I watch a bunch of Youtube vids to fall asleep to at night. Usually it’s sim game, science, history related stuff but the past few days I watched some videos of a guy that just reviews and discusses MMORGS. I played a lot of WoW, Guild Wars, and a few other titles, but I realized I never want to even try another MMORG again. Too much of a time sink with other things competing for that time. It becomes all encompassing as far as game-time is concerned since everything moves on when you don’t.
So I’m curious if anyone else has come to feel the same after all these years? Could it be a slowly dying breed? None of the younger people I know who are into gaming including my nieces and nephews have any interest in MMORGS.
Only MMOs I play technically aren’t MMOs, as they’re on private servers with friends. I’ve just never been into mixing it up with random people online. Not sure which category fits that use case.
I’d probably have put in a “I still play a couple but I have no desire to find or try new ones” option, myself. Because that’s where I’m at. I still enjoy Secret World Legends (but haven’t played in ages and don’t expect it to still be around that much longer), semi-regularly play ESO, and look forward to getting back into FFXIV sometime now that they’ve cut down the ARR/post-ARR stretch so it’s easier to get into the expansions. I also fiddled with the fan resurrection of City of Heroes.
On the other hand, I haven’t heard anyone talk about any MMO in development or that came out past ESO/FFXIV that I have any interest in trying, and I’m pretty done with less story-focused MMO gameplay. Even WoW, which I enjoyed for over a decade, has driven me firmly away at this point with their attitude towards flying and forcibly wrenching the story back to the Horde vs Alliance conflict. I also just don’t really have time for this scope of game, and they mostly seem to want all of my time.
I’d certainly rather another MMO than most of the big multiplayer genres people have stampeded into since then, though. Fuck MOBAs and battle royales and F2P PvP card games.
I’m done with the standard format MMO, which admittedly isn’t really being done much any more beyond games already long in the tooth. I doubt I could stomach another tank-healer-dps type combat system or endless end-game grind. I usually love the leveling phase of MMOs, when you are always getting stronger and finding new stuff but loathe the repetitive raiding and dailies and collecting grind of the end games.
Yeah, that shit is boring for me. I’ve stuck with ESO and, in theory, FFXIV because there’s a ton of story content I can work through. when that runs out, I’ll bail. until there’s more at least. and unlike WoW or most other MMOs, it’s an actual focus, and ESO at least doesn’t put crucial story beats in the group content. FFXIV does put some of that stuff there, but it also makes sure you can find people to do it with conveniently and then move on.
I’m all-in on FFXIV and eagerly awaiting the next expansion this fall. The sheer breadth of content available is amazing - and they’re adding what looks to be Harvest Moon-esque side content with the expansion which could end up as another massive (and enjoyable) time sink.
I’m pretty uninterested, partly because I don’t have the time.
I might still be playing WoW Classic if the Blitzchung business hadn’t made me swear Blizzard off. That game provides an extremely strong nostalgia hit for me.
But MMOs in general… probably too much social commitment to go along with everything else. It probably makes more sense for me to play big single player RPGs instead, and there are plenty of those for me to work through.
That said, I’ve thought about getting into ESO more than once.
I’ve recently gotten into FF14 with the free play until the end of Heavensword trial and I’m loving it. I treat it as a chill, single-player JRPG that I only occasionally need to wait in a queue for a few others to play. The story content is generally engaging, the quest chains are streamlined, the leveling is simple, switching classes is easy and useful. There’s plenty of depth too but I don’t feel the need to engage in most of it (at least so far at level 41) as I focus entirely on the main story quests and my main job quests.
I voted ‘rarely,’ but it’s more like ‘occasionally.’ If I play an MMO nowadays, it’ll usually consume most of my gaming time for a few weeks, then I’ll drop it and play something else. That’s pretty much what happened with City of Heroes Homecoming and Guild Wars 2 last year.
I don’t see a multi-year obsession like the one I had with Everquest happening again.
I’m mostly interested because I don’t have the time that I did when I was playing them (roughly 1999-2012, I think). I’d love to have another experience like I did with Everquest or its successors again - even at the cost of that time - but it probably has to wait until, like, kids off to college. I have no idea how the 30-somethings with kids in my guild at the time managed it.
(Also, while I obviously haven’t been following it for a decade or more, the WoW design philosophy was the least interesting of basically any of the MMOs, and I say that as someone who was big into Warcraft 3 coming in. EQ, Rift, Vanguard, Guild Wars, and probably some others that I’m not remembering were all much more interesting to me than my time in WoW was.)
I’ve tried most of them over the years and I always returned to WoW. I never had time for two of them and playing in guilds helped keep me interested in WoW until the expansion before Shadowlands. I quit any sort of real activity in WoW at the end of the last expansion, but Shadowlands brought me back. I only log-in on the weekends for the most part and can do OK in raids. ESO when it was first released is probably the one that almost made me quit WoW.
I have been HUGE into MMOs since 1993 when they were just MUDs. Played WoW for a stupid number of years. At least dabbled in almost every other major one, and plenty of not so major. But of late, I find my attention span wandering when I try to get into them.
For a while I figured my issue was the psychological need to play consistently if I’m paying for a sub. So when I finally moved off of WoW, I went to GW2. And then to ESO. And then realized that NOT paying was making it hard to not move on to the next shiny. So when my daughter got hooked on FFXIV I jumped to that. Then non-MMO stuff drew me away again, and now I find it hard to jump back in. It isn’t because I’m not interested, but I’m not as tolerant of all the group stuff. I play MMOs as single-player RPGs with in-game chat. And eventually a little voice in my brain says “then play a fleshed out RPG dummy”. Now to be fair, FFXIV is pretty close to a single-player RPG so … I’m not sure now why I’m not playing it. Give it a month or two, and I’ll be back to bingeing it.
MMOs came around at a time that was sort of a perfect storm. It was the combination of being able to run around in a huge, persistent 3D world, combined with real time interaction with people from all over the world. Both of those things were fairly novel at the time. WoW really hit that nail on the head when they released right as broadband internet was becoming more commonplace.
I think the novelty of both interaction, and huge 3d worlds has largely worn off, not just on me, but on the public at large. For me, running around in Everquest was a gaming experience that I doubt will ever be topped, because of what a huge change that was to the world in general and the impact a game could have on you. No matter how good a new MMO is, there is always a sense of ‘been there, done that’ that I think is just about impossible to overcome.
The other part of that equation, for people 20 and under, is that they’ve grown up in an A.D.D. world. Attention spans in general have become much shorter, and the things vying for your time have been multiplied exponentially.
Yes, for me too EQ was an amazing initial experience. I spent weeks in the same area, too, getting to know it intimately because I played solo. In current MMOs you spend a day or three and then move, hardly ever returning.
I like the feeling of being in a game world with other players so that’s one of the hooks of an MMO. But once I figure out the game part of it, then it begins to lose my interest.
I still have fun with WoW for a few months at a time when something new is out, like Classic or Shadowlands. That’s about it though. If something is going to suck me in deeply in the future it will probably be a big budget VR MMO. That may never happen, however.
I thought I was over them, then WoW Classic came out and turns out I still really enjoy the standard MMORPG gameplay loop. Good thing Blizzard hates free speech otherwise I still might be playing it.
