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Mike Morhaime Talks About The Declining Popularity Of MMOs
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Mike Morhaime Talks About The Declining Popularity Of MMOs
In an interview at the GamesBeat Summit 2020, former Blizzard President and co-founder Mike Morhaime spoke to New York Times reporter Seth Schiesel about his career. During the chat, Morhaime touched on World of Warcraft and the declining popularity of the MMO genre in general.
Comments
I would give you a guest pass to SWOTR, but then I wouldn't be able to find a way to live with myself afterwards....
If battle royals are so popular put in a battle royal into the game as a battle ground/arena that people can sign up by putting up money (winner takes the pool) and let players have 2 minutes before the battle starts to place in-game money on (bet pays a % of the total depends on how much you put up).
Either get rid of the level cap and have it skills increase after using them, questing for an npc to teach you a better (skill increase) and other ways. Or you can have a high level cap with each level taking twice or more to level then the previous (EQ hell levels).
We need a living environment, live invasions, main scenario quest that if they fail have a city wiped out, now a new tent city pops up somewhere to make quest to take the city back or rebuild. This all comes down to a living environment.
I had hope for VR to bring MMOs to the next level but with wonky movement controls I do not see that happening. So what else are we left with.... to me this would be a living world that changes and no class system. I would rather see no classes and 1000's of different skills that one can grab if they have the pre-req, than items that are so over the top its insane. Why at level 60 I do 2000 damage and now at level 120 I can do 1 mil damage that to much of a jump.
meh just my ramblings.
10,000,000 people log In to play 100 different games. DECLINE OF AN INDUSTRY!
12 million folks attended the Travis Scott concert in Fortnight. Honestly that game is going no where, it's still just as popular, if not more than ever. MMOs just appeal to a different generation. People either outgrew the genera, and moved on with life, or play old games, or went to play MOBAs. MMOs don't bring too many new folks in anymore.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52410647
Bullshit it's a ghost town. Either you're intentionally logging into an area that's not used much or you're logging in at some obscure time and crying "dead" .
My best guess is that the next big thing that comes about is not going to have a cash shop or micro-transactions or any of the various nickel and dime bullshit that dominates the market now.
The first developer that returns the spirit of the MMO genre back to their game, and actually expands on ( not simply copying ) what is already the basis of the genre with new and actually innovative gameplay, will be the next WOW.
If only their greed wasn't so blinding, we'd already be there by now.
It's ironic but WoW was the best and worst thing that happened to MMORPGs.
Here's the summary translation...
"We made the first mega-hit MMORPG then instead of investing in even bigger MMO projects with the billions in cash we made we hired 200k useless employees, gave ourselves huge bonuses and let the entire genre die all while watching our competition fight over our leftover scraps like dogs. I'd do it all over again cause I'm sitting in my cushy study still receiving my payout payments while other developers far more talented are living in studio apartments, hah".
The victor gets to write the history books as we witnessed in this interview but the upside to WoW's reign of destruction is that they didn't completely annihilate the competition and those that remain are doing a pretty damn good job of holding down the fort. The true MMORPG's that remain have come to terms with reality for the most part and accepted that they will probably never make bags of cash but continue on anyway. Don Amechi I think said in a movie once "A big man knows the value of a small coin" and all the MMO's that have stuck to the original MMO ideas and concepts are the true champions of the genre not this profiteer and the rest of his kind.
WTF are you talking about. Every time I log in its packed, not to mention the two guilds I'm in shows dozens and dozens of active players 24x7. Stop with the fake news, it's bad enough I see it on Fox.
There Is Always Hope!
We're never going to get to a point where 10 million people are playing a single MMO again. At least, I don't think we should anyway.
If every game studio stops trying to make the best game ever for everyone and instead focuses on the core aspects that built the genre, then i'll be happy.
Stop aiming for 2009 numbers and instead aim for 1999, and slowly build on a strong foundation.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
As long as WoW, ESO, and FFXIV are around I don't think the genre will ever really die. I mean you can clearly see the influence of Standard MMORPG on popular games (Division, Destiny, RDO, GTAO, Warframe, etc) right now. So for it to be dead, it would mean that there is none of that anywhere, no influence, no games.. nothing. That's dead to me. Those 3 main MMOs would have to shut down to even start the process of it fully dying.
I think most of us agree with that.
But!
I keep seeing this "we are waiting for the next big thing" conversation
I want to touch on that here. I don't think there is a Next Big Thing for MMORPGs because MMORPGs don't offer anything novel anymore.
When I was a teenager in the early 2000s it was novel to play online games with people from other countries. It was mindblowing even. I think the first MMORPG I played was Runescape and I quickly wanted more of it, I moved to EQ, Anarchy Online, and Star Wars Galaxies before finally jumping into WoW. That was a different time socially. We didn't even have WiFi it was all dial-up! No social media.. nothing. Just email, message boards, search engines, and MMOs. haha, It was really amazing in 2001 to load into a world with other people from all over the world. MMOs had that entire online interaction experience to itself.
That's done now. You don't need to be in an MMORPG to interact online with people. Everything is so connected you can literally press a button and have breakfast, lunch, or dinner with someone in Korea and London at the same time while streaming a GoT marathon. All of you watching the same exact scenes. Being connected is not novel anymore. Massive worlds are not novel anymore either... I think almost all recent single-player RPG games proved that. The Witcher 3, Skyrim, and Red Dead 2 come to mind immediately.
Today I have a 9 and 12-year-old. They have access to the world in their pockets. They were born with it so to them it's not novel to play online with other people. It's normal. I don't think they even own any offline games. Both play Fortnite. Minecraft. Warframe. Destiny and Division. I've tried to get the 12-year-old to play ESO, he has zero interest in it. He is excited about Cyberpunk2077 though. All of their friends play the same types of games. They had a whole virtual party for The Travis Scott event (popular rapper/cool event btw) on Fortnight and they really had a blast. I watched them. They were making moments for themselves. The way I see it, this is their childhood, not mine. It reminded me of when my friends and I used to hook up multiple XB and have LAN parties playing Halo. LOL everyone would tote their TV's to my house on bikes.. smh this was Before the Xbox Live days. Kids on Bikes! You hardly see that anymore.
Okay nostalgia aside, for us slightly older folk (and I'm not as old as some of you here) but for us to bitch about getting our childhood back is unfair in many ways to the new generation. Let them have their things, as we already had our time. We cant expect MMORPGs to come back or have some "Next Big Thing" eureka moment. Things don't work like that. They only evolve. As I've said so many times around here, the genre has already evolved past that time not only that but so did the rest of the world.
People have just moved on and that's okay.
Nobody is saying you can't have those style games because they are out there, they just aren't as popular as they once were and probably never will be again. Mainly because they are set up to be time sinks and that is against everything this generation is about.
So you can have your emulators and your "Classics" just don't expect the WORLD to subscribe to it. People will check it out but retention will be low as we saw with Blizzards WoW classic project. Less than a year and people are complaining about empty zones and requesting features that are in the Retail Version lol... So yea the novelty wore off quickly I'd say. It was a commercial success though and that's all that matters to Blizzard. It doesn't prove that The MMORPG of Yore is making a comeback.
I promise you It's not.
Fortnite has 250 Million people playing... ( holy shit. )
Minecraft has 112 Million...
Warframe has 50 Million...
League of Legends has 33 Million...
FFXIV has 18 Million...
ESO has 15 Million...
WoW at its peak had 12 Million.. 12 million. let that sink in.
That 12 seems like nothing next to the games of this generation. The shining staple of the MMORPG genre.. the King of the Genre.. never reached the popularity that these games have. Not even close. It felt big because at the time it kinda was, but if WoW came out today instead of the time it did, also consider it wouldn't be one of the first MMOs but A NEW one based on a very OLD RTS game...take away the ADVANTAGE of baby's first internet experiences.. it would have fewer numbers than ESO. Less than 6 Million. There are just too many options now.
It would still be a success I think, just not a large one. A more moderate success because AGAIN there are people who LOVE that style of game. Mostly older people, but still they are out there.
As I say often, most of the developers today are in my age group. Millennials who grew up with dial-up MMORPGs but we also are young enough to hang with the young people who grew up on iPhone games. We get all of it and we are trying to cater to all as much as possible but the reality is, the market is always going to lean towards what the kids want because they are the driving factor even more so today with YouTube reviews and such on what games are successful or not.
MMORPGs are not coming back and I say this a lot... find some joy in the new/current things out there or go watch a movie. Bitchin about bringing back that era isn't going to bring it back. It's not for lack of trying either.. every time some developer tries to bring that style back it never works. How come you "Old School" people arent playing f2p Legends of Aria? That exactly what you guys always ask for, it's a UO style game with more features, and it's free but the game is struggling..it only has 200-300 people playing.
There is no next big thing for MMORPGs. That's okay. It was a fun ride, the games are niche again and fans of the genre should be happy about that because maybe you get some innovation out of that which could make for some cool games. NO need to chase Fortnite, the popularity may never get there and that's a result of time, technology, and society changes but the idea that it's going back niche may be the best thing that's happened to the MMORPG in a long time.
"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.