IGN: WoW drops to 5.6 mil subscriptions.What happens to the GENRE when the end comes?

[TeknoBug]

I'm tired of fantasy MMO's, Guild Wars 2 was the last one I bothered with although my guild from SWG migrated to ArcheAge and I checked that out and was disgusted by it. I think space MMO's are catching on and so are modern sci-fi MMO's like Destiny with more similar games to come.

Everquest 1 & 2 are still active IIRC, Blizzard has a lot of money, enough to keep WoW alive for a long time to come and 5.6 million is still a lot, not a lot of MMO games holds that much over a decade.

 

[Sonikku]

That we can get real MMORPGs again?
WoW completely dumbed down and destroyed the MMORPG genre....
If there is one game I could remove from gaming history, it would be WoW.

Damn whipper snappers and their 2-3 hour mmo grinds. You should be investing 16 hours a day MINIMUM to make any kind of progress you lazy ass brats! *shakes cane*

 

[bystander36]

Damn whipper snappers and their 2-3 hour mmo grinds. You should be investing 16 hours a day MINIMUM to make any kind of progress you lazy ass brats! *shakes cane*

Time isn't the issue, it is grouping and challenge that lacks in most today's MMO's. If you are playing solo, or in a computer created group which you do not have to speak to succeed in, there is no social aspect to the game anymore. Without the social aspect of an MMO, they are really crappy games.

 

[SMOGZINN]

What WOW, and MMORPG's in general, bring to the table that other games have had a hard time replicating is the social aspect of gaming. This is not really new BTW, MUDS were highly social games long before the graphic MMORPGs like Everquest or WoW.

That is what has kept WoW running all these years, why it became the largest and nearly impossible to supplant, leader of the MMORPGs. It is the same reason no Facebook competitors are really able to get a foothold in the market. Because everyone you want to socialize with is already on it.

The social aspect of gaming is what the player base of MMORPG's are going to still be looking for. We want to share our virtual worlds with our friends, we want virtual hubs to gather and meet people on our terms. We want a new way of being social. Whatever game or platform can successfully capture that will become the new king. WoW came really close, but ultimately failed.

 

[Sonikku]

WoW had a good direction until WotLK (2nd expansion). At that point, they started putting extremely casual friendly features that had a side effect of killing off what made MMO's great.

Wrath was awesome. Before Wrath, Warriors were far and away the best tank "for reasons". There was no balance at all. Remember any Tankadins? Pallies might as well have been given a second healing tree like Priests for all the good it was. For that matter if your class could heal, you DID heal. The other trees were trash. And Warriors speced for Fury outfitted in raid gear were like Rogues in plate, completely obliterating the hybrid dps Shadows and Rets and the like were doing.

The raid utility was so overboard that by TBC you had Paladins standing outside sunwell buffing everyone between wipes because the raid still needed their buffs, but needed room for boat loads of Shammies for their blood lust. What people played was dictated by the raid utility quota more than their preference in play style, and that utility quota was sky high. Wrath actually let to run with your friends, as opposed to "That guy who's a douche that unfortunately has the buff my raid needs".

 

[bystander36]

Wrath was awesome. Before Wrath, Warriors were far and away the best tank "for reasons". There was no balance at all. Remember any Tankadins? Pallies might as well have been given a second healing tree like Priests for all the good it was. For that matter if your class could heal, you DID heal. The other trees were trash. And Warriors speced for Fury outfitted in raid gear were like Rogues in plate, completely obliterating the hybrid dps Shadows and Rets and the like were doing.

The raid utility was so overboard that by TBC you had Paladins standing outside sunwell buffing everyone between wipes because the raid still needed their buffs, but needed room for boat loads of Shammies for their blood lust. What people played was dictated by the raid utility quota more than their preference in play style, and that utility quota was sky high. Wrath actually let to run with your friends, as opposed to "That guy who's a douche that unfortunately has the buff my raid needs".

You are only thinking of balance issues, which mostly didn't matter except for raiding, as everything else was made so easy, almost anything could tank.

I am talking about the whole purpose of an MMO. MMO's are social games at their core, and WotLK was when they started killing the social aspect of the game for new characters and especially new people to the game. Balance issues will always exist as long as classes are different.

WotLK started the downward spiral of killing off important social constructs in MMO's.

Examples:
1) Forming groups used to require a social interaction by talking to people. They also made your ability to play an important aspect as well, as people will remember if you suck or not. Taking away the need to form groups takes away a lot of social interaction needed to make friends in these games.
2) Cross server queues for groups made it where even if you managed to find someone you enjoyed grouping with, you couldn't talk to them again, because they were on another server.
3) In cross server RvR, you no longer had grudge matches, as no one ever showed up enough to remember.
4) Making almost everything so solo friendly, no one had a reason to group up before raiding any longer.
5) Making the elite dungeons so easy that any random group could complete easily, again made it so you no longer had to create core groups of friends to allow you to progress through them.

The only social aspect left is raiding and raiding is quite time consuming, so that leaves a lot of people out of that world. While I've done that a few times, it takes time to get geared up to be able to raid, which most people won't stick around for, due to the lack of social interaction up to that point.

 

[ewdotson]

Time isn't the issue, it is grouping and challenge that lacks in most today's MMO's. If you are playing solo, or in a computer created group which you do not have to speak to succeed in, there is no social aspect to the game anymore. Without the social aspect of an MMO, they are really crappy games.

I think that time does matter for a lot of people. My group of gaming friends started back in UO. We migrated to Crossroads of Norrath for EQ, then to our own board. We pretty much all played WoW. Our guild name during Wrath and Cata was "Recidivism". Nearly all of us are married with children at this point. We'll get excited about the occasional MMO since it's pretty much how we started. A bunch of us re-upped for WoD. None of us stuck. We just ... got old.

That said, I completely agree with you about the cross-server queues that you mentioned in your other post. I remember with a great deal of fondness the period where LFG was a thing but it was server-specific. There was a genuine LFG community at the time, at least on my server. You got to know people, and there'd be moments of "oh, awesome, it's my-favorite-LFG-tank". These days, people don't even bother to refer to other players by their names rather than their classes. I'm not sure that replacing my average LFG group members with bots wouldn't actually *improve* the sociability of the groups. I think it's really unfortunate.

 

[CPA]

The game is finally dying out. I think it has 2 expansions left in it before it goes free to play. It's about time. Hopefully something new and innovative arrives because WoW has been dull and uninspired for a long while now. The only good thing left in the game is raiding, everything else is awful.

Blizzard as a whole is no longer the incredible game dev they once were. They're just trying to keep churning out cash from the game as long as they can. The corporate side of the company knows the game is on its way out and they are trying to milk it for what they can before it goes legacy. I think the genre its self is failing and that something new needs to happen.

The meta of what an MMO is has to be changed by something new. The traditional approach every company is taking, the one WoW has, is stale and boring at this point.

With Hearthstone, HoTS and StarCraft II, they're no longer an incredible game dev? If not incredible, still very credible.

 

[bystander36]

I think that time does matter for a lot of people. My group of gaming friends started back in UO. We migrated to Crossroads of Norrath for EQ, then to our own board. We pretty much all played WoW. Our guild name during Wrath and Cata was "Recidivism". Nearly all of us are married with children at this point. We'll get excited about the occasional MMO since it's pretty much how we started. A bunch of us re-upped for WoD. None of us stuck. We just ... got old.

That said, I completely agree with you about the cross-server queues that you mentioned in your other post. I remember with a great deal of fondness the period where LFG was a thing but it was server-specific. There was a genuine LFG community at the time, at least on my server. You got to know people, and there'd be moments of "oh, awesome, it's my-favorite-LFG-tank". These days, people don't even bother to refer to other players by their names rather than their classes. I'm not sure that replacing my average LFG group members with bots wouldn't actually *improve* the sociability of the groups. I think it's really unfortunate.

I don't disagree with you that time can be an issue for people. I was talking about the general problems of most MMO's is not time, but other stuff.

I also think that if you can't play for at least 1-2 hours at a time, that an MMO is probably a poor choice of game. MMO's are not good solo games, and you need a little time for it to work as a group game, as people have to coordinate.

 

[ewdotson]

Oh, sure. I'm definitely not suggesting that this is a WoW-specific problem. I do think that a lot of the original playerbase for these sorts of games has pretty much aged out of them. And I'm not sure there's anything the games can do about that. However, I'm also not sure that was a good way for them to attract and keep more of the younger crowd over genres like MOBAs. It seems like a disproportionate number of the gamers I meet tell me some variation of "oh, sure. I used to play WoW. These days I'm all about LoL though." It might just be the turning of the wheel, so to speak. (Which is not, of course, to say that I expect MMOs to disappear any time soon. Or WoW itself, for that matter. I can't imagine they aren't still quite profitable. I just think we may see WoW start to dial things back within the next few years and I'm not sure I see another game reaching the heights that WoW reached any time soon.)

Of course, this is all wild speculation on my part, not backed up by anything more than anecdote.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

In a perfect world:

- Fewer new MMOs would try to be all things to all players in a desperate attempt to live up to WoW's numbers. It would be a good thing if games narrowed their focus.
- More MMOs would be willing to accept "is it profitable" as the metric to be judged by rather than "does it make so much money we can use $100 bills as toilet paper"?

In practice, I'm guessing it'll just mean more WoW clones until the genre goes the way of RTSs.

This is what I am hoping will happen, that gaming companies will, instead of all of them trying to create hyper-accessible ones, that more will take a middle ground - include SOME accessibility features, but stop forgoing including things that require a little effort/skill/teamwork just because some of them will turn away a few players. That they'll do this knowing they'll still make a profit, even if it's not going to achieve 20 million subs.

And also for them to start taking a stand against boxing and the third party programs that facilitate it, as nothing removes teamwork more than being able to control your own 42 character army. Though I'm sort of skewed by EverQuest in that regard; for all I know most other MMOs might not have this issue.

DX12 has multiple new features. Just like every DX release had. I suppose you are referring to the most anticipated feature, which is that DX12 will allow engine-developers to program "much closer to the metal" ?

That helps in only one situation. That is when you have a relatively slow CPU coupled with a relatively fast GPU.

Example: any AMD cpu, or an Intel i3 cpu, with a top-end GPU, like a gtx980(ti) or AMD R9 Fury. Or when you do have a top-end CPU, but you have 2 or 3 high-end videocards in SLI or CF. In those cases, DX12 will help. For the gamers who have a i[57]-[2345]xxx CPU and a fast videocard, not much will change.

Of course there will be exceptions. I believe that RTS games with lots and lots of units on screen might benefit more than other games. Yes, maybe MMOs might benefit too, but I doubt it. Also, implementing this feature in DX12 means you have to completely redesign the main skeleton of your renderer. And you need to readjust your renderer every time a new family of GPUs is released. Big engines, like Unreal, CryEngine, FrostBite, Blizzard's engine, Unity, etc, will certainly implement the improvements. And I expect high-tech engines by smaller companires will do it too (like those of the Metro games, of CDPR of the Witcher, etc). But lots of games will not programming the bare metal. Don't expect DX12 in the new Fallout, or in the next Elder Scroll game. Bethesda will just not bother.

I know it has a definite potential for RTS, but I do think a lot of people might have weaker CPUs, and while you wouldn't necessarily want thousands of players in the same area in an MMO/RPG, you'd still want a good size number, and I figured it could help.

 

[Anubis]

as much as some of you hate WoW for "ruining MMOs" you do realize that without WoW making MMORPGs popular they would probably not even exist at this point

EQ/EQ2 never had and would not have the popularity of WoW, DAOC was basically dead, FF14 had limited appeal and SWG never took off

 

[ewdotson]

This is what I am hoping will happen, that gaming companies will, instead of all of them trying to create hyper-accessible ones, that more will take a middle ground - include SOME accessibility features, but stop forgoing including things that require a little effort/skill/teamwork just because some of them will turn away a few players. That they'll do this knowing they'll still make a profit, even if it's not going to achieve 20 million subs.

I don't mean just that really. I think that making an MMO that's a de facto solo game is just fine. There're clearly a lot of people who like that. So I'd be delighted to see someone try to make the best danged de facto solo MMO they can. Don't waste time making complex, involved raids. Don't waste time trying to provide a quality pvp experience. Make a really good solo game. Heck, include remorts for people who really enjoy leveling characters. And screw class balance, because it's de facto solo game.

Alternately, how about a game that truly caters to pvp players? There have been a few that have tried (Shadowbane, for example), but they've tended to do a pretty crappy job of it. There's always that push and pull between pve and pvp in games that try to do it both.

Or how about another sandbox game like UO and SWG? MMOs don't *have* to be DIKU MUD clones.

Or yes, a group-focused game that required real teamwork to progress through some quality pve content.

You get the idea, I'm sure.

 

[ewdotson]

as much as some of you hate WoW for "ruining MMOs" you do realize that without WoW making MMORPGs popular they would probably not even exist at this point

EQ/EQ2 never had and would not have the popularity of WoW, DAOC was basically dead, FF14 had limited appeal and SWG never took off

I think they'd certainly still exist - they simply wouldn't be nearly as mainstream. Back when EQ was the 900-lb gorilla of the industry, people were amazed at their 400k subscribers. It only looks trivial in comparison to what WoW achieved. I don't think there's any question that it was very, very profitable and something that other studios would look to emulate.

 

[bystander36]

as much as some of you hate WoW for "ruining MMOs" you do realize that without WoW making MMORPGs popular they would probably not even exist at this point

EQ/EQ2 never had and would not have the popularity of WoW, DAOC was basically dead, FF14 had limited appeal and SWG never took off

Prior to WoW, MMO's had a following, that was smaller, but still quite dedicated. People moved from one to the next if it was good. EQ2 was doing just fine before WoW, and still is going now.

I would bet MMO's would be more like many of us wish they were had WoW not come around and changed the game. They took a group necessary genre, with built in social qualities, and made it more accessible to the masses. Unfortunately for many of us who played MMO's prior to WoW, or even in Vanilla and Burning Crusades, we saw the genre move away from group necessary, tightly social games, into a solo friendly genre that has a much harder time retaining their players.

 

[Sonikku]

Time isn't the issue, it is grouping and challenge that lacks in most today's MMO's. If you are playing solo, or in a computer created group which you do not have to speak to succeed in, there is no social aspect to the game anymore. Without the social aspect of an MMO, they are really crappy games.

Then stop playing entry level content? Can you drop mythic level archimonde without speaking to your teammates?

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

I don't mean just that really. I think that making an MMO that's a de facto solo game is just fine. There're clearly a lot of people who like that. So I'd be delighted to see someone try to make the best danged de facto solo MMO they can. Don't waste time making complex, involved raids. Don't waste time trying to provide a quality pvp experience. Make a really good solo game. Heck, include remorts for people who really enjoy leveling characters. And screw class balance, because it's de facto solo game.

Alternately, how about a game that truly caters to pvp players? There have been a few that have tried (Shadowbane, for example), but they've tended to do a pretty crappy job of it. There's always that push and pull between pve and pvp in games that try to do it both.

Or how about another sandbox game like UO and SWG? MMOs don't *have* to be DIKU MUD clones.

Or yes, a group-focused game that required real teamwork to progress through some quality pve content.

You get the idea, I'm sure.

As far as PvP, there's Crowfall in a few years, we'll see how that goes.

On the solo thing, imagine if Star Wars the Old Republic had been billed that way? Tone down all the raids they did and just bill it as a solo game but that you can help friends too, and meet up at cantinas and such.

 

[ewdotson]

Prior to WoW, MMO's had a following, that was smaller, but still quite dedicated. People moved from one to the next if it was good. EQ2 was doing just fine before WoW, and still is going now.

EQ2 came out less than three weeks before WoW, so I'm not so sure how meaningful of a statement that is. Particularly given that they were in public beta concurrently.

 

[bystander36]

Then stop playing entry level content? Can you drop mythic level archimonde without speaking to your teammates?

How much time does it take to get to that point? How is an MMO supposed to gain new members if it takes a few months to get to the point that the social aspects of the game matter. I also mentioned that social interaction should matter for more than raiding.

 

[bystander36]

EQ2 came out less than three weeks before WoW, so I'm not so sure how meaningful of a statement that is. Particularly given that they were in public beta concurrently.

I was thinking more about before it exploded in size. EQ2 had a good following for a couple expansions.

 

[poofyhairguy]

If there is one game I could remove from gaming history, it would be WoW.

I have never agreed with a statement on this forum more. Imagine a world without WoW!

-MMORPGs are more fragmented and varied, as people try to find the right formula
-All those Asian people don't spend a chunk of their life grinding virtual Wow gold
-No one knows who Leeroy Jenkins is or cares that they don't know
-Gamergate maybe doesn't turn into such a crapfest without Wow bringing more women into mainstream gaming
-Maybe Xbox and Playstation Online are both free because there is not this business model of people paying a monthly fee to just CONNECT like in the dial up days
-I actually played through the Final Fantasy games after 10 because they were proper JRPGs instead of Wow-ripoff abortions (MAYBE Everquest still ruins 11 and 12 but 13 would have been back to roots)

What I would give for such a world.

 

[Sonikku]

How much time does it take to get to that point? How is an MMO supposed to gain new members if it takes a few months to get to the point that the social aspects of the game matter. I also mentioned that social interaction should matter for more than raiding.

Everyone in the thread seems to be singing the praises of Everquest and "The good old" MMO days. But if a couple months seems like a daunting task, I suspect those titles would have chewed you up and spat you out. If you want day 1 mass interaction your options include joining a guild and running content with your guildies and friends. Hell, the recruit a friend route will burn you through the questing content in no time while simultaneously giving you someone to interact with every step of the way.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

I have never agreed with a statement on this forum more. Imagine a world without WoW!

-MMORPGs are more fragmented and varied, as people try to find the right formula
-All those Asian people don't spend a chunk of their life grinding virtual Wow gold
-No one knows who Leeroy Jenkins is or cares that they don't know
-Gamergate maybe doesn't turn into such a crapfest without Wow bringing more women into mainstream gaming
-Maybe Xbox and Playstation Online are both free because there is not this business model of people paying a monthly fee to just CONNECT like in the dial up days
-I actually played through the Final Fantasy games after 10 because they were proper JRPGs instead of Wow-ripoff abortions (MAYBE Everquest still ruins 11 and 12 but 13 would have been back to roots)

What I would give for such a world.

How was FF12 influenced by WoW? I didn't play any other FF after 10 yet so can only ask about 12 -

 

[SunnyD]

5.6 million * $15/month = $84 million per month.

I'm pretty sure Blizzard isn't too worried.

 

[bystander36]

Everyone in the thread seems to be singing the praises of Everquest and "The good old" MMO days. But if a couple months seems like a daunting task, I suspect those titles would have chewed you up and spat you out. If you want day 1 mass interaction your options include joining a guild and running content with your guildies and friends. Hell, the recruit a friend route will burn you through the questing content in no time while simultaneously giving you someone to interact with every step of the way.

I played all the games mentioned. EQ was daunting, but it was a social, group game from the get go. You had fun the whole time, from day 1 to the end. It was also not designed around the idea of get to level X, then raid. It was designed with the idea of having a fun challenging time the whole time you play.

The problem with your assertion, is you assume people will know that if they spend the time, it will eventually become fun. Most people won't stick around to find out. They want their fun, their social group interactions from the start. If the game doesn't show that it will provide that, then they will leave. I'm not even sure they know that the social, or group aspects is what makes an MMO fun, and single player MMO's aren't very fun, so you do the math.

And not everyone wants to raid, yet still want the social interaction, and challenge of smaller scale group dungeon crawls. The last I played WoW, the group dungeon crawl experience was streamlined into something not challenging, social or fun at all.

Note: I did belong to our servers top raiding guild, though I rarely raided with them once they were the top raiding guild, as I wasn't interested in the time commitment anymore.