Welcome to Ten Minute Mode, a weekly web discussion series exclusive to Gamer Nation.
This week, Liam, David and Phil ask, are MMO’s still relevant?
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HG writes: "Blizzard is usually pretty bad at keeping secrets, but the company somehow managed to keep this one under wraps until now. Plunderstorm is a special limited-time event that’s basically World of Warcraft’s take on the Battle Royale genre."
Hanzala from eXputer writes "History is witness to their downfall, yet they keep coming."
It's not so much Devs as it is Invested and shareholders, issue is barely anyone has the backbone to stand up to them anymore and say no for the sake of the project.
This is a fairly interesting article that does summarize a bit of the history of this revenue type. But to answer the main question is a much simpler affair: While people will say in the internet that they hate GaaS games. The top revenue generating games are GaaS, so companies will try to have their own. Take Genshin Impact for example, that game alone generated more than 1.5 Billion USD in revenue during 2022. That is almost as much as the 1.9 Billion USD that Ubisoft as a whole generated that year.
It's definitely a risky move because the majority of GaaS games don't reach the level of success Genshin Impact achieved. However, companies can't seem to take their eyes off that tempting prize at the end.
Do you ever think that over the past year or so every studio who makes this shit has started to think
"GaaS is dying out partially because there's so many of them in the market now, I think other developers are moving away from the model now BUT lets stick to our GaaS game and then when it releases we'll be one of the few on the market still which allows us to get more of the market share since every one else has left"
Yet because every developer has that same thought process they've now all got GaaS games on a still over saturated market.
Premiere gaming is dying. With Spider-Man's 300 million dollar budget and Ratchet & Clank's ridiculously low return on investment (8 million Dollar loss) AAA gaming is going to be only filled with even more High profile IPs trying to make the biggest bang for buck. Expect to see more of this stuff.
"AA" level games are now making a big comeback and are usually even more beloved by playerbase now. So hopefully that's the silver lining. Smaller, better games.
Navigate your way through 2024 with the World of Warcraft roadmap with Executive Producer Holly Longdale.
Nope.
They stopped being relevant 6 years ago.
Or better yet when IPads and apps became more dominant.
and I HATE APPLE products.
So heres the thing.
No desktop, no MMO.
Wtf. Someone has to ask this? Just look at the 100s of millions playing them.
"Are MMO’s Still Relevant?" I would say yes they are.
The main issue with the MMO market currently is people aren't taking risks, everyone is staying in the comfort zone, using the same old mechanics as the more successful MMO's (SWTOR, Elder Scrolls Online.
Another issue is that dev's are still using the P2P model which, while it does give them the income they need it's also a dying model. It's been shown with games like LOTRO and GW2 that F2P with the marketplace can work if done right, just don't make it Pay to Win.
move away from the same of mechanics that we have used for years and using a relevant business model is what the MMO market needs right now, I'm going to say thank god for Guild Wars 2 releasing next month so hopefully other dev's can see a good success story (hopefully)