Current Events > Why do you think the MMO genre failed?

(+) Yeah! (+)

poll
---

it did?
---

Microtransactions happened
---

WoW took the formula about as far as the traditional mmo genre can go

personally i think that once the novelty of being in a virtual world and making friends with people on the internet wore off for most people, the mmo genre died out. you get that same social experience with a lot less of the time/skill investement

---

everyone tried to copy WoW and the "level to cap, do raid for gear to do harder raid to get better gear" format is trash

I think a lot of elements of MMOs have made their way into other genres. Games as a service is the MMO-ization of AAA titles
---

Subscription services have a natural individual limit, especially so time-dependent ones.
MMOs aren't dead. MMOs that aren't WoW are dead.

Modern MMORPGs are trash because they lack a sense of adventure. Getting to the level cap in just a few days, following the exact same trail of fetch quests everyone else did, just to sit in dungeon queues all day. It was the only way to get the casual audience interested in the genre but still isn't enough to keep them playing.

How has it failed? I don't play any but it seems like there's still some successful ones out there

---

picked the second option in the poll since I think there's a fair bit of truth there. For years, WoW was basically synonymous with MMO, and I think they were just too big and too popular for anything else to really fit in the market regardless of what it was. I've basically never played MMOs so I'm not gonna try and make any actual quality judgements but the player numbers for WoW were consistently way higher than everything else. And now that they're dying off too, there's nothing to fill the space since nothing had room to really exist before that.

But I also agree a lot with this:
Antifar posted...

I think a lot of elements of MMOs have made their way into other genres

As other games adopt many of the features of MMOs, people who were only there for certain parts of the MMO experience that can now be found elsewhere have less incentive to stick around.

Edit: I also would not say the MMO genre "failed". It had a very good run with some big wellknown games and pushed an absolutely new form of gaming that didn't really exist elsewhere into becoming more generally popular. Numbers may be dwindling now but the genre by no means "failed"
---

It turns what is supposed to be fun into a job.

Listen to the people who play them. When it starts, they talk about it being fun and how they GOT to explore this, that and the other...

A month or more later and the language changes. "I gotta do my dailies." or "I need to farm ____ in ____." It quickly goes from being a joy to a percieved obligation. They stop having fun and it still takes them a decent bit of time to realize it.

I wouldn't say that WoW was just too good for other MMOs to break out. I think so much of the playerbase had just dedicated so much time to it that moving to a new game and starting over again just wasn't appealing.

Most of the playerbase in WoW isn't new players. It's people that have sunk years into it. They might try a new MMO when it comes out, but none of them really want to sink that time into a completely new game that might not even make it a year.

---

Other: The social element is not as unique anymore.

With the gamification of Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/etc, social media is the new MMO
---

I voted for risky investment . It's just not worth it in today's market when they can make as much money with a AAA single player game like Assassin's Creed Odessey and repeat that like once a year or every other year

Not really a failure when there are multiple popular MMOs atm.
---

HasaDiga posted...

It turns what is supposed to be fun into a job.

Listen to the people who play them. When it starts, they talk about it being fun and how they GOT to explore this, that and the other...

A month or more later and the language changes. "I gotta do my dailies." or "I need to farm ____ in ____." It quickly goes from being a joy to a percieved obligation. They stop having fun and it still takes them a decent bit of time to realize it.

This reminds me of a post I read a long time ago from someone who wanted to join a guild. The guild had an actual "job interview" with him, including someone quizzing him in a foreign language. They also gave him specific times he HAD to be online for the guild or else he would be booted.

Definitely sounds like a job.
---

Excessive microtransactions rotted away the core of the genre, meanwhile MOBAs became the new fad genre (nowadays it's whatever genre Overwatch/Fortnite/etc is)
---

People have less time and want instant gratification. Kids these days want to jump in and play, and if they die, get straight back into a new game (CoD, Fortnite etc etc).

Personally I like a slow, long, tedious grindy game, and I am fucking LOVING WoW Classic.
---