Look I know there is a place for MMO’s …MMORPG’s on the other hand I worry about.
Every year it seems that RP is going down in Quality. Every new MMORPG has less and less done for the RP community and with each new game the quality of that community decreases.
It scares me that eventually we will get to a point where the RPer is not even recognized.
Look I have limited money …I don’t have the cash to pay for two subs…I am just honestly saying that the ONLY reason I did not pay is because I could not afford it and instead used accounts from WoW Players who played it and youtube videos and from what I have seen/heard I am basing my assumptions off it.
It’s not, at all, and insisting that it is while simultaneously admitting you don’t actually have any first-hand experience with it is dishonest at best.
Going out of your way to specifically search out “Goldshire equivalent” videos from FFXIV and claiming they’re representative of the whole RP scene in that game makes as much sense as literally linking WoW Goldshire videos and claiming that all WoW RP is exactly like that.
What we do know is that WoW’s subscriptions plummeted drastically mid-WoD, and that Blizzard have very deliberately avoided releasing any information about the game’s player count since.
Every single estimate since has been either guesswork or wishful thinking.
You mean the entirely unofficial census deriving an “active” player count from how many people they’ve seen with a particular mount?
That census also reports a worldwide total of a mere 1.58 million characters in January, despite the fact that the game passed 14 million registered accounts in 2018. Going back to November shows the census reporting 13.5 million worldwide characters, but somehow there were “0 active characters” in that specific month only.
That census is wildly inconsistent and inaccurate, and that’s being polite.
You can’t “guarantee” any such thing, especially when the most trusted — but equally unofficial — WoW census indicates there are well under two million active WoW players, with only around 30-40% of that total actually available to play with in the distinct, separate US region.
Your right I do no have first hand experience but I did the next best thing. I asked people on my server who DID have it and then used video evidence to support or refute their claim.
(@Op) Care to elaborate on how ff14 and eso do nothing to foster healthy rpg community’s?
You are saying warcraft does foster a healthy rpg community? Please with examples tell us how warcraft does foster a healthy rpg community? From where im sitting im having trouble seeing the exsistence of any community in warcraft. Not to mention ff14 and eso are actually fun to play and the devs listen to their gaming community.
Dedicated rp servers: The most obvious is that WoW has dedicated rp servers. This allows people new to the game but have RPed before a easy way to find and meet other Rpers. Likewise Blizzard has special rules for these servers such as naming rules.
Accommodating RPers: Blizzard has ALWAYS taken extra steps to accommodate the RP community. The first example of this is the fact that RP servers are NEVER sharded unless; You are in war mode (even then your a grouped with other rp servers), Server stablity is at a risk, or you are in the current content zones. Blizzard did this because they know sharding can affect Rper’s ability to get together.
Another example is the elixir of Tongues. You see while fixing a security flaw Blizzard accidentally broke an addon that allowed cross faction communication. This really affected Rpers ability to form RPVP events. Rather that doing nothing Blizzard introduced the Elixir of Tongues that would allow the drinker to understand the other faction.
Making RP lore Canon: Blizzard has done a lot in making RP lore Canon. Two examples would be the Draenei ghosts practicing Jed’hin in Mac’aree (Jed’hin was originally created on the Rp servers) and naming an empty inn in Ironforge after the name an Rp guild used for it.
I admit that when I wrote those I was still half asleep. Let me explain better.
Those are all examples of Single Player RPGs. For an single player RPG success is measured the immersion factor for example Skyrim.
For MMORPGs Immersion is great but it all depends on what the community does with it. A game can be immersive but if they do not foster a healthy rp community then all that immersion is wasted.
Let us take for example Ultima Online. Ultima Online was an early MMORPG that was build around the fact that the players could literally affect the world with their actions. However when released the Players literally broke the world forcing the devs to patch it and remove a lot of the immersive features.
I agree other games are outmatched by wow. But I think if wow were to die (or degrade enough that I felt a decision needed to be made) I would be more likely to play more hearthstone and D&D than another mmo.
I came to wow because it was improved EQ. I won’t leave it for lesser wow. I will leave it for improved wow, or something else entirely.
MMORPGs are already pretty much ‘dead’ aside from smaller projects, honestly. They’re too expensive to make, cost too much to maintain, and don’t make as much as cheaper games - why do you think Blizzard are branching out into mobile?
They had their time, but unless someone figures out how to make them without spending a fortune, there probably won’t be many new ones for a while, with or without WoW. It’s just too costly for a little indie team to make a game of WoW’s scale, let alone with the same level of lore and detail.
LOTRO has a pretty healthy RP’ing community, they’re also incredibly friendly and helpful. Lot’s of player-driven events in towns, tons of cosmetic gear (and actual instruments you can play…no dancing on mailboxes for coin), a very well fleshed-out crafting community with a player driven economy and HOUSING. Honest to goodness, beautifully done housing.
They have holiday events just like WoW does that are a lot of fun as well.
Plus, you get to play in the SHIRE. C’Mon, it’s the daggone SHIRE!
There is still the “RP” element out there but I’m not sure if the demographic is made up of “old-style RPG’rs” (older players) or if the younger generation really cares to RP. They were never really introduced into the RP elements of video games the way we older players were.
Is there still hope? I really, honestly don’t know.
No its not. ESO surpassed WoW mid-Legion. 10 years after Blizzard killed Hardmodes because “they were too difficult to design” ESO is bringing them in during Elsweyr. On top of that, Final Fantasy keeps getting better with every patch (Blue Mage unique class design). The only MMO regressing right now is WoW, and it is purely due to the Devs stubbornness to not listen to its community. They pat us on the head condescending (Warmode) or tell us too bad (Titanforging) 10x more than admitting their own mistakes. It will come back to haunt them. Probably already is.
Believe it or not, old school runescape has actually gotten a little bit more popular the last time I checked.
I almost laughed and said wow I wonder if people quit BFA to go back to runescape lol.
I remembered when I once took Blizzard’s playful antics as jolly old sport giving us a good ribbing.
Now it just reads as that one friend who does mean-humor and thinks he’s being cute when the whole room is staring daggers at them and they think they’re being hilarious