Will MMORPGs make a comeback on the main scene anytime soon?

Falaax13

Yes I know there is still some MMORPGs doing well. But when is the last time there was one that was hyped as much as some of the all-time bigs? The most recent one that comes to my mind is TESO but it's been almost 6 years already.
Yes there are probably some good ones still coming out every year, but I'm sure they are nowhere near as popular as RuneScape or WoW were in the good ol' days of arround 2005-2010.
It just seems like MMORPGs now have a lot of difficulties to attract younger people, it feels like most of the population is 20+ years old (since at 19 I always feel like the young one in clans and group chats).

So, do you see MMORPGs as a genre making a comeback with some new big names in the next few years? Or will the success and money will all go to Fortnite-like games?

Valentina

The gaming market always seems to rotate, I think it is inevitable that MMORPG's will come back into "orbit" so to speak, they will need to be evolved from what we're used to which has been happening very slowly, so I don't see them being exactly the same as they have been in the past and it will probably be a little while, yet. Battle Royale games will eventually experience the same thing, where the genre sort of eventually loses steam and is replaced with something else, and so on the cycle will go.

Palebane

Its definitely not cool anymore, so at least the games will start to get better as the lemmings finally move off. Personally, I hope the lemmings never come back.

esc-joconnor

A substantial amount of clue would have to be gotten by a lot of people for this to happen. The industry really needs one of those rare leaders like Richard Branson to come in and show people how it's done.

Asch126

They will eventually, all genres end up having comebacks.

What it needs is a FFXIV/WoW level MMORPG. What i mean by this is that it has to be an MMORPG of an established franchise, something huge that will bring an established IP into the MMO world.

Only other thing that would bring it back into the limelight is a sequel, like WoW 2, another FF MMO, GW3, etc.

someforumguy

I don't think so. I think that you will see more hybrid online games that will blurr the lines between online genres even more.

Especially the AAA publishers will go for the fast buck and fully featured MMORPG's are not the best way to do that because of the very long development time/costs. But online PVP style games with some form of microtransactions are. And these come always with very limited rpg features and/or lack of PVE.

Indie developers simply don't have the resources to develop fully featured MMORPG's with great 3d graphics.

EDIT: My advice, find yourself a new genre. Don't limit yourself to the old idea of MMORPG's.

Scot

Falaax13 said:

Yes I know there is still some MMORPGs doing well. But when is the last time there was one that was hyped as much as some of the all-time bigs? The most recent one that comes to my mind is TESO but it's been almost 6 years already.
Yes there are probably some good ones still coming out every year, but I'm sure they are nowhere near as popular as RuneScape or WoW were in the good ol' days of arround 2005-2010.
It just seems like MMORPGs now have a lot of difficulties to attract younger people, it feels like most of the population is 20+ years old (since at 19 I always feel like the young one in clans and group chats).

So, do you see MMORPGs as a genre making a comeback with some new big names in the next few years? Or will the success and money will all go to Fortnite-like games?

Welcome to the boards!

I see no big comeback for MMORPGs for at least a few years, though indie has some interesting ones up and coming. If you love the genre stick to what you love, just don't expect a new AAA MMO to be coming our way any time soon.

It is the people as much as the game and you get a better class of people in MMOs but far more noticeably if they have to P2P. Other posters have suggested stuff like looking at another genre, you could of course do what all the real 19 year olds do and just watch games. If I keep bringing that up I hope posters will forgive me as I can't get my head round it.

No, stick to what you like and try to lure gaming mates to the darkside that is MMORPG's.

H0urg1ass

Yes.

They will make a big comeback when the technology is right.

What do I mean by that?  Currently, the killer for making MMO's is the gestation period.  It takes 5-6 years to produce an MMO that's still buggy and unfinished in areas.  Then, you don't even get to sell it for a box price because the community has come to expect MMO's to release as Free to Play.  All that work and effort and to top it off, you've got to rely on a cash shop, or selling "enhanced experiences" for your income.

In the meantime, five new Call of Duty games, five new Assassin's Creed Games, five new FarCry Games... you get the point, have all been released.  Each of them earning hundreds of millions of dollars each off of the box price.

So why put in the effort?  The ROI just isn't there anymore, and after the last couple of big releases crashed and burned hard, such as WildStar (That disaster alone scared away the majority of executives) no one is going to touch the genre.

However!  A few big changes in technology could drastically reduce the design and build period of these games and a new MMO could be finished in 2 years instead of 5-6.

One of these technologies is AI.  At some point, there will be world designing AI out there that can create interesting, believable worlds for us.  Once these AI have been trained with realistic topographies, vegetation dispersion models, animal population models, thousands of examples of villages, towns, cities, examples of realistic commerce routes,... etc, then they'll be able to generate in a matter of hours huge realistic worlds.

The designers can then go back in and sculpt a few areas to meet specific demands, make some tweaks here and there, design some scripted encounters, and design a lot of assets that can be applied to the AI generated world.

Given enough time and training, it won't just be the land masses that the AI designs, but entire communities with NPC's that go through believable daily routines.  Caravans that actually carry goods from one city to another.  Bandit camps that prey on lightly defended travelers.

Essentially, you'll insert yourself into what will feel like a living breathing world.

I think we're only looking at 8-10 years down the road before this happens.

But until the technology progresses that severely reduces the gestation period of these games, then I can't see a renaissance of this genre any time soon.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Samhael

Gorwe said:

H0urg1ass said:

Yes.

They will make a big comeback when the technology is right.

What do I mean by that?  Currently, the killer for making MMO's is the gestation period.  It takes 5-6 years to produce an MMO that's still buggy and unfinished in areas.  Then, you don't even get to sell it for a box price because the community has come to expect MMO's to release as Free to Play.  All that work and effort and to top it off, you've got to rely on a cash shop, or selling "enhanced experiences" for your income.

In the meantime, five new Call of Duty games, five new Assassin's Creed Games, five new FarCry Games... you get the point, have all been released.  Each of them earning hundreds of millions of dollars each off of the box price.

So why put in the effort?  The ROI just isn't there anymore, and after the last couple of big releases crashed and burned hard, such as WildStar (That disaster alone scared away the majority of executives) no one is going to touch the genre.

However!  A few big changes in technology could drastically reduce the design and build period of these games and a new MMO could be finished in 2 years instead of 5-6.

One of these technologies is AI.  At some point, there will be world designing AI out there that can create interesting, believable worlds for us.  Once these AI have been trained with realistic topographies, vegetation dispersion models, animal population models, thousands of examples of villages, towns, cities, examples of realistic commerce routes,... etc, then they'll be able to generate in a matter of hours huge realistic worlds.

The designers can then go back in and sculpt a few areas to meet specific demands, make some tweaks here and there, design some scripted encounters, and design a lot of assets that can be applied to the AI generated world.

Given enough time and training, it won't just be the land masses that the AI designs, but entire communities with NPC's that go through believable daily routines.  Caravans that actually carry goods from one city to another.  Bandit camps that prey on lightly defended travelers.

Essentially, you'll insert yourself into what will feel like a living breathing world.

I think we're only looking at 8-10 years down the road before this happens.

But until the technology progresses that severely reduces the gestation period of these games, then I can't see a renaissance of this genre any time soon.

That's not "anytime soon", is it?

That depends entirely on your definition of "soon" which can differ greatly.  As I have personally been gaming on computes since the early 80s, 8-10 years is soon.  However, I can appreciate your view that that may not be soon.  (and sure, I'd like a few awesome MMOs to come out prior to that as well -- but I haven't found a decent MMO in years now so I've already been waiting)

Amathe

There may be projects not yet finished and not yet announced. *crosses fingers*

alkarionlog

Falaax13 said:

Yes I know there is still some MMORPGs doing well. But when is the last time there was one that was hyped as much as some of the all-time bigs? The most recent one that comes to my mind is TESO but it's been almost 6 years already.
Yes there are probably some good ones still coming out every year, but I'm sure they are nowhere near as popular as RuneScape or WoW were in the good ol' days of arround 2005-2010.
It just seems like MMORPGs now have a lot of difficulties to attract younger people, it feels like most of the population is 20+ years old (since at 19 I always feel like the young one in clans and group chats).

So, do you see MMORPGs as a genre making a comeback with some new big names in the next few years? Or will the success and money will all go to Fortnite-like games?

if you belive teso was any good then, yes crap like that is made yearly.

now if you really want a good MMORPG who really raise the bar, and bring something new to this dying genre, then no it will take years to see if anything will really do the job, but my guess is if anything it will take a decade at the very least for us to see something really good

Tamanous

You asked if the "MMORPG" genre could come back. The AAA's on the market are MMOs engineered for mass markets. I'll address ACTUAL MMORPGs ... a concept new players may have no clue about. Those are specific genre games targeting a specific audience. This is called Niche Marketing. MMOs today are NOT niche marketed.

We'll find out when Pantheon and Camelot Unchained come out.

I mention these 2 because they target slightly different audiences, yet are still heavily themed around previous, old school MMORPG concepts ... while still trying to be new, and who's projects appear to still be running smoothly.

They only have to be successful for their target audience. They are niche marketed games and not meant for wide audience appeal. They aren't monetized for wide audience appeal. If they were, they wouldn't be old school style MMORPGs. I cannot stress how important this is.

The only question is whether or not they can grab the niche market audience to keep them afloat. This number is dramatically smaller than RMT and F2P models, but still has to be large enough.

The success or failure of these 2 projects sets the stage for future Developer interest. To me, they are projects on a far more sustainable/repeatable scale than something like Star Citizen which is likely a one time industry anomaly.

Tamanous

MisterZebub said:

Short answer? No.

Long answer? HELL NO!

Prediction without evidence only masks ignorance.

Mendel

Palebane said:

Its definitely not cool anymore, so at least the games will start to get better as the lemmings finally move off. Personally, I hope they never come back.

Odd.  If the people playing (and presumably paying) the current games leave, why would any company want to make another game in the same genre?  I don't think they would.  It seems like you are asking for more single player games by asking for massive multiplayer games only without anyone who is currently playing them.

I'm also in the camp that the MMORPG isn't due a comeback anytime soon.  I think the factors that drove the genre in the first place have changed -- drastically.  There isn't an untapped horde of PnP players who haven't already played one or more of examples of MMORPG.  That's what a large proportion of the initial wave of MMORPG players were, they graduated from PnP games or from single player cRPG games (or in WoW's case, graduated from the Warcraft RTS games).

There isn't another generation coming along.  Children have already been exposed to MMORPGs, and there isn't a game currently on the market that can capture attention like some of the MOBAs or FPS games.  The MMORPG genre has been relegated to the second division.  I think it will take some radical changes for this genre to move back to the top of the gaming heap again, but then people will simply argue over 'is it an MMORPG?' on this and other forums.

craftseeker

Gorwe said:

H0urg1ass said:

Yes.

They will make a big comeback when the technology is right.

What do I mean by that?  Currently, the killer for making MMO's is the gestation period.  It takes 5-6 years to produce an MMO that's still buggy and unfinished in areas.  Then, you don't even get to sell it for a box price because the community has come to expect MMO's to release as Free to Play.  All that work and effort and to top it off, you've got to rely on a cash shop, or selling "enhanced experiences" for your income.

In the meantime, five new Call of Duty games, five new Assassin's Creed Games, five new FarCry Games... you get the point, have all been released.  Each of them earning hundreds of millions of dollars each off of the box price.

So why put in the effort?  The ROI just isn't there anymore, and after the last couple of big releases crashed and burned hard, such as WildStar (That disaster alone scared away the majority of executives) no one is going to touch the genre.

However!  A few big changes in technology could drastically reduce the design and build period of these games and a new MMO could be finished in 2 years instead of 5-6.

One of these technologies is AI.  At some point, there will be world designing AI out there that can create interesting, believable worlds for us.  Once these AI have been trained with realistic topographies, vegetation dispersion models, animal population models, thousands of examples of villages, towns, cities, examples of realistic commerce routes,... etc, then they'll be able to generate in a matter of hours huge realistic worlds.

The designers can then go back in and sculpt a few areas to meet specific demands, make some tweaks here and there, design some scripted encounters, and design a lot of assets that can be applied to the AI generated world.

Given enough time and training, it won't just be the land masses that the AI designs, but entire communities with NPC's that go through believable daily routines.  Caravans that actually carry goods from one city to another.  Bandit camps that prey on lightly defended travelers.

Essentially, you'll insert yourself into what will feel like a living breathing world.

I think we're only looking at 8-10 years down the road before this happens.

But until the technology progresses that severely reduces the gestation period of these games, then I can't see a renaissance of this genre any time soon.

That's not "anytime soon", is it?

No its when someone stumps up a truly stupendous amount of cash to build the AI that can generate that sort of world. And then another huge bucket of cash for the super computer to run that AI on while iy creates the world.


After that it is all down hill to the gravy train.

SpottyGekko

No.

The combination of factors that brought us the "Golden Age of MMORPG's" no longer exist, those days are forever gone.

The best we can hope for in future is smaller "boutique" games that cater to very specific audiences. But they will need the financial security of a monthly subscription. F2P does not work with a smaller player base, for that you need big volumes of players...

Tamanous

Mendel said:

There isn't another generation coming along.  Children have already been exposed to MMORPGs

LOL

Ya, humans just suddenly stopped having children. o.0

Your view is extremely short sighted, and you are talking about games that do not have to even target children to be successful. Ages 12-17 wasn't even the target audience of the early MMORPGs. They were grabbing the existing audience who previously played RPGs and MUDs who were largely 20+ at that stage. This is why we got difficult and complex games and why that era (the era where MMORPGs only had a minority market share) is considered the Golden Era.

You, along with many replies, clearly can't define what a MMORPG is. You confuse the success of the mass marketed, abhorrent version of the genre that converted to the incredibly exploited RMT/cash shop model that created the very bubble that is currently collapsing the greater industry across the board.

Not one single company attempted to nurture or advance the original MMORPG concept. A concept that was never trying to target the largest possible audience. It just had to target it's niche audience it was designed for. 

Venture Capitalism killed the MMORPG industry,  because it is the death of niche marketing. MMORPG as a concept should never have as large as it is, because it's core audience was never that large. 

Currently, we see a stagnant  and exploitative industry shrinking. Indie development rising. Increased interest in foundational games like D&D. Rebellion against the same clones everyone has played over and over. Increased interest in emulations of older games and return of Classic/Legendary versions of true MMORPGs before their conversion to RMT models.

The trends are clear. MMORPG will come back, but it will come back as it was meant to be, targeting the audience it was meant to target, and the sustainable size it was meant to be.

I see nothing but positive steps required for niche market share and genre specific gaming. Perhaps it just requires someone to take their industry propaganda blinders off, grab a sliver of understanding of the true history of the genre, and look around and realize that everyone around you IS ACTUALLY DIFFERENT, WITH DIFFERENT INTERESTS and not some idealistic, equally exploitable blob you were taught to think of yourselves as.

learis1

I think a big problem is the audience is too niche. Mmos typically target hardcore audiences willing to spend thousands of hours doing either the heavy solo grind or heavy group team content. If they can make an mmo that has good casual features without making the hardcore players feel snubbed, then I would say its a good market. But Im not sure how to do that.

Kyleran

MisterZebub said:

Tamanous said:

MisterZebub said:

Short answer? No.

Long answer? HELL NO!

Prediction without evidence only masks ignorance.

No evidence? Have you not been watching the MMORPG industry slide into the crapper for the past twelve years? MMORPGs have been out-shined, out budgeted, out populated, and out produced by some of even the most simple and pathetic game genres. No matter how good these indie studio niche MMOs happen to be, if they manage to launch at all, they are not going to revitalize the genre as the gaming mainstream has now been dominated by gamers who do not and never have enjoyed playing any type of MMORPG. Not that doesn't mean that they won't do fine as niche genre games, but don't pretend for a minute than the Battle Royal or Mobile game contingent are going to show the slightest bit of interest. Let alone spend huge heaping piles of cash on them.

The traditional MMORPG is an evolutionary cul-de-sac. A huge slow lumbering beast that's expensive the feed and terribly unpredictable. No massive company worth their salt is going to risk everything on one of these dinosaurs when there is so much easier and faster money to be made elsewhere.

Shhhh, he's convinced CU is here to save the genre....there's no reasoning with that sort of viewpoint.

craftseeker

Gorwe said:

craftseeker said:

Gorwe said:

H0urg1ass said:

Yes.

They will make a big comeback when the technology is right.

What do I mean by that?  Currently, the killer for making MMO's is the gestation period.  It takes 5-6 years to produce an MMO that's still buggy and unfinished in areas.  Then, you don't even get to sell it for a box price because the community has come to expect MMO's to release as Free to Play.  All that work and effort and to top it off, you've got to rely on a cash shop, or selling "enhanced experiences" for your income.

In the meantime, five new Call of Duty games, five new Assassin's Creed Games, five new FarCry Games... you get the point, have all been released.  Each of them earning hundreds of millions of dollars each off of the box price.

So why put in the effort?  The ROI just isn't there anymore, and after the last couple of big releases crashed and burned hard, such as WildStar (That disaster alone scared away the majority of executives) no one is going to touch the genre.

However!  A few big changes in technology could drastically reduce the design and build period of these games and a new MMO could be finished in 2 years instead of 5-6.

One of these technologies is AI.  At some point, there will be world designing AI out there that can create interesting, believable worlds for us.  Once these AI have been trained with realistic topographies, vegetation dispersion models, animal population models, thousands of examples of villages, towns, cities, examples of realistic commerce routes,... etc, then they'll be able to generate in a matter of hours huge realistic worlds.

The designers can then go back in and sculpt a few areas to meet specific demands, make some tweaks here and there, design some scripted encounters, and design a lot of assets that can be applied to the AI generated world.

Given enough time and training, it won't just be the land masses that the AI designs, but entire communities with NPC's that go through believable daily routines.  Caravans that actually carry goods from one city to another.  Bandit camps that prey on lightly defended travelers.

Essentially, you'll insert yourself into what will feel like a living breathing world.

I think we're only looking at 8-10 years down the road before this happens.

But until the technology progresses that severely reduces the gestation period of these games, then I can't see a renaissance of this genre any time soon.

That's not "anytime soon", is it?

No its when someone stumps up a truly stupendous amount of cash to build the AI that can generate that sort of world. And then another huge bucket of cash for the super computer to run that AI on while iy creates the world.


After that it is all down hill to the gravy train.

That's "anytime soon" from the point ~10 years in the future, not from now. Everything else is a rationalization.

No its not. There is at least five years in the development of that AI, and only Amazon has deep enough pockets to do it, and they aren't even going to start it in tt least the next couple of years.

That anytime soon is sometime after 2035, not something to expect. Not even something to hope for at this point.

Akulas

I can make a new MMORPG. It will take 115 years and 3 generations.

Theocritus

It sure seems like other genres have overtaken MMOs for sure.....Battle Royals, FPS, survival, DOTA, all more popular now. It seems like people dont want to work at their games anymore, just give them a ready to go toon and they are set.

Quizzical

All that it takes is one game that is a huge hit, and then lots of companies will try to make a knock-off of it.  But that one game will do something (or perhaps a lot of things) that are unconventional by today's standards, and then we can complain about all of the clones of whatever game that is, the way that we used to complain about WoW-clones.

Quizzical

H0urg1ass said:

Yes.

They will make a big comeback when the technology is right.

What do I mean by that?  Currently, the killer for making MMO's is the gestation period.  It takes 5-6 years to produce an MMO that's still buggy and unfinished in areas.  Then, you don't even get to sell it for a box price because the community has come to expect MMO's to release as Free to Play.  All that work and effort and to top it off, you've got to rely on a cash shop, or selling "enhanced experiences" for your income.

In the meantime, five new Call of Duty games, five new Assassin's Creed Games, five new FarCry Games... you get the point, have all been released.  Each of them earning hundreds of millions of dollars each off of the box price.

So why put in the effort?  The ROI just isn't there anymore, and after the last couple of big releases crashed and burned hard, such as WildStar (That disaster alone scared away the majority of executives) no one is going to touch the genre.

However!  A few big changes in technology could drastically reduce the design and build period of these games and a new MMO could be finished in 2 years instead of 5-6.

One of these technologies is AI.  At some point, there will be world designing AI out there that can create interesting, believable worlds for us.  Once these AI have been trained with realistic topographies, vegetation dispersion models, animal population models, thousands of examples of villages, towns, cities, examples of realistic commerce routes,... etc, then they'll be able to generate in a matter of hours huge realistic worlds.

The designers can then go back in and sculpt a few areas to meet specific demands, make some tweaks here and there, design some scripted encounters, and design a lot of assets that can be applied to the AI generated world.

Given enough time and training, it won't just be the land masses that the AI designs, but entire communities with NPC's that go through believable daily routines.  Caravans that actually carry goods from one city to another.  Bandit camps that prey on lightly defended travelers.

Essentially, you'll insert yourself into what will feel like a living breathing world.

I think we're only looking at 8-10 years down the road before this happens.

But until the technology progresses that severely reduces the gestation period of these games, then I can't see a renaissance of this genre any time soon.

That's an interesting theory, but I find it implausible.  The cost of creating the training data to make a good world-building AI would greatly exceed the cost of just making a game without the AI.  Even once you had it, all that the AI would be able to do is to create knock-offs that don't do anything novel whatsoever.  And even once you had all of that, it's not at all clear whether the AI-generated worlds would be any good.

Some game might try it if they have an enormous budget and want to create an effectively infinite world.  It's plausible (but far from obvious) that using machine learning to train it on what "good" worlds look like could do better than traditional methods of procedural generation.  But the cost of creating the training data to test that theory would be enormous, so it would take a huge budget to take a serious stab at it.

Kyleran

craftseeker said:

Gorwe said:

craftseeker said:

Gorwe said:

H0urg1ass said:

Yes.

They will make a big comeback when the technology is right.

What do I mean by that?  Currently, the killer for making MMO's is the gestation period.  It takes 5-6 years to produce an MMO that's still buggy and unfinished in areas.  Then, you don't even get to sell it for a box price because the community has come to expect MMO's to release as Free to Play.  All that work and effort and to top it off, you've got to rely on a cash shop, or selling "enhanced experiences" for your income.

In the meantime, five new Call of Duty games, five new Assassin's Creed Games, five new FarCry Games... you get the point, have all been released.  Each of them earning hundreds of millions of dollars each off of the box price.

So why put in the effort?  The ROI just isn't there anymore, and after the last couple of big releases crashed and burned hard, such as WildStar (That disaster alone scared away the majority of executives) no one is going to touch the genre.

However!  A few big changes in technology could drastically reduce the design and build period of these games and a new MMO could be finished in 2 years instead of 5-6.

One of these technologies is AI.  At some point, there will be world designing AI out there that can create interesting, believable worlds for us.  Once these AI have been trained with realistic topographies, vegetation dispersion models, animal population models, thousands of examples of villages, towns, cities, examples of realistic commerce routes,... etc, then they'll be able to generate in a matter of hours huge realistic worlds.

The designers can then go back in and sculpt a few areas to meet specific demands, make some tweaks here and there, design some scripted encounters, and design a lot of assets that can be applied to the AI generated world.

Given enough time and training, it won't just be the land masses that the AI designs, but entire communities with NPC's that go through believable daily routines.  Caravans that actually carry goods from one city to another.  Bandit camps that prey on lightly defended travelers.

Essentially, you'll insert yourself into what will feel like a living breathing world.

I think we're only looking at 8-10 years down the road before this happens.

But until the technology progresses that severely reduces the gestation period of these games, then I can't see a renaissance of this genre any time soon.

That's not "anytime soon", is it?

No its when someone stumps up a truly stupendous amount of cash to build the AI that can generate that sort of world. And then another huge bucket of cash for the super computer to run that AI on while iy creates the world.


After that it is all down hill to the gravy train.

That's "anytime soon" from the point ~10 years in the future, not from now. Everything else is a rationalization.

No its not. There is at least five years in the development of that AI, and only Amazon has deep enough pockets to do it, and they aren't even going to start it in tt least the next couple of years.

That anytime soon is sometime after 2035, not something to expect. Not even something to hope for at this point.

You have overlooked several key components, a huge investment to upgrade the data transmission network between everything, a customer base willing to spend the necessary amount on equipment to access this great new world for starters.

All of the above has to be done on faith the investment will be worthwhile and coordinated between several industries which don't always well cooperate with each other. 

My recommendation, invest your money in anti gravity research, rocket packs and flying cars, probably easier to pull off.