepark to full blown sandbox yet some people says MMOs are dying, I would like to know why, because I don't see what they see.
Because you don't measure the health of an industry by the number of firms, you measure it by the number of consumers.
Name a single MMO that has a longterm trend of growth at this point. Also, even if you are measuring by the number of firms, how many MMOs have you seen released in the past couple years?
I'm sorry, but people saying this industry is doing just fine are clearly living in a state of denial. It is not. It's been slowly shriveling and dying for years now.
Now you can say "I think things are about to turn around because _________." and potentially have a point. But right now in 2017 the MMO market is in a clear tailspin.
As to the other interpretation of your question, what is causing them to die. Lack of innovation and the fact people are fed up with grinding.
I think the guy is saying the overall number of mmorpg players in the world don't necessary decrease. There are just so many mmorpg now people are spaced out.
I personally think the overall number of mmorpg players in the world increased.
The revenue from mobile gaming right now is higher than both console and computer gaming.
As for mmorpgs, it seems that the amount of shovelware has decreased dramatically and only key titles retain their population or grow right now. I hope this is a sign of maturity and an indication that only quality titles have a chance from now on.
Comments
MAGA
We now have much more sophisticated single player games. You can have large worlds (e.g. Skyrim, Fallout 4). They can have environments that you can modify - the Bethesda games are virtual playgrounds - and they can have rich story lines (Witcher 3, Pillars of Eternity.) Even simpler games like Mindcraft and Don't Starve. MMOs have a structural problem - namely, that in a space spared between many players, there is limited room for any individual player to modify the game world.
The second big change is related to the game play. Early MMOs were heavily focused toward group co-operative play, and the encounters that you ran into *when you started the game* could be technically challenging. With a long term player base, however, MMO leveling became a chore, and game design was driven strongly towards chasing more players (to deal with attrition), padding the game (thus simple, repeated mechanical tasks) and to making the early game much, much easier (see above.) I think that the payment model changes - from subscription to cash shop - follow this evolution in the player base. The focus on casual play gutted the ground co-operative version - you will "level up" by yourself, without facing any real need to use your character skills, in almost all MMOs now. (Yea, yea I know : "the game starts at level cap." Asking people to drop a hundred hours into simple mechanical solo play is not a good introduction in that case, no?)
As far as pvp goes, there is a fundamental conflict between long-term character development - a core MMO feature - and a truly competitive game. That's why MOBAs have gotten so huge - you don't *want* long development times and unequal contests. Short matches, even playing fields - this has really drained away players. Even group co-op gaming is now possible in some (mainly) single player games, and I expect this trend to continue.
I have to close by noting the uniquely toxic role of cash shops. They represent the logical consequence of a lot of trends in the genre. But they have had, in my view, terrible consequences. In any other competitive game, you wouldn't play if other people could get an advantage before the match starts by dropped money on the table. We do, however, tolerate people simply having more experience playing a game than we do. The original MMO formula respected that distinction, and cash shops erase it. "But it's pay to advance!" Again, no - people don't pay to skip things that they enjoy. This encourages game design that actively punishes people who don't pay. And, of course, at the magical "end game", people with strong gear will have advantages all around too. Add in that gambling can be an addiction - and I have an actual moral problem with cash shop games.
In terms of where to go, there are a few options. You could take a page from single player games and basically insert "resets", e.g. you start fresh in each version of the fallout series. This directly solves the problem of games where only secondary characters are below the level cap.
You could take advantage of procedural world generation to make truly vast worlds where players could have a real impact on their surroundings. Character advancement in that case could be less about adding elaborate new combat abilities and more about world-building and adding in-game status in other ways. Meaningful group activities are another area where MMOs could shine.
What won't work is ignoring the challenges to the genre from other types of entertainment, which currently just do a better job at the things which MMOs were designed to do in the first place.
Wow has gone from a peak of 13-14M to what now? 3M? Now look at the growth of MOBA, shooters like Overwatch, and TCG like Hearthstone.
The growth you're talking about isn't just the growth of a few cherry-picked titles. It's the growth of online game play as mainstream entertainment that coincided with that. You think there were actually 100 million people playing online games when WOW was at its peak? Well there are that and more now.
Besides... WoW? Really? The decline in sub numbers of a game that is more than a decade old proves that MMORPGs are played by fewer people now? Nah... show me real numbers.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
This isn't changing. The genre isn't dying, there was never the interest to begin with in the masses.
I think it was The Jace Hall Show: Evercracked that pointed out for example Everquest had a peak population of 75k. Which is still a big number in today's standard for MMO's.
Ok, so ESO is a nice case study because they just announced that 10 million people have played ESO, and that they have made 8.5 million retail sales. This is great because we can extrapolate numbers from Steam. So below are steam numbers extrapolated into actual genre numbers.
Ok, so obviously it's not concrete, but these are the Alphas in the industry (minus SWTOR because they are very tight-lipped and not on steam). So the estimated activity across all these games in the last 2 weeks is like 3.5 million. That's not insignificant, but it's also not significant. Also, it would support the idea that maybe WoW is finally actually losing subs to other games, or players are simply moving around between different games instead of sticking with one.
So the real question is what is the actual size of the industry? Is it much above the 13 million that WoW once was? How many people are actively playing MMORPGs? It could actually be less than that. Of course that also depends on how flexible your definition of MMORPG is
Crazkanuk
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
All the major players have pulled out of the mmorpg game. The only existing games in development seem to be crowdfunded indie games, of which there is little history of success, and well amazon i guess has so much money they can make one regardless of profits.
MMORPG's became too expensive. From 2000-2008 everyone was using a massive playerbase in EQ and WOW to get investment, i mean on paper it looked good...how many million were willing to pay $50 and $15 a month back then? Granted mmorpgs were really the only game on the block for interactive online gaming...beyond death match shooters.
All the various aspects of mmorpgs were split off into specific games that succeeded, pvpers got mobas, and mobas were more fair and better at it, removing the RPG bs....sandboxers got server based builders like minecraft and now games like ark...removing the BS from the mix....so on and so forth.
So why would anyone invest hundreds of millions on an overpriced genre whos sum of all products are done poorly due to needing to balance everything, pve/pvp/building/storytelling/reasons to play past endgame ect....when you can break off each piece for $40 and be done with it no need to develop indefinitely....and people are far more happy with an OK co-op arpg for $40 than an mmorpg with cash shop or sub. MMORPG needs to get everything right, and even then people will get bored after a month or two...
The problem with mmorpgs is they were a fluke in good timing for online gaming. It was only them that existed and many tried to recreate the first gen mmorpgs, which were all so new of an experience, once everyone got their taste the next generations all declined while becoming insanely expensive to make and maintain.
I mean name one AAA major studio making a mmorpg? If it was 2008 or before (maybe even 2010) you could have named 5 maybe 10....the fact that most have been canceled and the list of good mmorpgs consist of games nearly a decade old now tells you all you need to know about the state of mmorpgs.
I knew the second blizzard pulled titan....that was the writing on the wall...then when EQNext was cancelled, that was the last nail in the coffin. I hope the indies do well and revive but theyll never be like it was 2004-2008 when big money was flooding into the mmorpg world.
And yes, MMO is not my genre .. but they seem to be dying to attract more players who are not core MMO players (more actiony gameplay, more soloability). So may be it is morphing into something that is no longer your genre.
2004 was 13 years ago. you speak to it like it was just a few years ago. time flies
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
It is just that either a) they are not MMOs (according to the diehards here), or b) they will be claimed as MMOs by the websites who need traffic and don't care about what is and is not one.
Name a single MMO that has a longterm trend of growth at this point. Also, even if you are measuring by the number of firms, how many MMOs have you seen released in the past couple years?
I'm sorry, but people saying this industry is doing just fine are clearly living in a state of denial. It is not. It's been slowly shriveling and dying for years now.
Now you can say "I think things are about to turn around because _________." and potentially have a point. But right now in 2017 the MMO market is in a clear tailspin.
As to the other interpretation of your question, what is causing them to die. Lack of innovation and the fact people are fed up with grinding.
Twitter
But we do have one year. Heck, one is "long term" enough for me.
https://www.vg247.com/2016/05/05/activision-q1-destiny-has-nearly-30m-players-online-player-community-hits-55m/
and i quote "Destiny has nearly 30 million registered players. As previously reported in November 2015, the game had 25 million players. Activision said during the call to investors that each players has logged over 100 hours on average playing the online shooter."
So a growth of 5M players from 2015 to 2016 ... a 16% increase .. i would say that is pretty good.
https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/23/15680482/grand-theft-auto-5-sales-80-million
Oh course who cares if we are talking about MMOs on MMORPG.com anymore...
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
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Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/This is saying registered players went up by 5 million and that the have played an average of 100 hours but they did not say anything to the affect of: "They have played an average of 100 hours during the past year."
Deceptive data. I registered to play LOTRO years ago, and have most certainly put in over 100 hours of play into LOTRO.
So I am a registered player who has put in 100 hours. Of course I haven't touched LOTRO in over 5 years. By these standards all games are growing, because you never lose registered players.
Do you have any kind of average server population graph we can look at?
I personally think the overall number of mmorpg players in the world increased.
As for mmorpgs, it seems that the amount of shovelware has decreased dramatically and only key titles retain their population or grow right now. I hope this is a sign of maturity and an indication that only quality titles have a chance from now on.