Wow is amongst a group of Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG). Over the years Wow has held up pretty well. While other games have come and gone or have barely survived and are loosing players by the thousands on a daily bases. Some have gone free to play others have just closed up shop.
There’s also the the Single player RPG games. But it seems like this type of game is slowly coming out of vogue. Apparently MOBILE GAMES have captured the attention of the worlds gamers. And general population. Maybe because they are fast easy games played on a handheld / phone device that people can take and play any where. Even though they are literally shameless exploitative cash grabs by the companies that produce them.
So what do you think? Are mmorpgs and RPGs in general going the way of the dinosaurs and the Mobile games raising in dominance? Is the future of gaming to be Mobile devices?
And a final question: Do you think Bliz will follow the market herd and Make a Wow Mobile Game?
The way of gaming has been mobile devices for quite some time now. So much so that pretty much all the AAA companies have gone the way of incorporating addicting and manipulative practices to earn themselves more money.
Unfortunately the way of gaming that we’ve known for a while with titles that we grew up with are long gone. Your best bet is to look for small indie and gaming companies that don’t have their entire development team bowing down to their stockholders at the cost of all the PR they’ve gained over the years.
I feel like there will always be a market for RPGs. Maybe it won’t be as large or profitable as the mobile gaming market, but I still think there are a large group of people who enjoy RPGs.
I am a bit biased though, because I love RPGs - so I certainly hope they don’t go extinct.
I think that (MMO)RPGs are probably at a disadvantage to mobile-style dopamine dispenser loot box sorts of games, but I don’t think they’re dying. At least, not due to any inherent properties of the genre.
Probably, the biggest problem is lack of quality games in that genre. They’re becoming increasingly rare, but the good ones pull serious numbers – just look at the immense popularity of Elden Ring, which isn’t just an RPG but a hardcore Souls-style RPG, which by all logic has even more niche appeal than “normal” RPGs but is topping charts anyway. Other somewhat recent immensely successful RPGs include Breath of the Wild, Read Dead Redemption II, and Witcher III.
MMORPGs specifically are kinda stuck up in a tree though, because they’re massive undertakings so every game company has played it safe by making a WoW-like, but cloning good old games isn’t how you make good new games.
The only true issue WoW suffers from is Blizzard’s ego in regards to how the story so easily loses both itself and the player, as well as how said Blizzard considers, “Good enough,” to unfortunately be, “Good enough.”
Both of my above posts answer to this one as well.
Blizzard ego is the single worst game design development paradigm.
That they can do no wrong by WoW is the literal problem in a nutshell.
There’s no, “Hey, this is good, how do we make it great?” Nor, “Wow, this is great! How do we make it even better?”
I didn’t see those threads, but anybody posting that was really dumb. No single player game is going to have the long-term pull of an MMORPG simply by way of the finite nature of single player games. Doesn’t matter how good they are, you’re eventually going to run out of game, and an MMO you’re already familiar with makes for a very appealing gap filler.
Yes, they are just GaaS now. Do a grind for leggo, but then buy a wow token with money for pay2win leggo base item? This is not an rpg, it’s a GaaS for people with too much time and money on their hands. It’s not for gamers.
For WoW the story is somewhat secondary to most players I think, and I say this as something of a minor lore nerd. WoW didn’t really nail an expansion-scoped narrative until WotLK, and yet Vanilla and TBC were still phenomenons in terms of popularity. The story in Vanilla and TBC was fragmented and in the case of the latter nonsensical.
This leads me to believe that WoW’s greatest woes have more to do with gameplay. No, I’m not suggesting to revert game design back to that of prior expansions or anything, but I do think it’s worth examining those versions of the game, figuring out what about them pulled people in so well, and finding a way to engineer that effect in the modern game. I don’t think they’ve made much of an effort to do this… the closest they’ve come is halfheartedly duct taping the wrong bits of “vanillaesque” design on and calling it a day.
RPG is too broad of a genre to disappear. It’s not like RTS or MMORPG. It’ll always be around, even if its popularity fluctuates.
MMORPG in particular? Yeah, its future is more questionable. It’s not dead yet. But it’s past its prime and I don’t see it turning around, despite Amazon and Riot dabbling in the genre recently.
Why can’t WoW be, story drives game play, said game play drives story, in a singly coherent narrative back and forth that both never loses the player, and always does its best to keep whatever they must do to advance the story fun, interactively rewarding, playable, and above all, always conveying context?
Because last I checked? The following is the secret to great MMORPG’s…
WoW: “Come for the game play, stay for the story!”
And that last part?
The lack of a single, coherent, context showing metastory?
Especially on narrative presentation?
Is entirely WHY so many sub’s were lost due to Shadowlands being so poorly conveyed as far as the story goes on the whole.
Shadowlands expansion. I took one look and thought pretty angelic npcs, but…Meh.
Time to try out these mobile games. So I did. Although some of these game are semi-fake mmo games. They are really single player corridor runs. Almost all have Automatic Battle.
That’s were you press a tab and your party runs through a dungeon corridor and fights and loots all on their own. you sit back and watch. Can be fun…but ho-hum after the 100th run.
The other part of the mobile games is that of the mini-transactions. When you first start the game you are winning, getting new characters, and free loot. that continues for a little while. You think: Oh I don’t need to spend any real money to play. But yes you will need money to play because within a short time you will hit a Pay Wall. You won’t be able to progress at all with out spending real cash. Welcome to the realm of diminishing returns. In the form of mini-transaction. Oh and when I say mini it is tongue in cheek.
Some of the transactions are like “special on this sword of power. Only $75 usd. Limited time only. 2 one day left.” It is at that time you realise you can not progress further without either buying this special sword with real world cash. Or Grinding for the next 9 months to continue to the next level. These games advertise that they are Free to Play. But only for a little while.
To be honest Id rather pay a sub for $15 usd per month. That is fair practice. The Mobile games are disreputable money robbers.
And yeah I have choice you say. Well I choose Wow.
RTS looks to be coming back. Age of Empires 4 just came out. A new Dune game is coming out in early access this year. There is a Company of Heros that is going to be a RTS and some Settlers game that is going to be a RTS as well.
I also know that Frost Giant Studios wants to make RTS games down the line.
I personally just wish that the story was fun, fit the game play, and would drive said game play, which in turn drives the story, back and forth, a truly fun and engaging, interactive and playable experience where not only am I having fun and rewarded for playing…
I can just go find my own fun.
One of the single biggest issues with Systems WoW of late is that Blizzard seems to think that grinds, time gates in all cases, and questing on rails is somehow, “Fun.”
The secret that made Vanilla WoW was that no one part of the game was truly cut off if one simply put the time in to gain access to hidden content.