147841-noticing-less-and-less-people-page-2

Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

Content
{| style="width: 100%;"

Again, no one is being told to be silent. And one of the worse thing about all of this is, if we do try to combat these types of thread titles by making threads that bring the issue up in a less provocative/doomy way, they get locked, deleted, or combined with WTF we're trying to combat because "There's already a thread about this, so we're going to lock this up/combine it with the other one."

Edited December 13, 2015 by beattlebilly


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

No it's not. You're just looking for a reason.


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

An uninformed and ignorant statement if I've ever heard of one. GW2 population takes a dump all over this games population and it is for the most part focused on PvP. GW2 and ESO have over 1k people watching or streaming on twitch...............WS has 13. Yup.........thirteen (peaked at 16 today).


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

we already did see the next evolution. Let's see: - from 2010 action MMOs started becoming a thing. They didn't even exist before that. - subscription model is going out of fashion. One could argue is it bad or good, but it's certainly a change in the industry. - in the last 2 years crowd funding MMO projects became a thing. Once again one could argue is it good or bad. - sandbox or at least part sandbox is sort of coming back. Said sandbox MMOs tend to be driven by players building and PvP. It might not be a very obvious change, as it's nothing that just took over and changed the way that MMOs look (the way that WoW did), but 2005-2010 for MMOs looked very different to 2010-2015.


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

The problem is that "just fine" isn't/wasn't enough. SWTOR, Star Trek Online, Wildstar, Elder Scrolls Online, etc, did not pan out to the developers or publishers initial expectations. They all fell well below their projections. Something like SWTOR needed to have WoW like numbers or at least a few million subs rather in order to continue the game the way they initially planned however the player base dropped off so quickly that they were forced to make multiple staff cuts to the point where the game was operated by a skeleton crew who was left with a difficult and expensive engine to develop for who were expected to constantly update a cinematic story driven MMO. Now realize that just about every MMO out there is in the same situation in that nearly all of them are manned by skeleton crews who can't produce content at the rate that it's expected. Also realize that the solution isn't to dump more money into the MMO either. Many people will often time say "Man if X MMO just did a full on expansion pack (similar to WoW) that would fix all the problems and bring in way more subs." but that isn't the case at all. The truth is such a thing would really only satisfy the audience that's already there. No expansion for an MMO (that isn't WoW) is going to pull in a million plus subs to any MMO at this point. Most people made up their mind about X MMO back when it originally came out and nothing is going to change that. Sure there are some people that will go back to an MMO due to a major update however not enough to change the tides of the game or state of the genre. And you can ask "what's the solution?" all you want but if you actually step back and take a look at the history of MMOs or the state of the genre it's fairly obvious what's happening and that there ultimately isn't a solution. I know that seems very negative, but it's the truth. It's an inevitability for certain games/genres. For instance look at Fighting games and/or Adventure games. For awhile they were all the rage but in the late 90s and early 2000s they weren't nearly what they once were. Neither genre went away completely however both kinda had to be in the state they were in order for things like Street Fighter 4 (Fighting Games) and Kickstarter/Broken Age (Adventure Games) to breath new life into those genres.

MMOs are not an evolving beast or genre at this point. Things like MOBAs and Team Based Shooters are now, ie the things that kind of took the place of MMOs. After WoW came out everybody tried their hand at an MMO because WoW was making like a billion a year from just subs however that situation only panned out for WoW. Then a few years later League of Legends hit big and it was the same thing all over again. You suddenly started every company putting MOBAs into production and doing licensed MOBAs just like they did with MMOs but just like with MMOs only an actual few were successful, and the rest were either shut down (like the DC one) or canceled, like the Microsoft one. Just like every MMO Microsoft put into production go figure. Now everybody is doing team based shooters in the vein of Team Fortress 2 which is kind of odd given how old that game is, ie for that genre to start blowing up now seems strange given that there's no single recent success that people can point to. MMOs aren't evolving because nobody is making MMOs anymore, or rather if you're wondering what the next evolution of MMOs are, it was MOBAs, and now it's team based shooters. As I said earlier you're not going to see MMOs anymore on the scope and scale of WoW, SWTOR, etc, ie what it traditionally thought of as an MMO now because they're ultimately not worth it to do anymore. At most you'll see more stuff like Marvel Heroes, but even that doesn't seem to be the case. "An online game with RPG elements that's possibly free to play with built in microtransactions." <- A brief broad description of what MMOs are currently. Now realize the exact same definition can apply to MOBAs, Mobile Games, etc, and that's basically what the MMO genre or market specifically evolved into.

The market changed, not the genre. Is X MMO having you do "Kill 10 of those & Collect 5 of these" quests? If so it's not changing or evolving. MMOs themselves are still all fundamentally the same. WoW was (sadly) the last big watershed moment for MMOs. For instance lets say everything from Ultima Online up to WoW was the 1.0 of MMOs and that WoW was 2.0. We've yet to see what 3.0 is, however it's unlikely we'll see that sort of thing in the next 5 to 7 years if at all when it comes to giant open world(s) with lots of quests and lots of players all running around together. Everquest Next certainly had some ideas about how to push some things forward or do things a little differently. Then again so does every MMO when it's only talk and not a game yet. It's unlikely that EQN would've been that 3.0 moment anyways, or be anything special when or if it actually ever is released.


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

Look at...all those MMO's player numbers dropping off over time. And no, PVP could not have saved Wildstar, just as it can't save any MMO. You say how not everyone likes MOBAs and Shooters and that people like the idea of having a big world to run around in. This is true, but you can't expect a strong PVP element to turn a profit on a $100 million open world online RPG. You think low population looks bad, try having all that millions of dollars worth of PVE content not being played in favor of PVP. That looks bad, especially to publishers, shareholders, etc, and makes them wonder why they bothered to spend money on the PVE part of the game and it also means that going forward they won't put more money into PVE content knowing that everybody is just playing PVP. Ultimately though PVP isn't where the money is at when it comes to MMOs. Pretty much every MMO out there is now F2P and full of various microtransactions however the microtransactions in MMOs are generally vanity items or things geared towards PVE content as that's what the majority of people who play MMOs tend to focus on. Rarely do MMOs offer anything via microtransactions that appeals to those just interested in PVP so if that's the case why would a developer ever try and focus on PVP to "save" their game if there's really no money to be made there? The PVP audience aren't the "wallet warriors" or "whales" dropping a bunch of money into MMOs. There is no "saving" any MMO at this point. The entire genre is in a place where it's basically just settled into a groove. There is no uptick in the situation. That's what people don't seem to realize. People want to hold out hope that the MMO they've been waiting for is going to come a long and change everything for them. That's part of the reason why so many MMO players jump from MMO to MMO, but then people don't even see the problem there, ie that it's only existing MMO players jumping from MMO to MMO. The genre isn't in a state of growth and that's no something that can change. Nobody seemed to notice that SWTOR, GW2, STO, ESO, and WoW all announced expansions within the year 2015. Wildstar and ESO both went F2P in 2015. Of those 5 expansions announced 4 came out this year. Almost all of them within a month from one another. Note that this is not a good thing. What all that shows is that not just one game but pretty much all the best known MMOs out there were/are desperate for attention. They all basically panicked at the same time. Again not a good thing. That means/shows/proves that there's a problem with the overall genre as a whole, and not a specific MMO.


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

I don't believe that its the MMO genre dying, it's just that we have so many freaking MMO's to choose from now. All the players that played the few MMO's back in the day are now in different games. As an MMO community, we're just too spread out due to ALL OF THE MMO'S currently out.

Edited December 16, 2015 by Killance


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

Wish there was more people like you that actually understood how game development and companies work.


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

Yep, like space fighter simulation. Hmm, what?


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

I can say myself i've played SO MANY MMO's while taking breaks from WoW. Surprisingly enough though FF14 ARR is keeping me hooked.


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

Happy Winterfest. Have some facts. You're welcome.


 * }
 * }