What does this say of the genre? With WoW being the top MMORPG yet people say it’s dying or dead?
Did mobile gaming kill PC gaming specifically MMORPG?
Is it the player base or how the game rewards you for not grouping up (mostly)?
I still enjoy the game but do see alot of posts saying the game is dead , bad balancing etc
What’s the Internet say?
I think the genre is dying.
MMOs were big for Gen X and older Millennials. The new generation of gamers want something else.
The genre’s popularity is definitely less than what it was.
I think it will take the next technological leap of something completely new to make it popular again.
The game is dying… but t4chnically it was dying the second it was born (as we all are). But its got a long ways to go. Its not then insane 12,000,000 of course…, but a healthy couple hundred thousand will support it for at least a few more years. I think we will see it hit 25 years which is an outrageous run.
They’ve been saying this for over 15 years.
I heard people back in the Burning Crusade say that WoW was dying because they hated the Isle of Quel’Danas. Then Death Knights proved WoW was dying because starting at a high level meant they couldn’t keep players playing and leveling. And so on and so on for every expansion.
Player count and new content usually goes down at the end of expansions. People are getting bored. Well, many people are getting bored.
Yep. MMO’s aren’t the exciting thing anymore. Not surprising.
~insert The Circle of Life song here~
Yeah, for a lot of us, MMOs and MUDs were our introduction to social online gaming. There really weren’t a lot of other options back then.
FF topped WoW back when WoW launched BFA.
It’s certainly not this. WoW has gotten more hardcore the last couple expacs and the casuals are leaving. The game being designed to cater to the min-maxers and the pushing towards e-sports are what are killing the game for me. 
first, I don’t think WoW is currently the best MMO. I think FFXIV is, overall.
Second, WoW’s height was SO ASTRONOMICALLY HIGH compared to the norms of the MMORPG genre, that even hemorrhaging players, it still keeps a massive playerbase.
the MMORPG genre is not dying, it just reverted back to its pre-WoW norm in terms of player count.
MMO developers failed to understand that WoW’s popularity was an anomaly. Pure lightning in a bottle. So their publishers started budgeting for and expecting WoW numbers from a genre in which WoW is the only game that has and will ever hit those numbers.
which is why so many MMOs after WoW have failed. Because they stopped trying to be MMOs and started trying to be WoW, which was never gonna happen.
I think gaming is going to be a console with Steam like account services. And the rest will die out like cassette tapes and records.
There’s a glaring solution to the generation divide that MMO developers deliberately fail to realize purely because of “tradition.”
No one - not even a good chunk of the older generation - wants to sink hours, if not days, of playtime to get to the “real” game.
It may be the “best MMO” in your opinion… not in mine, though. I wouldn’t even call it mediocre.
They’ve been saying that for 20 years. 
Personal opinion aside, WoW probably is the best MMO. FFXIV has it’s perks but WoW feels and plays like a new-age game whereas FF feels like you’re constantly underwater. Keep in mind, how a game plays has little to do with how “good” it looks.
Do we know for sure? Doubt it. But saying FF14 is the best MMO feels like a high stretch. It’s great all around but the only thing it does best is a story. And I’m not sorry to say, but that story is your typical JRPG story with decent JRPG plotlines. That means the “greatest” its story can be is in the anime realm, not the fantasy or fiction realm.
Fixed it for you. 
I can admit WoW isn’t the best. I can also admit FF14 isn’t the best despite actively playing both games.
I can also admit Blade & Soul, Black Desert Online, Age of Conan, and plenty others all feel like mistakes in their own way. The only MMO I’ve played thus far that feels like a good current gen game is WoW. And that’s with a 20 year old engine.
Is it the best? Meh. Does FF14 deserve to be on the same playing field? Depends on the categories and it really only has one to try to compete in. And that’s story, which just so happens to be aimed at the JRPG niche.
By what measure? Citation? Or just feelings?
Agree to disagree.
I mean, sorry, but it’s 2024 and WoW still looks like it never left the early 2000s. No player housing, no modern adjustments like sliders for height, muscles, chin, ears, etc., no color palettes for hair, fur, eyes, skin, etc., no dyeable armor, no decent 3D armor, you can’t even wear a hat without losing your hair, laughably few emotes, a catastrophic storyline (although admittedly that has nothing to do with time), until recently no AI dungeons, and even now they’re only limited to Dragonflight, and restrictions everywhere you look. So sorry, but WoW doesn’t make a good impression overall.