For many years, genre fans have been waiting for an MMORPG to come along that can truly excite. At the Grindfest 2026, we will give a voice to 6 renowned industry veterans who analyze the current challenges of MMO development.
The history of MMORPGs is long and shaped equally by winners and losers. Unfortunately, there have been more disappointments and defeats in the past decade, or to put it differently: MMORPGs with severe false starts, projects halted while still in development, questionable experiments with crypto/NFT models, challenging pay-to-win payment models, or also depressingly unfinished MMO tests.
The few encouraging successes of recent years can be counted on one hand. But why is that? Why is it so difficult for even experienced teams to release an MMORPG that can be both successful and exciting? And how can today’s challenges in MMO development be overcome?
Precisely with these questions, we approached various industry veterans for our Grindfest theme week 2026, who have shaped the genre with their games for decades and wish to continue doing so in the future. And they responded!
Speaking in alphabetical order: Benjamin Zuckerer (CipSoft – Tibia, Persist Online), Greg Street (formerly WoW, LoL MMORPG, and Project Ghost), Jack Emmert (Cryptic – Star Trek Online, Neverwinter, Champions Online), Moritz Bokelmann (Sandbox Interactive – Albion Online), Raph Koster (formerly Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies – now: Stars Reach) and Rich Lambert (Studio Game Director at Zenimax Online – Elder Scrolls Online).
In this week, exciting articles about MMORPGs will await you every day. Included: nostalgic retrospectives, thrilling analyses by renowned industry veterans, previews of upcoming online role-playing games, and entertaining streams.
Here’s the program for the big MMORPG theme week 2026 by MeinMMO
MMORPGs must be “unknown monsters”
MeinMMO: “In the past, everything was an adventure; today, it is a second job.” Players’ expectations have changed significantly. While exploring together and community were at the forefront before, today efficiency, min-maxing, and “guides on the first day“ dominate. How much does this changed player behavior limit the classic MMORPG feel, and how do developers respond to it?
Benjamin Zuckerer: I don’t believe that we can turn back time. Information spreads within minutes today. Guides, builds, and optimization strategies have become part of modern gaming culture. The question is: How do we still create adventure?
From my perspective, this cannot be achieved by hiding information but by creating situations that cannot be completely predicted. Therefore, we at Persist Online strongly focus on player interaction. When I enter a dangerous zone, I may know which enemies spawn there. However, I don’t know if I will encounter a hostile guild, if someone wants to steal my loot, or if an alliance forms from a random encounter.
That’s where stories arise. For me, the true allure of MMORPGs was never solely about discovering an unknown monster. It has always been about the unpredictable stories that arise through other players. Tibia has been demonstrating this for decades, and that’s exactly why we pursue a very player-driven approach at Persist Online.
Benjamin Zuckerer has been at CipSoft for almost 20 years and has worked his way up through various positions. Today, Ben shares the management with Stephan Vogler and oversees the development of Persist Online as a product manager.
Under the leadership of Zuckerer and Vogler, CipSoft has recorded the strongest years since its founding in 2001.
With Persist Online, the team is currently working on the first new MMORPG since Tibia, which counts DayZ and Escape from Tarkov among its sources of inspiration.
Greg Street: I agree it changes things a lot. There is little job in a player experimenting or theory crafting to find the best build when those answers are all known and solved.
The best solution is to make the answers very situational. This build may be best for boss 2, but is weaker for boss 3, and by the way what if you can’t assume boss 3 will act the same every time? The more the endgame is focused on single target static DPS again a HP sponge the easier it is to log and model these answers.
Consider a Diablo approach where there may be a best in a lot item but there are so many items that you can’t just plan around when you get that BiS item. Variability matters a lot here (as in the next answer). I think a lot of players approach greeting with a mindset that everything is trash until they get their best in slot and it’s a reasonable expectation that they will get it after a few tries.
Greg Street has already introduced his Project Ghost to MMO fans in an early prototype version:
Jack Emmert: I think, as always, it’s vital to focus on what the players’ want. If players want to min-max – if they want to make knowledgeable decisions on their builds – then I, as a developer, should make sure the players can do those things in the game without needing to go to YouTube or Discord or any other place.
I would also add that today’s market doesn’t give a game hours before making a decision – if the game doesn’t show fun within 15 minutes, it’s on to the next game. Heck, in the early MMO’s the motto was “the game doesn’t start till End Game” – sometimes 100 hours in! That’s simply not viable today. Players put up with it back then because it was the only way one could play with other people. Now? Every game is multiplayer it seems.
Anyone wanting to develop a competitive MMORPG must plan many years of development and expect an AAA budget. This was the case 20 years ago, and it hasn’t changed today.
However, what has generally changed is that the development of large AAA games takes increasingly longer and becomes progressively more expensive. If a Star Wars: The Old Republic costs a staggering 300 million US dollars in the 2010s, a comparably ambitious project would likely cost double today.
Raph Koster: I think we have to take a step back and not take the changes at face value. Why is it dominated by efficiency and min-maxing? (The guides phenomenon is not new, that’s been there since the MUD days; the evolution has been more about volume and sheer easy access to them). And I think the answer has to be FOMO – people feel competitive, they feel like they are “wasting” their play time if they aren’t keeping up or executing at a certain level.
To some degree that has to be driven by other players telling them that – probably because grouping up or guilding requires specific gear sets or the like, and then it becomes a positive feedback loop. And why would grouping up or guilding call for specific gear sets? Probably because something in the gameplay that guilds engage in requires it. Setting guilds in competition over raid efficiency, or similar mechanics.
By the way, Raph Koster showed us his new MMO Stars Reach during Grindfest 2026 and answered many of our questions:
And we have to remember that a lot of people don’t want that sort of pressure all the time. A lot of people just want a cozy retreat with less pressure, or a fun get-together like a friendslop vibe, without the min-max emphasis. An MMO doesn’t have to be all one-note, it’s a whole world.
People are still people, is what I am saying. But incentives really powerfully shape what people do, in a game or an online world.
Our general approach is to make these ways to play be opt-in. You shouldn’t feel the pressure to min-max unless that’s the way you want to play. And we make a lot of use of proc gen and emergence so that guides have less to grab onto, so that there’s still mystery in the world.
Rich Lambert: I don’t know that I would agree that player mindset has much changed. Players have always been fascinated with min-maxing and optimization. Even in the early days of the genre – The Realm, Ultima Online, EverQuest for example – there were guides for efficiency, “best” builds, and the best ways to progress… you just had to know where to find them.
What is different now is the speed and scale. Because of public test cycles, previews, early access, and creator culture, a lot of that information exists before a game or update even launches. It is also an actual career now for many
people, so this stuff spreads faster and is everywhere.
For designers, the reality is that you cannot hide as much as you could 30 years ago. It’s a lot harder to keep secrets or challenge players through discovery, because the second someone figures something out, they post it.
The other reality is that you have to respect a player’s time more. It is one of the most precious things they have. In the age of social media and the huge number of great games available today, if players start to lose interest, they have loads of other options. Back in the day, that just was not the case.
On the next page, we continue with the question of rising development costs, the players’ hunger for ever-new content, and the danger of burnout.
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