My point is generally, most people looking to play an mmorpg are more or less looking to play a game long term with long term progression.
Really?
If that is the case, why do 80% of mmorpg players don't stick around a game for more than 30 days?
Because there hasn't been one out in over 10 years (With the exception of BDO, but it has a cash shop). However if you look at BDO it's plenty full.
That's because MMO players love cash shops even though they will never admit it in forums. It's somehow not cool, but cash shops don't exist because no one uses them.
Of course not. The Division is highly successful. The World of Tank is highly successful. Only traditional mmorpgs are being marginalized and being cancelled.
FF XIV ARR is doing better than ever. The game will last another 10+ years. MMO's are not dead or dying, your just playing the crappy ones lol.
The gameplay is too slow, and the engine performs terribly on PCs that aren't relatively high end (you'll be turning so much down, that it will look like EverQuest...). The gameplay is hampered by the fact that they want to make console players equal citizens.
All I can say to this is get a better PC. It takes a 660 GTX to run it at max. I am running it at ultra settings and im using an 870m, 8 gigs of ram, and an 8 core processor. About 900$ now for my set up and again, I can run the game at ULTRA PC, not laptop, DESKTOP settings ULTRA.
Which means my PC(laptop) is from 2013, the year FF XIV ARR launched. We also have dx11 too.
Let me guess, you got a TI card for productivity thinking it was a gaming card? I have seen people do this mistake because it saves them 100 or so dollars.
Combat is 2.5 and after 50 it's EVEN LOWER GCD. As a DRG, I never wait for cooldowns. Especially after the level 30 + mark.
And yo combat your console theory, no, they did not. I have it for PS4 and there is no difference in gameplay or lag. BUT, then again, I do have 300mbp internet and both are wired in. So there is no "hamper" in gameplay AT ALL unless your internet sucks and that can happen on PC too.
Hell, PS3 has a duel core and it runs the game at high settings(looks a million times better than EQ). PS4 at ultra and soon 4k.
Oh yeah, you can play in 4k at 60 fps on ultra with a 2014 rig with ease. My buddy is doing it with his 760gtx LOL.
So like I said before, mmo's are not dying, people just for some reason choose the crappy ones. IDK what else to say dude.
Why get a better PC when I can get a console for half the price, and that eliminates PC MMOs as an option.
You're completely missing the damn point...
People go console for economic reasons, not just technological reasons. And those decisions have an impact on the PC gaming market, believe it or not.
Telling people to get better PCs doesn't work, when they have $500 to spend but a better PC costs twice that. Not everyone wants to go through the trouble of sourcing parts and building their own PC (which has all sorts of inconveniences when something doesn't work properly).
PS4/XB1 are not at end of lifecycle. Not even close.
My Laptop is from late 2013. FFXIV runs terribly on it. I don't want to even argue about this. The game has high system requirements. It's why the wrapped mac version runs to poorly and has to be run at reduced resolution even on 1080p systems to get decent performance out of it.
This makes laptops horrible for gaming, unless you're absolutely splurging on one ($1k+) because you cannot even chase specs on them. A PS4/XB1 will play something like FFXIV on what is equivalent to above Standard Settings and you just never have to worry about the ongoing cost of desktop PC gaming and spec chasing.
That's a huge selling point, and why I've been moving my gaming away from PCs. The long term costs savings are massive in comparison.
I know a PC can game better than a console, but I am not willing to pay that price anymore. I use my PC for PC stuff, save money on the configuration, and just game on my cheap console that plays game relatively flawlessly at a fraction of the cost.
Also, I game on PCs with dedicated gaming equipment (Razer Tartarus, Anansi, Naga), so that adds to the cost. Can't play half these games with a vanilla mouse/keyboard unless you're a keyboard crawler that was forced to do that because you couldn't afford better equipment. I used Nostrumos and Logitech G## Keyboards before that.
Lastly, many of us have tried virtually everything that has come out over the years. We are just tired wasting our time and money with these games as at their core they're just more of the same. Another timesink with hardly any rewards that requires you to delude yourself into believe a virtual world somehow affects you IRL QoL.
Part of the issue with MMORPGs is that fun is contained is various bubbles. Leveling with a truckload of quests that give minuscule XP forcing you to be a completionist (i.e. ESO) is not fun. Taking an hour to go from Point A to Point B (i.e. Vanilla EQ) is not fun.
When people PLAY a GAME, they want it to be fun... NOW. They don't want fun to come in an hour when they finally get to point A. They don't want fun to come "after you gain some levels and have more options. This is why MMORPGs have moved in the direction that they did, because players don't want their time wasted.
This is an MMORPG forum with a very vocal minority so I don't expect much agreement.
Of course not. The Division is highly successful. The World of Tank is highly successful. Only traditional mmorpgs are being marginalized and being cancelled.
I would say it is well past the time for the "traditional" (WoW like) MMORPG to be marginalized and die off. So it is a good thing in my book. From the ashes, new games will have a chance to evolve from the stale old formula.
I am looking forward to games like Crowfall, Camelot Unchained, Gloria Victus, and even Star Citizen as they offer a different way forward from the WoW clones. I am cautiously optimistic that a few of these games will be very fun to play for lengthy amounts of time.
( Note to self-Don't say anything bad about Drizzt.)
Because all the so called mmo released in the last 10 years are the same crappy themepark wow clones brawlers without a soul, they are just like an empty shell with the same content over and over and a different skin.
Sandbox in my signature are something different from this rubbish mass or crap where sociality and fun will be something again.
Because game companies have no idea what they are doing.
I Prefer Subscription Based, I don't mind Cash Shop, but Games that could be great or decent like BDO are behind a pay-wall of either Pay 2 Win, or Pay 2 Enjoy making you have to spend hundreds of dollars just for cosmetics and such if you are going this route the only best game is GW2 that isn't like that and fairly decent cash shop wise, but there are other reasons I don't like GW2 such as limting cosmetcs to always have to use charges, No Timers on world bosses map, UI needs improvements things that should have been done but haven't yet.
Other than that WOW besides Dark Fall have really been the best MMO's I have really played unless you go like way way way back.
Familiarity breeds contempt. Inevitable result of a decade of experiences.
MMORPG themepark are bad game design. Marginalizing multiplayer aspects and widely copied content delivery has limited growth IMO.
Themepark design doesn't automatically mean marginalizing multiplayer aspects. If anything, true sandbox games like UO are way more solo friendly than games like WoW and clones.
No but it seems the natural refinement leads to it though. I am not really talking about combat though.
Gamers, especially some of the most experienced and familiar in the field of gaming will always find a product to entertain themselves (at least that's been the case for me) but produces won't always find the $ to make another product after failing their investors previously. Reputation plays a vital part in these game companies. Over the last past 5+ years quality of MMO's have deteriorated, but monetizing models has evolved (at least many have become more realistic and went more competitive by going F2P), which means I've benefited (thx to my vet experience) finding joy playing F2P games like DC Universe, Marvel Heroes and Path of Exile.
Money for me has never been a barrier, an issue to enjoy any product, but I see my $ as my only REAL vote for what I want to see come in future, which will also set the standard for the rest, sadly World of Warcraft instead of setting standard of QUALITY PvE + PvP in a single MMO, they set the standard for cloning with far less QUALITY.
I found joy again now in Path of Exile and at the end it comes down to players and setting themselves their own goals in specific MMO's. It's little bit of both players ability to find entertainment in products and producers making products easier for players to get themselves entertained with.
Quality of MMORPGs has not gone down, BTW. It's just that people react way more strongly to issues these days, and with the Internet being so widespread and people being so keyed into things, bad news is amplified.
Many of the older MMORPGs that people sing nostalgia ballads about had tons of issues, but back then we didn't spend half of our time checking internet forums or news sites. We were playing, and when we weren't playing, we had other things in our lives to worry about. Now, people are practically always connected on their smartphone and getting on the hour news from sites and forums with apps like Tapatalk etc. It literally can give you a push notification whenever any new "MMORPG" news pops up (thankfully, I turned that off).
In addition to that, the complexity of MMORPGs has gone up tremendously. While poor graphics used to be "okay" and developers could spend most of their time on things like spells/skills and more in-game content, that is no longer the case. The games are extremely heavy now. Bugs can crop up anywhere from exploits of mechanics, to bugs in zone geography, physics, etc. There is just so much that can go wrong with all the extra stuff they are throwing into these games.
But I don't think that makes them any worse than they've always been. MMORPGs have always been some of the buggiest games on the market with the benefit that the bugs get fixed in a decently fast fashion due to how they affect the players as opposed to single player games.
I think even many of the failed MMORPGs like Vanguard, Warhammer, Age of Conan, EQ2, etc. bought a lot to the genre.
The big issue with the genre isn't the games, it's the players. The market is different, so trying to blame the developers for chasing a carrot on a stick doesn't really work for me.
A really big risk with developing MMORPGs is that when you plan for development the market can look completely different than it will when you actually deliver the product. Many of these games are in development for 4-6 years. This is why even Blizzard canceled Project Titan.
People just like doom and gloom. Same reason journalists often focus on bad news and sensationalism; because it appeals to the masses. And an article like the one linked above is perfect clickbait for someone looking to make money off their little website.
If the genre was dying, MMOs would be shutting down left and right, not continuing to operate at a profit for the companies running them. Or do you think the studios running those are doing charity?
The population is so spread out these days because there's so many games to choose from. People have this idiot concept in mind that unless a game reaches WoW numbers, it's a failure. While even WoW doesn't have WoW numbers anymore.
A good deal of its players have moved onto other games. All those players haven't grown jaded and suddenly quit the genre, they just outgrew one game. They are still in the pool somewhere. Except for the tiny percentage that lives on this site, claiming the MMO genre has been dead for years now.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
It ain't "doom and gloom" to say that FC, NCSoft, SOE, and other MMO companies have either been sold, are looking for buyers, closed, or are no longer making MMORPGs.
Those are the facts.
Even "successful" companies like Blizzard and CCP have canned MMOs that were far along in development.
None of that speaks to a healthy industry.
(And I have personally seen it many times before in other industries: the whole sector is currently is in the midst of a draw-down / consolidation, where the weaker companies are being winnowed out. At the end, will be the survivors: the strong companies like Bliz, SE, and CCP that had the cash to survive the downturn, and the bottom feeders like Cryptic and now DBG that skate by on cheap product to make their numbers. All of those in the middle will be gone.)
EA and other large companies have been buying up other gaming studios for decades. So by that reasoning the entire gaming industry is doomed. As for CCP canning an MMO that was "far along in development"... I suggest you go read up on the articles about WoD. They'd barely done anything on it because they kept changing the concept and the features they wanted.
Blizzard seems to have been in the same boat with Titan. They kept scrapping their current concept and going back to the drawing board because the one they had didn't seem as "fun" as they wanted it to be, until the entire project got cancelled entirely. (And I suspect its artwork reused for Overwatch)
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
As stated in the thread,mmos are too much of the same.
So as they 'expand' with expansions you have more linear story with 'progression' of more of the same.
The only thing that would hold the game together at that point is the repetitive content such as raids,pvp, questing, mini games, and in game events as being something good enough for the consumer.
The huge work load for MMOs goes towards the art, and the amount fo quests. Quantity vs quality. You could have a game with a few pvp maps with mmo combat and it could have the same brand loyalty as another mmo that put a lot more effort into their worlds which can feel lacking in content.
So in my opinion the alternative is cutting out the story to a bare minimum, and focusin more in creating a vr mmo with more mini games, and npc interaction, pvp and raids. The story can be continued more in raids and possibly pvp/raid map.
Some decent ideas are coming out, for example the hunger dome for crowfall which is kind of a dota like pvp scenario.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
Get rid of PvP in MMOs, it's unbalanced and always has been. Leave it to the RvR, GvG, MOBAs, FPS industries. That will curtail a huge portion of the whining and bellyaching that stems more from the PvP community than it does the so called "Care Bear" scrubs who seem to have firm grasp of the obvious ...games are about entertainment....who knew??!
Creating an mmorpg has always been a huge gamble, there are an endless amount of mmorpg's that never made up to launch and you also have plenty of developers that has gone defunct because of their mmo dream failed. However, the P2P model was a golden cow for publishers and that's why so many investors were willing to risk their money on making an mmorpg.
The huge problem now is that the costs of making an mmorpg has gone through the roof while the stable income that P2P gave has mostly been replaced by cash shops. To put it in gaming terms, the risk is much higher and the rewards are lower so investors skip the hard approach and go for something easier instead.
You could make an extremely lengthy post on why P2P has mostly died out, the tldr version would be that lots of genres have copied aspects of what made mmorpg's unique while mmorpg's themselves have become more like singleplayer and multiplayer games. People simply aren't willing to pay a $15 premium subscription when they can get a similar experience elsewhere.
The reason why we have so many indie developers try to create mmorpg's is that they put part on the risk on the fanbase. Look at projects like star citizen, shroud of the avatar, crowfall, camelot unchained and plenty of others, the risk is mostly carried by fans that are willing to put their money into the project. That's not to say that indie developers don't risk something, but the sums are much lower than what AAA publishers risk on making an mmorpg's.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
More like, the big influx of "lite gamers" that WoW originally brought in, have mostly moved on from MMORPGs, to MOBAs, mobile and browser games (and more capable console games, too, I expect).
Those more serious "MMORPG gamers" are not playing much, because there are currently no (new) games offering the experience they want.
So you have (or had) companies making MMO lites for people that largely don't want to play them any more, or conversely, never really wanted to play what is or was being released up to now.
Thus, companies like FC, SOE, and the other MMO makers have gone under, been sold, or no longer make MMOs any more.
It is no mystery, really.
I mostly agree with this. I don't think the market of gamers that want something like EQ has grown. It's still the same size it was in 2004, or even smaller. The newer generation of gamers aren't into dumping that much of their life in a game, and a lot of us who did it in the past don't want to do it anymore.
So while it's nice to opine and be nostalgic about your experiences back then, there is hardly any market for games like that. Pantheon will tell the story.
Gamers these days seem way more competitive and PvP-centric then the average MMORPG player was back then.
Additionally, Consoles are offering much of the social experience that MMORPGs provided to PC gamers decades ago, without the need to live in the same virtual worlds for years at a time. You just start up a party chat and off you go. Console games are also starting to erode away at the MMORPG as well (Destiny, Division, Multi-Player components in Single Player RPGs like DA:I, Assassin's Creed, Last of Us, Uncharted, etc.).
Consoles now also offer better performance and graphics than the average mid-range PC, at a fraction of the cost of a gaming rig, as well.
If MMORPGs don't start moving swiftly to that form factor, their market is going to get eroded even further by console games, and they will lose even more players to competitors on that form factor.
I don't even plan to upgrade my PCs anymore, and when I do buy new PCs, they will likely be Macs and definitely not spec'd to play games. I've already started my transition from PC to Console gaming. WoW is the last MMORPG I'm likely to play on the Windows/OS X PC form factor/platform.
Trouble is, consoles are not in a good place, already both the XB1 and the PS4 are at the end of their lifecycle and are going to be replaced. Microsoft is even going so far as to move away from the Xbox as their main platform, and are shifting solidly towards using Win10 as their primary gaming platform, because if there is one thing, is that PC gaming is still growing, and has been fairly consistently for years, the console market however, not so much, and already the consoles are out of date so badly. Already, Sony are intending to bring out a new version of the PS4, there is talk that they will call it the 4.5 as it will effectively be the same console, but with better hardware. Reason is because the current batch of consoles are comparable only to an entry level/low end PC, they can barely manage 1080 resolutions in gaming, and even then are often reduced to just 30 fps, just look at The Division, both consoles struggle with 30fps and only the PS4 can actually manage 1080 with it, compared to the PC where 60 fps is the norm, and 1080 is the minimum, consoles are not comparable to mid range PC's at all, though a year or two ago, they probably would have been, there is even the suggestion that the new version of the PS4 will actually be able to handle 4k gaming. As for the Mac's, apple isn't really interested, their focus is on the mobile market, itunes and the iphone, its where they make their money, and the Mac's are probably something that Apple are wondering if they will continue to support, the revenue from it, compared to the costs for maintaining the aging OS probably mean that the platform itself is a liability to them, now they are pretty much comparable to Linux PC's only not as powerful, if anything, games developers are more likely to support a linux version than a mac version, only, its not just games software developers, but other types of software also that are increasingly, not mac compatable, not a surprise really, after all, ask anyone on the street, what Apple have, and you will invariably hear 'iphone' rather than 'Macs' assuming they even know what a Mac is of course, chances are, most of them won't, even if they have Iphones. And then there is the recent activities by Microsoft, by making Win10 a recommended update in the automatic updates bit of Win7 and 8, by now, a significant proportion of them have already been 'updated' it will be interesting to see in 2 months time, just what proportion of the PC market is now Win10, i have a feeling, that it will be a lot more than 12 percent, and the reason for this is because Microsofts next console, is the PC.
Professional graphic designers prefer Apple Macs hugely over PCs.
I bought a MacBook Pro for work, rather than a PC, because I wanted something 100% reliable - and it is. I have no worries about getting a virus etc.
Therefore, I don't believe your claim that Macs are in decline.
As for "Why are MMORPGs in decline?", well, one reason is that games like Skyrim and Dark Souls give you a constant sense of wonder. They are serious competition, even though they are not MMORPGs. MMORPGs run the risk of breaking immersion because of human interaction.
Familiarity breeds contempt. Inevitable result of a decade of experiences.
This basically... everything else is kind of a meh reason.
The games aren't getting crappier or anything. (Some copies are, but copy cats in general are bad).
I honestly think the MMORPG fan base has played these games for so long that if we don't get 100% of the feature list we want and don't want; the game sucks. We have to make sure EVERYONE knows it sucks too.
If I were a business... why would I put any money into this genre? We're just horrible fans and we don't even know it.
Because they turned into pay2win fests that lack in quality. That's why.
Instead of spending several hundred bucks for the founders pack of an unfinished game that is to 99% the same as any other MMORPG, I'd rather by games such as Rocket League, Civilization 5 or Fallout 4.
Comments
~~ postlarval ~~
Didn't "faux MMO" like Destiny and The Division making big money and are highly popular while games like Titan and EQN got cancelled?
Of course not. The Division is highly successful. The World of Tank is highly successful. Only traditional mmorpgs are being marginalized and being cancelled.
You're completely missing the damn point...
People go console for economic reasons, not just technological reasons. And those decisions have an impact on the PC gaming market, believe it or not.
Telling people to get better PCs doesn't work, when they have $500 to spend but a better PC costs twice that. Not everyone wants to go through the trouble of sourcing parts and building their own PC (which has all sorts of inconveniences when something doesn't work properly).
PS4/XB1 are not at end of lifecycle. Not even close.
My Laptop is from late 2013. FFXIV runs terribly on it. I don't want to even argue about this. The game has high system requirements. It's why the wrapped mac version runs to poorly and has to be run at reduced resolution even on 1080p systems to get decent performance out of it.
This makes laptops horrible for gaming, unless you're absolutely splurging on one ($1k+) because you cannot even chase specs on them. A PS4/XB1 will play something like FFXIV on what is equivalent to above Standard Settings and you just never have to worry about the ongoing cost of desktop PC gaming and spec chasing.
That's a huge selling point, and why I've been moving my gaming away from PCs. The long term costs savings are massive in comparison.
I know a PC can game better than a console, but I am not willing to pay that price anymore. I use my PC for PC stuff, save money on the configuration, and just game on my cheap console that plays game relatively flawlessly at a fraction of the cost.
Also, I game on PCs with dedicated gaming equipment (Razer Tartarus, Anansi, Naga), so that adds to the cost. Can't play half these games with a vanilla mouse/keyboard unless you're a keyboard crawler that was forced to do that because you couldn't afford better equipment. I used Nostrumos and Logitech G## Keyboards before that.
Lastly, many of us have tried virtually everything that has come out over the years. We are just tired wasting our time and money with these games as at their core they're just more of the same. Another timesink with hardly any rewards that requires you to delude yourself into believe a virtual world somehow affects you IRL QoL.
Part of the issue with MMORPGs is that fun is contained is various bubbles. Leveling with a truckload of quests that give minuscule XP forcing you to be a completionist (i.e. ESO) is not fun. Taking an hour to go from Point A to Point B (i.e. Vanilla EQ) is not fun.
When people PLAY a GAME, they want it to be fun... NOW. They don't want fun to come in an hour when they finally get to point A. They don't want fun to come "after you gain some levels and have more options. This is why MMORPGs have moved in the direction that they did, because players don't want their time wasted.
This is an MMORPG forum with a very vocal minority so I don't expect much agreement.
The market speaks for itself, however.
So it is a good thing in my book.
From the ashes, new games will have a chance to evolve from the stale old formula.
I am looking forward to games like Crowfall, Camelot Unchained, Gloria Victus, and even Star Citizen as they offer a different way forward from the WoW clones. I am cautiously optimistic that a few of these games will be very fun to play for lengthy amounts of time.
( Note to self-Don't say anything bad about Drizzt.)
An acerbic sense of humor is NOT allowed here.
Sandbox in my signature are something different from this rubbish mass or crap where sociality and fun will be something again.
Crowfall - LiF: MMO - Darkfall: New Dawn
I Prefer Subscription Based, I don't mind Cash Shop, but Games that could be great or decent like BDO are behind a pay-wall of either Pay 2 Win, or Pay 2 Enjoy making you have to spend hundreds of dollars just for cosmetics and such if you are going this route the only best game is GW2 that isn't like that and fairly decent cash shop wise, but there are other reasons I don't like GW2 such as limting cosmetcs to always have to use charges, No Timers on world bosses map, UI needs improvements things that should have been done but haven't yet.
Other than that WOW besides Dark Fall have really been the best MMO's I have really played unless you go like way way way back.
Money for me has never been a barrier, an issue to enjoy any product, but I see my $ as my only REAL vote for what I want to see come in future, which will also set the standard for the rest, sadly World of Warcraft instead of setting standard of QUALITY PvE + PvP in a single MMO, they set the standard for cloning with far less QUALITY.
I found joy again now in Path of Exile and at the end it comes down to players and setting themselves their own goals in specific MMO's. It's little bit of both players ability to find entertainment in products and producers making products easier for players to get themselves entertained with.
Many of the older MMORPGs that people sing nostalgia ballads about had tons of issues, but back then we didn't spend half of our time checking internet forums or news sites. We were playing, and when we weren't playing, we had other things in our lives to worry about. Now, people are practically always connected on their smartphone and getting on the hour news from sites and forums with apps like Tapatalk etc. It literally can give you a push notification whenever any new "MMORPG" news pops up (thankfully, I turned that off).
In addition to that, the complexity of MMORPGs has gone up tremendously. While poor graphics used to be "okay" and developers could spend most of their time on things like spells/skills and more in-game content, that is no longer the case. The games are extremely heavy now. Bugs can crop up anywhere from exploits of mechanics, to bugs in zone geography, physics, etc. There is just so much that can go wrong with all the extra stuff they are throwing into these games.
But I don't think that makes them any worse than they've always been. MMORPGs have always been some of the buggiest games on the market with the benefit that the bugs get fixed in a decently fast fashion due to how they affect the players as opposed to single player games.
I think even many of the failed MMORPGs like Vanguard, Warhammer, Age of Conan, EQ2, etc. bought a lot to the genre.
The big issue with the genre isn't the games, it's the players. The market is different, so trying to blame the developers for chasing a carrot on a stick doesn't really work for me.
If the genre was dying, MMOs would be shutting down left and right, not continuing to operate at a profit for the companies running them. Or do you think the studios running those are doing charity?
The population is so spread out these days because there's so many games to choose from. People have this idiot concept in mind that unless a game reaches WoW numbers, it's a failure. While even WoW doesn't have WoW numbers anymore.
A good deal of its players have moved onto other games. All those players haven't grown jaded and suddenly quit the genre, they just outgrew one game. They are still in the pool somewhere. Except for the tiny percentage that lives on this site, claiming the MMO genre has been dead for years now.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Those are the facts.
Even "successful" companies like Blizzard and CCP have canned MMOs that were far along in development.
None of that speaks to a healthy industry.
(And I have personally seen it many times before in other industries: the whole sector is currently is in the midst of a draw-down / consolidation, where the weaker companies are being winnowed out. At the end, will be the survivors: the strong companies like Bliz, SE, and CCP that had the cash to survive the downturn, and the bottom feeders like Cryptic and now DBG that skate by on cheap product to make their numbers. All of those in the middle will be gone.)
Blizzard seems to have been in the same boat with Titan. They kept scrapping their current concept and going back to the drawing board because the one they had didn't seem as "fun" as they wanted it to be, until the entire project got cancelled entirely. (And I suspect its artwork reused for Overwatch)
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
So as they 'expand' with expansions you have more linear story with 'progression' of more of the same.
The only thing that would hold the game together at that point is the repetitive content such as raids,pvp, questing, mini games, and in game events as being something good enough for the consumer.
The huge work load for MMOs goes towards the art, and the amount fo quests. Quantity vs quality. You could have a game with a few pvp maps with mmo combat and it could have the same brand loyalty as another mmo that put a lot more effort into their worlds which can feel lacking in content.
So in my opinion the alternative is cutting out the story to a bare minimum, and focusin more in creating a vr mmo with more mini games, and npc interaction, pvp and raids. The story can be continued more in raids and possibly pvp/raid map.
Some decent ideas are coming out, for example the hunger dome for crowfall which is kind of a dota like pvp scenario.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
The huge problem now is that the costs of making an mmorpg has gone through the roof while the stable income that P2P gave has mostly been replaced by cash shops. To put it in gaming terms, the risk is much higher and the rewards are lower so investors skip the hard approach and go for something easier instead.
You could make an extremely lengthy post on why P2P has mostly died out, the tldr version would be that lots of genres have copied aspects of what made mmorpg's unique while mmorpg's themselves have become more like singleplayer and multiplayer games. People simply aren't willing to pay a $15 premium subscription when they can get a similar experience elsewhere.
The reason why we have so many indie developers try to create mmorpg's is that they put part on the risk on the fanbase. Look at projects like star citizen, shroud of the avatar, crowfall, camelot unchained and plenty of others, the risk is mostly carried by fans that are willing to put their money into the project. That's not to say that indie developers don't risk something, but the sums are much lower than what AAA publishers risk on making an mmorpg's.
Professional graphic designers prefer Apple Macs hugely over PCs.
I bought a MacBook Pro for work, rather than a PC, because I wanted something 100% reliable - and it is. I have no worries about getting a virus etc.
Therefore, I don't believe your claim that Macs are in decline.
As for "Why are MMORPGs in decline?", well, one reason is that games like Skyrim and Dark Souls give you a constant sense of wonder. They are serious competition, even though they are not MMORPGs. MMORPGs run the risk of breaking immersion because of human interaction.
The games aren't getting crappier or anything. (Some copies are, but copy cats in general are bad).
I honestly think the MMORPG fan base has played these games for so long that if we don't get 100% of the feature list we want and don't want; the game sucks. We have to make sure EVERYONE knows it sucks too.
If I were a business... why would I put any money into this genre? We're just horrible fans and we don't even know it.
I don't play MMORPGs anymore.
Why?
Because they turned into pay2win fests that lack in quality. That's why.
Instead of spending several hundred bucks for the founders pack of an unfinished game that is to 99% the same as any other MMORPG, I'd rather by games such as Rocket League, Civilization 5 or Fallout 4.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)