There is never going to be another giant MMORPG

“Look guys, there’s this great new MMO coming out! Its gonna be the one to end WoW this time!”
It feels as though this is said everytime a MMO gets announced or enters development. Everyone hypes this up as the next big thing, we all go to it for a week, and then we very quickly forget about it. Maybe mention it a couple of times in some random news article about how the developers severely overestimated the potential to enter a market which has already set it’s big players in stone.
This repeats, and repeats, and repeats, and repeats, and repeats, and repeats, Korega requiem da, etc.
Here’s why there is never going to be another new big MMO.

  1. The world has fundamentally changed since MMO’s first became a thing. Part of what made MMO’s so popular back in the early 2000’s and 2010’s is that they were also a social network, a place where you could hang out. Now, that element is gone and the gaming landscape has moved on from that. What many new MMO’s do though, much to their mistake, is attempt to foster those social interactions not realizing that that element is no longer in play. In small scales it works, but its basically only in RP communities.
  2. Developers severely underestimating the undertaking of an MMO. Trying to create an open world MMO to rival WoW or FFXIV is not easy, and it requires a lot of time, effort, and money. What many developers fail to understand though is that you can’t just put in an open field with a couple of boars running around and expect the playerbase to care enough to play the game. They also don’t seem to understand what difficulties are faced when you also have to work on balancing, side systems, and more, when compared to other genres. MMO’s are big, and developers have yet to fully learn from the mistakes of overambitious MMO’s which flopped.
  3. Lack of individuality and style. Modern MMO’s suffer from this the most, where they go for the photo-realistic imagery that has become common in other games. What they fail to understand however is that just making the game look “pretty” doesn’t give it style, as evident by FFXIV which was able to strike that balance in it’s visuals. Afterall, who would want to play a game that looks just like any other game, or something which was used as an unreal engine demo a few years ago.
  4. Modern MMO’s fill most niches. Simply put, thisi s the real problem. With the wave of MMO’s that were made, the ones that stuck around are highly varied in gameplay, artistic direction, and story-wise. SWTOR fills the story niche, FFXIV fills the anime niche, WoW fills the fantasy niche, there is something for everyone in the genre already.
  5. As a continuation of the fourth point, they also fail to advertise to communities outside of the already established MMO communities. Established MMO players are always going to be looking at the next game, sure, but those players do not bring longevity to a game. Modern MMO’s being created have simply failed to advertise and appeal themselves to wider audiences. Why should a regular consumer who has no idea what a WoW is care about the game which advertises itself and promotes itself as a WoW killer?

I feel this sums up all the problems nicely. There is just never going to be a new big MMO, and I can’t wait to say “I told you so” to the next MMO to be released.

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Kay.
/10char

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I feel like I’ve seen those points repeated so many times by now… Nothing new to see here.

I think you’re wrong though, the Riot MMO is gonna be really big imo.

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There will be. Its just hard to predict when we’ll see it.

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The funny thing is, I feel like it will do good for the exact reason of them advertising the game to LoL players and encouraging them to try it out.
Its that overlap which will let it be successful, if it does end up successful.

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I know you are attempting to make a point. And you do offer valid critiques. However, I would wager that anyone in the game development market, especially any AAA developer, knows significantly more about the industry, market and player bases than can be summed up in your post.

I counter propose this argument. The only real reason, it is highly unlikely that another AAA MMO will succeed, is because of money. The investment vs reward is far less than most other games. The success of mobile games and other games like LoL and fortnite, offer much more profit.

Passionate game creators are in the crowd funding market. AAA companies arent interested. And most crowd funded games stall out, as they cant reign in their vision to produce a shippable game/run out of money. There are a couple with potential, Ashes of Creation for example. But we are still a few years out from that. The Riot MMO, most likely wont be in alpha for 4 to 5 years. And New World is going to release this summer… and most likely end up the way of Archage, Black Desert, Wildstar, SWoTR, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Rift, Tera, Aion to name a few.

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I mean that’s basically how WoW got popular.

I think if any MMO has the capacity to rival WoW, it’s gunna be Riots. They’ve just got the perfect storm of widespread appeal in both worldbuilding and company appeal, especially in the Chinese markets.

Especially since the team for Riots MMO is basically former Blizzard employees, with it being headed up by Ghostcrawler.

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Riot has done one thing right leading into the mmo genre by creating a world with chars amd story before releasing the mmo. Much like wc3

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We’re nOt In AzErOTh AnYmORe

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Ghostcrawler’s whole career has been focused on pvp (Age of Empires, WoW, and LoL). I got to imagine if he’s building an MMO it’s going to be pvp focused (which would make sense given the LoL brand).

PvP has been something the genre has really struggled with so I’m excited to see what they do. But I’m skeptical we’re going to get an in-depth PvE-centric world.

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Riot have expanded pretty significantly into the PvE territory with the “Dungeon Run” mode being a very popular addition to their card game and Ruined King slated to be released sometime this year and a platformer (based on Ekko) in the works as well.

More info needs to be released since it’s still literal years away, but my gut feeling is that they’ve set up wayyyy too many stories in the universe for it the MMO to address them in any other way but PvE orientated.

Like they’ve got a card game, an autobattler, a MOBA (arguably 2 if you count Wild Rift as a separate game) and soon a fighting game where you slug it out as the heroes.

My gut feeling is that the MMO will be looking to scale down some of those conflicts. You’re not gunna be duking it out as the Aspect of War vs a Demon who wants to murder the whole world to begin with, you’re gunna be a scrub Noxian collecting boar asses for the glory of Noxus.

They’ve done so much world building and a lot of it is revolving around unity against common threats like the Void, Darkin, Demons, Mordekaiser or the Shadow Isles for it to be dealt with any other way than in big raids.

Though it makes you wonder how factions are gunna work in the game.

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I think everyone (including WoW players) are waiting for the next great MMO. Doesn’t seem like anything has really compared to WoW as of yet.

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I wouldn’t play another MMORPG to be honest. I’d play both an MMO and an RPG but probably two separate games if not WoW.

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I honestly would never call FF14 open world. A lot of connected zones yeah, but its like moving thru tunnels.

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If one came out that could balance factions id swap in a heartbeat.

WoW has gotten progressively worse and Alliance as a faction is WAY underpowered. Both in terms of racials, playerbase and storylines.

WoWs biggest failure is to build a storyline around Alliance vs Horde while making one side pissweak and the other OP for basically all of the 15 years the games been around.

It’s just bad game design by the devs.

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Well no not as far as anyone can see.

But if the gaming world is one thing its unpredictable.

Gems like Undertale or Five Nights at Freddys comes along and shakes the pillar, perhaps someone will one day shake the mmorpg pillar.

I will merely quote Yoda.

“Impossible to predict the future is.”

There’s never going to be a WoW killer but FFXIV and ESO are the leading MMOs right now in this era. Their player base is huge and happy as well.

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I’m sorry but what? Have you ever played FFXIV? The story of FFXIV is AMAZING. Sure SWTOR’s class storylines were amazing too, but their story telling after launch fell off rather quickly.

But regardless, how are we defining giant? Because depending on how you define giant severall MMOs could easily be called giants.

I dunno, I was never interested in League of Legends.

Ashes of Creation on the other hand, if it ends up being good, has potential to be absolutely massive.

Edit: Although sadly, Ashes is still a year out from launch at least.

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there will never be another themepark MMO.

sandboxes will live on.

Themeparks are afterall relative newcommers. Eve online turns 18 this year by the way.

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