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#1
03-19-2025, 10:43 AM
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How could a new MMO thrive?
I’m out of the loop on new MMOs, but to me it seems that the combination of development strategies and player meta would make it impossible for any new MMO to thrive.
Every MMO RPG has a sect of players that rush through the content in a few days. Hundreds of hours of gameplay experienced in a week. Seemingly this is a larger population than it was 20-25 years ago during the golden age of MMOs. I’ve also noticed that players don’t usually stick around, even if they aren’t speed running the game- because they return to a game that was made 20 years ago they enjoy playing more. (Everyone’s got a forever game, and WoW seems to hold the crown for most people's forever game). Its almost like we all collectively prefer how games were developed 20 years ago. To me, it seems like there’s no way you can keep a large, active player base when there’s a decent chunk that just won't stick around whether it's because they speed run the MMO, or they prefer another MMO. Who's got some.numhers for me to show subscriber amounts over the last several years for MMOs | ||
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#3
03-19-2025, 11:59 AM
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I continue to be amazed to this day at the depth of content and immersive environment that Everquest has. To your point most games are captivating for days or weeks, rarely a game is captivating for months, EQ is the only game I've ever seen that is captivating for years. To the point where there is internal conflict of if you should engage knowing the time sink it will inevitably become (by choice/desire). With that said I never migrated to WoW, I walked away from intense gaming for a couple of decades after my first EQ live stint.
The flip side to that is that in order to achieve that level of depth a game almost inherintly has to be very unfriendly to new comers. Part of the beauty of EQ is that there is so much content in the game that requires deep exploration to discover (think back to how it was to experience things for the first time back in 1999, not the current gamestate where there is a veritable encyclopedia britannica worth of EQ specific info available). I know I have to consult the wiki multiple times per day to get information to make game play effecient, and that's 26 years later! Most things that you can achieve are not obvious or intuitive and are often learned through shared knowledge, not individual effort. The problem is there is so much competition for eyeballs and as time goes on people become more and more conditioned to instant gratification and shorter form content (shorter attention spans). These two forces compete as games that have a large barrier to entry are likely to turn off the vast majority of potential player bases. And games that require large time commitments, especially real-time gameplay where you can't hit a pause button is severly limiting the target audience. Put all that together and you realize that games like EQ have the largest investment in development and really only capture a neiche market. Highest cost for lowest return isn't a model that a for profit business finds ideal. Even the development of EQ itself was effectively cancelled multiple times and barely saw the light of day (see pantheon for a more modern version of the challenges of getting a game like this to market). One example I could think of is Diablo 4 (I only played the beta than found P99 while waiting for full release and never went back). I thought they did a great job of taking what historically has been a single player game and adding in sprinkles of MMO content like world bosses and the ability to interact with players in the world, however, you have to balance that as for little gain you now eliminate any ability to play the game offline. GTA V is probably a good example too where a historically single player game now has a robust community of content creators that have put together online roleplaying servers that have transformed the game world into new and exciting content. It seems the future is really focused around a low barrier to entry, hybrid type of game play that pulls in elements from the MMO legends of the past while focusing on a more casual and expanded player base. I also have always thought that offer the ability for users to create custom content is one of the simplest things a developer can do to give their game a lot more legs. Blizzard did a great job with this early on in the warcraft and starcraft series where a fairly limited single player scenario based gameplay expanded into so much more with custom maps and online competition. And that's all from the perspective of a PC gamer which is a dying artform in itself. More and more everything is being developed for mobile as younger and younger generations may live in a world of never having/needing a PC. | ||
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#4
03-22-2025, 11:34 AM
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Quote:
In an age of TikTok and Fortnite, finding people who want to slog hours of fairly slow combat is a tough one. I find running through zones rather relaxing but maybe EQ just broke my soul over 25 years… | |||
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#7
03-19-2025, 02:30 PM
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#9
03-19-2025, 01:33 PM
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this, it needs a tech breakthrough like VR that doesn't make you motion sick to recreate the cultural phenomenon that was EQ and WoW early on.
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#10
03-19-2025, 07:58 PM
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Quote:
New "modern" MMOs can be fun for about a month, old MMOs have their die hard fan bases, new ones trying to capture that old school magic find a microcosm of a niche market and then fade away. Or in pantheons case, be dead on arrival due to a 1:1 blood:cocaine level
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< Knights Who Say Ni >
Qeynos questing and leveling (all quests nerfed) | Off the beaten path 24-40. | |||
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