Fighting Bots and Player Fatigue
Lost Ark had even more tailwind at launch than New World, as the online role-playing game from Smilegate had already captivated numerous fans with its Korean and Russian versions. Especially the spectacular presentation and the surprisingly powerful battles from an isometric perspective made players crave more.
However, after the launch, Lost Ark faced the typical endgame problems of free-to-play MMORPGs that come from Asia. The randomness factor in item upgrades was frustrating, the resulting grind was too hard, and then there were also countless bots.
It is not surprising that developers have been trying for many months to improve exactly these two issues. In fact, even today, despite many new contents, the effort is relatively low to prepare a hero for the current endgame.
However, it is a well-known problem in the genre: once the mass of players has left, it is hard to incentivize them to return. Currently, about 55,000 players are on peak times in Arkesia, which is just a fraction of the all-time high.
The Most Successful WoW Expansions Are the Worst
When it comes to the best expansions for World of Warcraft, fans of the Blizzard MMORPG often mention Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, or Legion. However, the most successful expansions at launch have different names.
The expansion Battle for Azeroth, released in August 2018, became the fastest-selling expansion in Blizzard’s history with 3.4 million units sold on the first day. That record stood for two years.
In November 2020, Shadowlands reached 3.7 million units sold at launch. This was also the most successful launch of a PC title. At least for a month. In December, Cyberpunk 2077 finally claimed the top spot with 4.64 million pre-orders of the PC version.
What both expansions have in common: they are likely to be among the least popular WoW expansions along with Cataclysm and Warlords of Draenor. Recently, Blizzard developers analyzed the mistakes of Shadowlands.
Battle for Azeroth failed because player beta feedback was ignored and non-functional endgame systems were released. Additionally, there were some poor decisions regarding the story and characters (keyword: Sylvanas Windrunner).
In Service Hell
Let’s stay with Blizzard. After all, Diablo 4 looks back on an incredibly successful launch. No other launch from the Californians was as successful. Within five days, they had already generated $666 million in revenue.
However, the developers did not continue with this rosy picture. Blizzard has not been able to engage the majority of the community with the current seasons. Instead of exciting mechanics and long-term motivating content, there is bland content that quickly becomes boring.
The competition is happy. Last Epoch was able to attract a strong 264,708 players simultaneously to its servers at launch in February 2024. But even here, the developers at Eleventh Hour Games are unable to retain hack-and-slash fans long-term – currently, only up to 52,000 players are on the servers.
More on this: Last Epoch is the newest competitor for Diablo 4, now only has “Balanced” reviews on Steam
A Star Wars MMORPG? From Bioware? Hype!
What was going on in the MMORPG community when the EA bosses announced that the role-playing experts from Bioware were making a new online role-playing game for Star Wars called Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR). The hype was immense. The expectations were high.
Accordingly, the rush at the launch in December 2011 was massive. In February 2012, EA proudly reported 1.7 million active subscribers and more than two million units sold. However, the high altitude did not last long. As early as 2013, the switch to a free-to-play model followed.
One problem at the launch of the Bioware MMORPG was that after the credits of the main story, SWTOR felt complete. The endgame turned out to be a dull collection of daily quests. It took an eternity for new story content to arrive. By that time, the hype had long since faded.
Which MMOs from the list did you play for a long time? Which titles might you even still play today? Or are you one of the players who were disappointed at launch? Let us know in the comments.
Looking for alternatives? The 15 currently best MMOs and MMORPGs in 2024
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