I agree with you all that No King rules forever but must there always be one?
For the longest time the biggest argument against people leaving WoW was “There is nowhere else to go” and WoW didn’t really have competition and I believe that is part of the reason for the drop of content. I mean we actually have an example of how how a lack of competition an negatively affect a game in EA and their Madden Franchise. And now that FFXIV has arrived it may be too late.
Speaking of FFXIV I am already seeing how the crown is affecting it. The fact they are putting putting streamers above their normal playerbase will cause issues in the long run.
I personally believed there should be no king and the crown should remain lost and forgotten lest another MMORPG falls to its curse.
Then there should not be a clear ruler. Rather it should be two or more smaller games each able to quickly take the top position and lose it just as quickly.
I’ve pondered on this one. Agreeing with you at first, but I can’t see SW/Alliance being without King or instead a Queen. It’s part of who they are. Like Org/Horde was nomadic and eventually a council. Makes sense…kinda like Britain and the USA Lolol
The problem is that if you join the competition later - you see the 1 guy with the 2 lap lead and in most cases…everyone (investors) expect you to lose.
Those investors you DO get - are going to pressure you to get in the race as the kings lead becomes greater and greater.
WoW is in my opinion one of the worst things to happen to MMO’s as it choked out funding and population for so many games - it prevented communities from forming; they resulted in MMO’s being pushed more by hype and less by progress.
No MMO is going to get it perfect at launch - that includes WoW - when it launched it was missing a lot of what it has today and it became what it was overtime because it was the new game in town. WoW was a good game at launch - but it wasn’t the king.
The problem was…if you have 2 “good” games - which are you going to play? The one you are progressing through and have friends on? Or the new game where your going to have to start over? Answer is usually to stay - resulting in the other game never having justification to get better and improve…so they wither and die unless they have mountains of money (FF).
So “Stream Sniping” to FFXIV can be simply questing in the same area a streamer is.
If both games are near equal then they will both have a devoting following and “Fair Weather fans” who will jump from one game to another depending on which is is popular at a time.
It should be a system of “Praise for one is motivation for the other”.
I disagree - the pool of MMO players is a finite amount - those players for the new game need to come from somewhere is the point - your new game needs to compete with a entrenched position - something WoW has become very good at defending as they have the majority of the player base and staggering content releases and appeasement of the player base to counter other game launches. The issue is also that its costly to put a game in development for 20 years - which is essentially what WoW benefits from.
But all that is going to do is repeat the cycle. FFXIV will take WoWs place and then fall to some other newcomming probally faster than WoW did becuase lets be honest WoW had the advantage of starting in the Golden age of MMORPGs
and actually that system can work as it as for the Survival RPGS… DayZ, ARK, Conan Exiles, SCUM, Minecraft. All these communities still exist and are still getting updates.
WoW was bad for the cycle because of the fact that it was so successful - it essentially consolidated most the population of players in its game and kept them there. No MMO will last forever - by the simple virtue of entropy - companies will change leadership and eventually start making bad choices - the fact WoW has been so successful for so long is because it had a good start - then it really hyper focused on remaining relevant; but they built the castle on shifting sand and other stuff - HR and Narrative and client care have all eroded to the point where not FF 14 is beginning to eat their lunch - which is also not ideal.
The concept of a single MMO raking in millions of dollars a month in subs is insane - just from the notion of the server infrastructure you need to support that volume (and a issue FF 14 is now inheriting) and frankly in a actual diverse market should never happen - but because WoW ate 95+% of the MMO customer base for so long - it caused many projects to wither and die or just outright panic. It also gave rise to F2P models because they knew they could not compete with WoW for paying subscribers.
Then what is the point of playing MMORPGs to begin with. We all might be better off heading to the survival RPG genre as it seems to be healthier overall.
With all games - when it stops being enjoyable - your supposed to stop it and seek a new vice. MMORPGs are games where your essentially never really losing progress and always playing in multiplayer and if you are lucky the world is constantly expanding and growing.
(RIP Asherons Call)
As for survival RPGs - eventually many communities there overcome the filter - at which point they slowly stop playing because their day to day subsistence in the game is easily met and they have essentially done it all. Even games that use procedural generation eventually become dull because you learn their tricks - how many times have you started a server only to have some guy with diamonds in the first hour in minecraft?
Part of this is - MMORPGs are devoid of discovery because of the free-flow of information and a general lack of effort to obscure it. Though I admit I have no clue how that would even be done these days. Even if you try to avoid the information - your peers will make it a requirement of progression…which will generally force you to read up in order to catch up. I miss the days of interesting questing and some things just took a lot of time to do.
Here is another reason why there should be so single MMORPG that rules for so long
When you have only one community everyone will go to it including the toxic individual and the thing about toxicity it is very contagious. And now all that toxicity is being dumped on FFXIV.
Square Enix is pragmatic. Asmongold has a huge following and can pull a lot of people into their game. It absolutely makes sense for them, strategically, to ensure he has a good time.
Also, I don’t really think FFXIV has the crown yet. Just looking at the top streamers on twitch right now, 50% of the viewers of FFXIV are simply watching their favorite World of Warcraft streamers try the game, and it is far too early to say they’re now FFXIV streamers.
FF 14 is just the only other well-known property. Its not a bad game - but it is also very popular. When the leader of the cheer squad got that sore on her lip; you started dating her hot friend.
Those aren’t the only 2 girls in the world; just the ones everyone knows. This is pretty much the issue with WoW’s domination of the MMORPG conversation for so long - 99% if the exposure is for that game and people forget or never hear about the scores of other games out there.
