People want to be in on the ground floor of the new hype thing. Then they leave. That's what New World proved, its colossal dropoff in active players and revenue wasn't entirely because Amazon killed some golden goose. Anyone trying to say "people want new MMOs" is probably coping about that surely the new MMO they want to not fail is going to survive.

New Thing Hype works for a couple years to be sure. And then you run into the content wall and learn that by playing a more established MMO like FF or WOW or ESO or GW2 you get decades of "new content" all at once.

Anybody remember .hack? I want an MMO that is like how the animes and cutscenes portrayed it. Not necessarily that actual game.

The other thing I miss is the social experience and not having to worry about 12 yr olds or pedophiles ruining it.

My ideal MMO would be something like No Man Sky with the scale of Star Citizen. Star Wars Galaxies had the right idea but botched the execution.

I think it really depends. People literally have significantly less time than they did in 2005 when WoW got big. People have to work longer or multiple jobs just to pay sky high rent and mortgage prices with long, stagnated wages.

I get wanting to bring back the nostalgia of a bygone era but these community mmo's where they were very social were a gigantic time sink that most people simply can't do now.

Oh a tread about MMOs?

I guess I'll shamelessly plug Foxhole. Not your traditional MMO. The community is small enough that a lot of people know each other. Also no subscription fee! Please join green team. 👍

I want an MMO where social reputation actually matters. None of this phasing shit where you play with people you'll never see again. MMOs need a sense of community. Modern WoW is just a single player game that lets you get cursed at by 12 year olds right now.

My MMO wishlist is more survival mechanics. Having to prepare before you leave town. Like in old WoW. You have enough food for you and your pet? Bullets? Potions? Leaving town was an event as was getting to the next one.

They make a good point about how massive multiplayer games shouldn’t try to compete with wow, nor to try and implement every feature that wow has, but I think it goes beyond that. I think they need to question the pre existing assumptions of what an MMO is. Like, fundamentally, it’s a mass multiplayer online game, but so much of what gets associated with that concept is not really inherent to it.

Quests, bosses, grinding NPCs for equipment, ect ect. What the shape of content even looks like for these kinds of games.

There is so much potential in the concept of a big world with lots of players all interacting and it is held back by attempting to hew to a certain formula that looks very similar to WoW. Specifically the reliance on NPCs to fill out the world and to act as a source of resources.

Someone brought up foxhole and I think that’s a really good example. It is made by a small team(like… 10 people if I recall?) and it completely lacks a lot of the stuff normally expected in an MMO. No NPCs, no leveling or skill points, no quests or missions. All of the purposes those systems normally fulfill are handled through largely player driven dynamics. It’s a profoundly collaborative game built on team based PVP and an entirely player driven economy. Importantly, you are not playing a hero or unique character, nor collecting particularly valuable equipment overtime. You are cannon fodder, and you will die. In some ways, you are the NPC. Some parts of it definitely share heritage from the genre, but it expands on a lot of stuff that I feel is under developed in most.

It’s a departure from the normal formula and I think it shows that the potential audience for MMOs is actually much larger than the current crop, as a lot of people who play were never into other MMOs. The genre has pigeonholed its self by attempting to chase an existing audience that are used to a certain dynamic, but there is so much more potential that is left on the table.

MMOs (the kind that are actually good) require people to be social to function properly. Everyone wants to build single-player experiences that function as MMOs kinda sorta. It has a big impact on the quality of these games.

People are less social than they were 20+ years ago too.

I like mmos as virtual worlds to hang out in. The more real the world is. cycles of day and npcs behaving what would be normal. animals. it is like the most important. almost equally important is a a lot of customization in character ability and costuming. Its also important that there are roles so that one person can't do it all. gameplay honestly, to me, is basically the last thing but it does need to be fun but not to hard for casuals to be a part of it.

I want a good MMO, but I also don't want to pay a lot to play it properly.

"I think that the idea that the MMO crowd doesn't exist is belied by the number of players who are still in World of Warcraft"

I'm not saying the MMO crowd doesn't exist (though I do hold the opinion that trying to launch a new MMO in this day and age is a fool's errand - so, actually maybe I am saying that!). But this argument is really weak - WoW players aren't playing because they want "an MMO", they are playing because they want to play WoW. Either because they're already so deeply entrenched in it, or because they want to recapture the nostalgia of ages past (see the success of WoW Classic and various pirate servers). There is absolutely no reason to think all these WoW players have any interest in a random new and different MMO.

New World was super good. Amazon canned it when it was at its peak too.

I don't want MMOs.