MMORPG’s first really saw a huge influx of development and players during the release of Blizzards titanic game World of Warcraft but, why is it more than a decade later, the market seems to be shrinking?
I like most invested countless hours into these games and there was a point when this genre was unstoppable. Developers saw an opportunity to cash in on the hype which saw the rise of many titles such as:
• Guild wars 2
• Star Wars: The Old Republic
• TERA
• Final fantasy XIV: A realm reborn
As someone who spent his childhood invested in games such as Runescape, World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The old republic, I’ve noticed that players grew increasingly frustrated at changes in the games. The Introduction of ideas such as the EOC in Runescape and the LFR in World of Warcraft have been seen with a mostly negative view, many players complain that the identity of the game itself has changed.
Why Has The MMO Genre Seen A Huge Decline?
The decline could be due to the following reasons:
- Rise of the MOBA – The rise of the MOBA genre was at the same time as the decline of the MMO genre. As of 2014 the game League of Legends boasted a massive 67 million players each month, this in itself eclipses the height of World of Warcrafts peak of 12 million.
- Lack of investment – this can be seen by Activision Blizzard itself. The free to play Hearthstone is hugely popular and rakes in more profits than WoW. Investors can see the same or larger returns on investment for lower production games.
- Its always the same – For me personally every MMORPG after WoW has just been a reskin with slightly different gameplay mechanics. This was very evident with Star Wars: The Old Republic. It seemed that a lot of developers took the safe road with lack of innovation however this failed.
- Just not fun anymore – This might be the main reason?
Personally I would to see another rise in this genre have the most potential and I would love to see new innovations that would capture that fresh feeling that I first had as a child.
Regards,
Xontor
All images are owned by Activision Blizzard
I'm a huge fan of SWtoR, played it from the beginning to the chapters end for three times. Hope they'll have another update soon:)
I was a huge SWTOR fan too but i only played it back at release, finishing the Sith warrior line. do you play any other MMOs?
LotR, WoW a few. I also was a sith warrior, all three times:) I just love the story A LOT:)
Yeah, the SWOTOR story was great. Only beat it with Jedi. Imp agent seemed best.
I played for sith warrior, liked the story most:)
I hear Galaxies was great. Wish another company would make a new star wars RPG or mmo.
If you guys want i could write a blog series on the life of different MMO's?
Perhaps it's just getting old now. It's also annoying to have someone yelling at you and cursing you in a random dungeon. It's just so obnoxious... MMORPG's have some of the most toxic communities. I honestly think the communities on WOW private servers are much better. I had a good experience on Excalibur, WOW burning crusade private server. GW2 also has a good community. ESO is not bad..
I have to agree on the toxicity. The Nostralrius private server for WoW was amazing. it really brought back a sense of community that helped each other. not tried ESO yet is that any good?
Yeah, my friend says Elysium is a great vanilla server. Thought about joining it. He says no one does dungeons. He said it's all about grouping and doing long chain q's. Thousands of players on...
ESO is good but not much player interaction outside of guild and random dungeon. It's like a mix of WOW and Skyrim. I think it's a good game but I still prefer single player Bethesda games like Skyrim or Morrowind. But you can try ESO for like less than 10$ish. Worth it!
Oh, btw, have you seen my warcrack illustrations? XD
LOOOL that's amazing mate. how have i not seen this before
I posted the Orc a few weeks ago but he didn't make much of an impact.