Death of MMORPGs?

[Aztec Triogal]

As most gamers know, one of gaming's latest and greatest fad is the MMORPG. The genre began in 1997 with Ultima Online and exploded for the first time in '99 with Everquest and again in '04 with World of Warcraft. Because of its potentially lucrative setup, requiring an initial purchase and a monthly subscription fee, every company from Blizzard to Bioware has designed their own MMORPG. However, while World of Warcraft grosses $165 million per month, the majority of MMORPGs do not last longer than six months before being pulled offline. The overhead to develop these types of games is substantially larger than single player games and it has literally driven dozens of development studios into bankruptcy. So my question to you is... do you think MMORPGs have a future in gaming? Or do you think developers are tired of wasting time and resources on a project that will most likely fail?

 

[The Illusive Man]

well personally i feel mmorpgs are currently in steady decline and will probably begin to die off within the next few years....

having played mmo's myself for several years i feel i can answer this question quite well.

The main reasoning behind the mmo's steady decline is not the subscription fee, nor is it a drop in interest in the genre, but more of people are sick and tired of being lied to and putting up with a copy of a copy of a copy every single time a new mmo is released...

It seems too many companies are jumping on the MMO gravytrain yelling "me too" and not coming forth with orginal groundbreaking ideas, systems and concepts, there all based on the same rules and principles and are constantly being dumbed down to cater to a wider audience of players rather than the orignally intended "gamer " audience...

This has left a bitter taste in many of the seasoned gamers mouths who have either sworn off mmo gaming entirely, or they keep checking the next big thing with the blind hope, that this will be there new drug of choice....

unfortunatley more and more gamers are walking away from the scene and the audience they are branching out to (who were never really all that bothered in the first place) are just going back to what they were doing in the first place, usually down to boredom or fees not being worth the little time they play the game.

So to sum it all up, The MMO market has to undergo a drastic change im afraid and they way things are going, its death is assured.

 

[Scrutator]

MMORPG's will be around for a while yet if the lasting appeal (and still at this time huge userbase) of WoW is anything to go by. True there were others before it and I'd imagine that WoW will one day die as well but there will always be something afterwards that'll take its crown.

Blizzard just have a stranglehold on the market. Gamers who enjoy these games tend to not play more than one and most are comfortable with WoW so why would they make a move to something else?

Basically with the level of success that WoW has then there will always be someone who'll try to emulate that for themselves but really Blizzard atm are sort of in an unbeatable position so I suppose there might be little point making one unless you have a popular license to it. But nevertheless MMORPG's are here to stay one way or another.

 

[oOTidusOo]

as long as WoW still runs, mmorpg's wont die..and with ff11 online, deffo not.
im not into WoW but i hear its pretty good, and got alot of active players still.
some time in the near future there will be a MMORPG that will bring back the mmorpg, i can see it coming lol.

 

[Sir Kenneth]

MMORPG's definitely have a future in gaming. MMORPG's only properly broke into the main stream of gaming a couple of years ago with the release of World of Warcraft, so I believe we've only just seen the tip of the iceberg.

It's just a hard market to break at the moment because of Blizzard's success in the field. Whenever another development studio/publisher puts out an MMO, the vast majority of their target audience is already playing World of Warcraft. Because all these people are always on the lookout for the next big thing, chances are that there's going to be a lot of initial exciment when the game is released. Problem is that most MMO's tend to be flawed upon release, which makes people scurry back to what they know best: World of Warcraft.

Eventually the curve is going to break for Blizzard though, and when that happens, I'm sure that the next big thing will come along.

 

[Valkyrur]

I'm not so sure, but I guess it'll last. Trends changes, and what may not be well-accepted now will definitely be accepted at one point in the future, under the right circumstances.

But for now, I personally dislike MMORPGs somehow. Used to play Runescape, CABAL and some others, but considering my friends quit rather early, I followed. Playing alone just isn't fun, and since most of the people I meet online have never won my complete trust, I guess I quit most of the time out of pure loneliness.

As to market references, I guess I'm in no position to cite any values, since I don't really know, but looking at the fact the super-duper high definition MMORPG Runescape still runs, I guess it does have some sort of future.