Should We Be Optimistic About The Future Of MMORPGS?

Yesterday, I was looking through r/MMORPG on Reddit (as one does) and I stumbled across this interview in which NCSoft America CEO Jeonghee Jin was saying she believes there’s still hope for MMOs as a genre. This is mostly attributable to the fact that she believes that there’s a cyclical pattern to the types of games that draw people’s interest.

It makes sense if you look at other industries. Clothes tend to be on a 30-year cycle. That’s why they say if you wait long enough, everything will come back into fashion. The same holds true for music. It may not be a 30-year cycle, but we did have that whole swing revival in the 90s. And it usually takes a decade or two before we all forget how we hated to have to wear those stupid glasses to watch 3D movies and have to suffer the whole thing all over again. (I’m honestly not sure which is worse, the little cardboard ones that would slip off your face or the plastic ones you know hundreds of other people have worn before you, and you just have to hope the underpaid staff somehow cared enough to clean.)

The point is, things do tend to move in cycles where trends and popularity are concerned. So why wouldn’t the same hold true for games? I mean, we do seem to have a resurgence in the popularity of turn-based games lately – thanks to a few standouts.

Jin believes that this is true of MMORPGs as well and that currently they’re at the bottom of that circle – meaning they’re about to swing back up into some kind of popularity. She points out that a lot of players still spend time in the older MMORPG games that are “10 or 15 years old”, and believes that that’s a sign that “there’s room”. “There’s an audience that’s loyal, that forms genuine communities, that makes games a part of their lives. That’s exactly the audience that MMORPGs speak to.”

She’s not wrong. Although it’s pretty obvious that just making a new MMORPG isn’t enough. Don’t get me wrong, long-time MMORPG fans will definitely try out the new thing. We’ve all been doing that. How many MMOs have you watched closely leading up to the launch and dived in on day one, only to return to your MMO of choice not long after and not really look back? Or, at best, the new MMO becomes a bit of a diversion while you wait for your home to get a new update.

But we’ve seen all the recent MMORPGs that either fail within a year or two of launch or just fail to launch at all. The common consensus is often that the genre has already attracted its player base; that newer players, being used to things like MOBAs and other genres that may not require as much dedication, or that are better designed for mobile devices and therefore easier to take with them, aren’t interested in playing traditional MMORPGs. Add to that the existing player base has games they’re dedicated to, and you don’t exactly have good conditions for a new entry in the genre to gain footing.

Still, she seems to believe that there’s hope, noting that younger players’ investment in Roblox and Minecraft indicates they “already understand what it means to belong to an in-game world and community”, which she believes “bodes well for MMORPGs in the long run”. I won’t argue that those games don’t create some kind of community, but my personal impression is that they’re a bit more free-form than your standard MMORPG. People can build communities around almost anything. That doesn’t necessarily translate to wanting to spend hours working your way through involved storylines. Hell, even a lot of MMORPG players don’t want to do that.

Roblox and Minecraft offer players something else. Their experience in those… (I wouldn’t even call Roblox a game, exactly) allow players to create their own experiences. The games don’t really come with a pre-built world. And they don’t necessarily require players to be in an environment where they’re going to interact with other people, whether they want to or not. When I played Minecraft, I played with about five people max… all friends. That is not the same as hopping into Eorzea and finding a few dozen people you’ve never met standing around an aetherite. It doesn’t require you to navigate the etiquette of collecting items or targeting mobs that strangers are also after. And then there’s the whole process of things like interviewing to find a weekly raid group that fits right.

Granted, it’s been ages since I’ve played Minecraft, and I’ve never played Roblox, but I don’t believe those things are a primary part of the games. I can imagine that, just like with traditional MMORPGs, there is an element of just hanging out in more public areas to see and be seen.

That said, I don’t think any of that necessarily makes these players good candidates for what we’d think of as MMORPGs.

There is a broader meaning of just MMO, “Massively Multiplayer Online”. That’s used much more broadly. Although you could argue the validity of what makes something “massively multiplayer”. I think most traditional MMO players would argue that you need hundreds or thousands of players all existing on the same server with the potential to interact. Those who use the term more broadly would argue that if it’s multiplayer at all and a lot of people play it, it’s an MMO. Both are technically correct, but only one has the vibes.

Then there’s the fact that even fans of traditional MMORPGs aren’t exactly hopping on the new game trains. Or, at least not sticking around. This is caused by a combination of things: games don’t really offer anything new, devs don’t listen to feedback (or listen too late), companies completely change what a game was supposed to be at the last minute (seriously, stop that), removing the feature that had would-be players interested in the first place.

And, of course, there’s the ongoing question of monetization. If you ask some players why they’re still in a game they started years ago, despite newer ones coming out, one of the reasons is likely to be investment. If they’re playing a P2P game, they’ve probably invested quite a bit of money – even more so if that P2P game has microtransactions with cool stuff. And, of course, there’s the time sink as well. For instance, it’s a well-known fact that a lot of Final Fantasy XIV players are unwilling to leave the game completely because of the time and money involved in just acquiring a house.

Yes, yes, I know. World of Warcraft housing… But… You know. We’re already invested. (And you’re still talking about another P2P game.

Free-to-play can be even trickier. There’s always the argument that they can end up pay-to-win. But there’s also the problem that because they’re F2P, players can easily shift allegiances. And, of course, there’s the whole thing of getting enough players to throw money at your F2P MMO to keep it alive for everyone else there. MMORPG’s, by design, require a community, whether a player chooses to interact with it directly or not.

These days, it seems that the games that are most successful at the F2P system are those that monetize access to characters in some way. Whether that be through gachas or through the systems tied to team shooters and MOBAs. Some MMORPGs do this as well, but it’s not something that works for the genre as a whole – not in the way it does with other genres.

All this is to say that Jin could be right. But it also feels a bit overly optimistic without the companies adjusting how they approach MMORPG. If nothing else, there are enough genres that allow people to play with their friends now that aren’t your standard MMORPG. People have options. We’re kinda buried in them.

Of course, she should try to be as optimistic as possible. Her company does specialize in MMORPGs. They’re even getting ready to bring Aion 2 to the West and are obviously hoping to see it do well. I’m personally a bit skeptical about the game’s success. But it would be nice to be wrong.