Are you excited about the upcoming flood of mobile MMOs for iPhone or Android? Or is that a game full of mysteries for you?
Friday is question day. As is the case every weekend, we want to discuss with you again today and talk about the changes in the colorful landscape of MMORPGs to exchange opinions and find out how our community feels about certain topics. Today, we’re also discussing (as the name of our site somehow suggests) MMORPGs.
Regardless of how you look at it, classic MMORPGs are currently in a difficult situation. Those who want to express it a bit more dramatically could also claim that MMORPGs are currently “dying,” and they wouldn’t be wrong. In the Asian market, more and more MMORPGs are “going down the drain,” publishers are withdrawing from the PC market and focusing on mobile.
Here too, a grim picture is slowly emerging. In addition to some perennial giants like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2, more and more providers have to fold, cease operations, or generate new revenue streams (like recently Rift). The trend has been clear for some time: mobile gaming is becoming more important.
But can the concept of a mobile MMORPG really work? Publishers and developers are firmly convinced of that. Although there is currently a lack of “mobile AAA titles,” it seems just a matter of time before they conquer the market in Asia and will then be played millions of times here as well. NCSoft opened a mobile studio in the USA for a lot of money a few months ago.
Surely many mechanics would need to be changed and adapted for the mobile market, which is a process in which the two types of games can inspire each other. After all, more and more “mobile/browser game” elements are appearing in MMORPGs, so the step in the other direction also makes sense.
Cortyn says: Ahahaha. No. Seriously, just no. For me, “mobile gaming” still encompasses a secret round of “Pokémon Red,” which you played under the covers while you were supposed to be sleeping in for math class. I can certainly understand that people find pleasure in the “typical” money traps in the mobile sector and temporarily lose themselves in “Heroes Charge” or similar games.
But for me, an MMO is still a game that I play on the computer or at worst on the console, where I feel comfortable, can spend a lot of time at once, and am not bound to a small display. Maybe it has to hit me cold before I can bring myself to really dive into mobile gaming. But as long as I still have enough alternatives on the PC, that is a distant future for me.
But enough about me, how do you see it? Can you imagine succumbing to the mobile MMO market if it truly blooms? Or does an MMO only work in the familiar home environment in front of the big screen? Are you perhaps looking forward to a specific mobile MMO? Let us know in the comments!
