Many MMORPG veterans complain that no new online role-playing games are coming out and that those that are coming are not the right ones. “You need to rethink if you want to have fun with new MMORPGs in 2021,” says our author Schuhmann.
When I started as a freelance author at MeinMMO in 2013, I thought: We are making an MMORPG site. Guild Wars 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic had just been released. Final Fantasy XIV was just struggling to crawl out of its early grave.
There were gems like The Secret World to discover. World of Warcraft had just passed its golden age with Lich King a few years prior. In 2014, just a few months later, absolute blockbuster games like WildStar and The Elder Scrolls Online would be released. That’s what I thought back then.
Today we know: Everything turned out differently. Gems like The Secret World remained undiscovered for years. WildStar quickly faded away. And after even Star Wars and The Elder Scrolls flopped upon release, huge brands, no one dared to touch MMORPGs in the West for years. The few titles that were still planned were canceled.
For years, MMORPGs were the trending genre: Everyone wanted to create the next WoW to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and become rich. But just when we started with MeinMMO, that time was over. Other genres and games replaced MMORPGs and WoW. Suddenly we were writing about guardians in space, about Pokémon on the streets of Germany, about the soldiers of Call of Duty and the strangely costumed crazies in Fortnite.
Everything had changed. What has not changed over the years, however, are MMORPG players.
MMORPG players still behave in 2020 as if 3 new top MMORPGs from Western studios are released every year, consuming budgets in the triple-digit millions and taking 7 years of development time.
“Too much PvP, too little PvP, too much old, too much new”
When MMORPG veterans see a new game, they already wrinkle their noses:
- The graphics don’t suit them, they look too colorful, too Asian, outdated, or somehow overloaded with effects.
- The direction of the game puts them off from the start – some simply don’t get along with PvP. Why are PvP games even released, when everyone knows they flop all the time, one wonders.
- Others curse every game that offers no “full loot PvP,” it seems the lucky bear faction has prevailed with their constant whining: a new PvE game that is doomed from the start, they judge.
- Either a game does not offer enough new (seen it all before) or a game scares away with a new idea, like the ISO perspective (“That’s not an MMORPG for me”).
- That mobile MMORPGs have been booming in Asia for years and that the wave is also spilling over to Europe and North America doesn’t sit well with them.
- And above all, the MMORPG industry apparently develops completely away from the interests of local players.
- On advice to look at old MMORPGs, they happily shrug it off: These old clunkers are worn out, no one wants to see them anymore, they’ve achieved everything.
Most MMORPG players lose interest in a new MMORPG the moment they see it for the first time.
Only indie MMORPGs make exceptions: They have the advantage of not showing concrete content initially, but rather presenting concepts over the years which players can fall in love with until the developer hooks them.
But now and then, it actually still happens that a high-quality MMORPG is released or at least becomes playable in the West. Some MMORPG fans have been waiting for “Lost Ark” for 6 years after they saw the first demo on YouTube in 2014. Lost Ark is an action MMORPG from an ISO perspective that finally released in South Korea in 2018 and was one of the most successful new MMORPGs in years.
Some particularly bold players were able to play Lost Ark through backdoors in Russia. But what was the reaction?
A player writes on MeinMMO:
I checked it out 4 or 5 months ago and was very enthusiastic at first. That lasted for 2 weeks and then that was it: PvP had some problems in my opinion and the PvE content was very unremarkable.
A disappointed player of Lost Ark
A new MMORPG is enthusiastically played for two weeks and then dismissed as a flop.
MMORPG fans searching for the great love like the first time
That hasn’t changed since 2013 either: MMORPG fans who really play a new MMORPG expect it to engage them for months, just like the first MMORPG they ever played in which everything was new to them. No matter if it was Dark Age of Camelot, Runes of Magic, World of Warcraft, or Guild Wars 2. If a game doesn’t offer that, a bland taste sets in quickly, motivation fades, and euphoria evaporates. Suddenly, everything is the same again: The player fell in love with an MMORPG in 2 weeks and then unloving.
MMORPG players always search for the feeling of endlessly falling into a game just like the first time. But they will not be able to experience it because they already bring too much prior knowledge and cannot rediscover the game concepts as they once did.
After years of exploration in the first MMORPG, the mechanics have been internalized. Those who have explored a foreign city can quickly unveil another. Those who have freed a princess and slain the dragon know how it goes: The challenges have lost their magic.
Are MMORPG players now doomed to never experience that kick they seek again? Yes, probably. The exhilaration of discovering the first MMORPG and falling in love with the game will probably be experienced by most players only once in their lives.
5 tips to enjoy MMORPGs again
- It helps to change your expectations. Look at new MMORPGs and give them a chance before you judge them after 20 seconds and 3 keywords that you encounter while scanning an article about them.
- Lower your enthusiasm and expectations with new MMORPGs: Don’t hope that they will blow you away like the first game when you were a teenager. Instead, realize that even two weeks of excitement in an MMORPG is already something good and valuable. Maybe those two weeks will become two months if you don’t compare it right away to your first great love.
- Go back to MMORPGs that you once dismissed quickly. Games like ESO or Final Fantasy XIV are examples of games that have managed to recover and improve enormously after rough beginnings.
- The perhaps best advice: Try to find old friends and ask them if they want to discover a new MMORPG with you. MMORPGs are meant to be played together. This social bond is the glue that kept you in your first game for a long time. If you move as a nomad into a new game and right from the start feel like you are just visiting and looking around, no MMORPG in the world will be able to hold you.
- If you don’t find gaming buddies from the past, be open to making connections in new MMORPGs, find a guild or gaming friends. Talk to people, write in chat, try to find connections.
You will not be able to change the new MMORPGs that will be released, but you need to find ways to deal with the offerings that are there. I know that nobody wants to hear that. I see the frustration in the comment sections about new MMORPGs and the offering that is there. I understand the longing for the one MMORPG experience from the past and for the new exciting thing.
But ultimately it is each MMORPG player’s decision to let themselves be frustrated by new MMORPGs or to make the best of the genre.
Anyone who has no interest in finding fun in MMORPGs and would rather become an experienced and bitter veteran in online gaming, we recommend the clear counter-program to this article:
