Do MMOs "Matter" Anymore?

Maverick827

With World of Warcraft, it felt more like a movement than a video game. I know that sounds pretentious, but that game had (has?) such a huge and active community that it was hard not to stumble into players in every corner of the internet. The game spawned many large fan websites like MMO-Champion and really popularized / standardizd the "item database" model (wowhead). Hell, entire guilds were paid to professionally complete raid content, and many players followed and rooted for these guilds like sports teams!

Its popularity in media and pop culture was obviously huge. The commercials, the South Park episode. I think every single police/hospital/etc. procedural show of the 2005 - 2010 era had at least one episode revolving around a character whose crime/death involved some fictional WoW clone the show made up. If you wanted your plot to involve video games, it was going to name-drop World of Warcraft.

New WoW patches and expansions were big news. There would be front page articles on major gaming news websites for routine content patches. It was like every single game news website became a WoW fan website for a few days every few months.

Since I quit WoW, I've played Rift, SWTOR, and ESO, and obviously none of them have even come close to "mattering" as much as WoW did, but because of that, none of them feel like they "matter" as much to me, either.

What popular fan sites have any of these games spawned? For ESO the only contender is TamrielFoundry, but that website has been dead for months. Is there a chance that ESO Patch 1.5 will even get a small article on, say, GameSpot? Will there ever be an ESOCon? Piggybacking on QuakeCon is close, but no cigar.

This is actually why I think the new ESO Live series is really important. It makes the community seem bigger, seem more important and active than it probably is. When the game's community seems more important, playing and participating in said community feels more worthwhile.

I play Magic: the Gathering, and every weekend I can watch a large tournament broadcasted on Twitch with great production values, like a football fan might watch an NFL game. It makes it seem like the game "matters" more because I'm able participate (passively) in the game/culture in other ways through other media.

Does anyone else feel like this? Will an MMO ever "matter" again? Is "mattering" reliant solely on numbers? I think not, because EVE gets a lot of exposure with how epic/brutal/intensive it is. There are stories of backstabs and coups that make their way into Cracked articles and whatnot, so there's that.

Can ESO find a way to "matter?"

GreySix

Tried getting into WoW, with the starter pack thing. Couldn't do it. Didn't see the draw or appeal.

To each his own I suppose.

ers101284b14_ESO

I don't think they matter as much anymore. WoW is still the king who is losing steam and came in at a time when there were less options. Now we have so many freaking MMO's it's like there is a new one every week. The market is so saturated what is going to have to happen is the MMO market is going to have to crash and no longer be profitable, after which a new MMO is going to have to step up and do things that no one has ever seen before to regain interest.

This might have to happen with the game industry in general but I think that's whats going to happen to "Matter" again.

kevlarto_ESO

I think mmo's as we know them might be slowly going away to be replaced by who knows what. Players have changed over the years technology has been changing the way we play. Seems like no game company can make anything to a keep lot of players happy and playing these days.

Sallington

If ESO pushes out more community content (events, appearance enhancements, "holidays", guild halls/housing, etc), it's going to go a very long way. That is what ESO is lacking most. The combat is the best around, the questing is the best around, the graphics are the best around, Cyrodil (minus the crashes) is stellar.

All it needs is that sense of community for it to do well for a very long time.

deepseamk20b14_ESO

besides the fact that ESO clearely came out way to early and lacked much needed content, I think because of the shear amount of games out these days people are simply spread out. People get so elitist about the specific game they play, majority of the time they refuse to even try another game and many of the times talk smack about said other game without ever even playing it. Not to mention the quality of people in general is slowly going down...

GreySix

deepseamk20b14_ESO wrote: »

Not to mention the quality of people in general is slowly going down...

True. People suck.

Armitas

I think for an MMO it is the fact that people are there that makes it "matter". I noticed this with games like Diablo and dungeon siege. For the most part they are the same type of game, but one I could player for years and the other I could play a little bit longer than the story lasts. I could repeat the same story to enjoy it, but I could not continue my original character for the loot alone.

The hook of both games is the loot, but it's the fact that people are there that it begins to matter. Whether it be the shared excitement in the search for loot, the uniqueness of having rare loot, or the possibility to compare yourself to others the game begins to matter because people are involved.

Games like Lost Odyssey matter to me, but my involvement there doesn't matter. Here I am effecting things in the world of other living beings. It is only because life exists that anything could have meaning; so it's no wonder that what matters resides around the living.

Wow had a lot of external hype with it that excited and manipulated people into joining it. They developed a notion that playing the game meant you mattered, and people who played other games mattered less in the scheme of things. I don't think they set out to do that, but I think it developed into that.

To really make something matter you got to start with the people. You need a good platform, but that will only go so far. You have to whip up the people that play it.

R1ckyDaMan

I think most people grew up and dont want a game like wow anymore, yet companies just look at the figures and say hey lets do what they did!

I never played wow, I had a choice.. I had wow and gw1 in front of me, one wanted a sub and one did not, I chose gw1 and six years of joy so I never experienced wow. I did download it but it looked like a steaming pile so I got rid pronto....

As someone else said in another thread, this is the elder scrolls and it matters to elder scrolls fans alot, and it should be its own definition of an mmo.

reften

EQ was before WoW and better.WoW was too cartoonish. ESO has the best PvP of any game. Either way "matters" is all opinion. And the answer is yes for me.

MikeBob

Do MMOs "Matter" Anymore?

That so many people currently play MMOs makes the answer to that question a fairly obvious and resounding 'Yes,' in my view.

Keep in mind that back when games like UO, AO, EQ, and WoW were launched, there were (relatively speaking) very few MMOs, period.

Since that time, the market for online video games (MMOs predominantly, but not exclusively) has absolutely exploded - and now, instead of everyone playing one (or more) of a dozen or so online games, many more people are playing way more MMOs than were in existence all those years ago.

The upshot is that, even though many people may have left the games that pioneered the MMO market (perhaps even in droves), they didn't all just decide to start reading books or playing pinochle - they've migrated to a veritable plethora of newer, smaller games.

In light of this, I submit that ESO does 'matter.'

reften

deepseamk20b14_ESO wrote: »

besides the fact that ESO clearely came out way to early and lacked much needed content, I think because of the shear amount of games out these days people are simply spread out. People get so elitist about the specific game they play, majority of the time they refuse to even try another game and many of the times talk smack about said other game without ever even playing it. Not to mention the quality of people in general is slowly going down...

Need to run w better people

Gulvar

As others have stated ESO seriously needs more fluff for townies and people who want to do something besides exp or pvp.

A large issue with MMOs these days are the communities. I can't get some friends to even try ESO because of things they have read about the community. It's a shame because there are decent people in the game but not a game session goes by where I don't /ignore people. I will say that the vulgar and racist tirade reports are no longer every session but ZOS still has some people to permaban. The game has a really bad rep and those who only play ESO may not realize it.

Another community issue is the constant ranting and raving by people about how any MMO they aren't playing is stupid and the people who play it are stupid. I don't blame developers for shying away from MMOs. At any given moment someone who has never played their product will be spewing venom about it.

ESO has a lot going for it. It made some enormous mistakes which I believe it can correct but I think it can be a solid MMO if ZOS, while maintaining their philosophy, becomes more accepting of what has made other games great and continues to ban some of our rejects.

Frenkthevile

WoW was such a delusion for me. I played for 2 months the Panda's Expansion...soooo easy and childish imho.
Anyway if you have fun, why asking for bigger numbers?
Now the most played vg are Dota2&LOL and MOBAs like these...and they're SO poor of contents, graphics, and innovations that i really can't understand their success lol.

Nox_Aeterna

Well ESO big patches do appear at IGN i believe , if it is a good or bad thing for the game on the other hand is another matter :P.

Mostly people just use said news to bash on the game more and more on the comments.

loudent

I think its too hard to make an MMO today that appeals to everyone. We're all expecting WoW levels right out of the gate and forget it took wow the better part of a decade to get where it was at it's height.

Audigy

I think you can say that gaming in general has left the TV and moved purely to the internet now which makes it look less popular.

About 15 years ago you had a few TV channels that covered gaming, while having a website where you could get in touch with those that were watching the channel.

You had special guests in these shows like for instance Peter Molyneux, Bashnik, Ghostcrawler, Iwata etc. These shows were on a daily basis and featured everything from previews, live interviews, blizzcon & quakecon videos but also lets plays. A lot of young gamers celebrated the journalists, developers but also whole gaming companies like gods and community events were done.

However, over the years more and more content was moved from the TV studio to the websites, mainly because of the amount of money that it required to run a full show in TV compared to just post an article on a website. Paying one writer is a lot easier than paying a whole crew at the set.

This was also the time when people started making their own gaming shows in the internet also known as lets play. What professional journalists did in TV they now did on YT and Twitch and this for free - every gaming companies dream --> free promotion and no work for them either.

The very tight and knit market that existed before was now opened up and wide spread.

All the people that were clustered together at one tv channel with its respective website began to spread out over multiple websites and YouTube accounts.

This was also the time when developers and officials disappeared more from the spotlight.
A community manager that was almost every month in TV was now only known to you as a "name" but no longer a face. This of course creates a less deep relationship between the gamer and the game itself.

Last but not least people get older, priorities shift and gaming isn't the main hobby for most of them anymore.


All of this leads to a "less mattering game" that you describe OP.


I am sure that the current still existing gaming conventions will disappear in the next few years as well, while being moved purely into the office of gaming companies like we see right now with Jess & Gina. It costs a lot less than hosting a panel at the convention + it reaches a much bigger audience.


Its the same with sports btw. back in the days a journalist traveled to an event, today he often sits at home and casts from there. I know its hilarious but unfortunately the truth - money rules all in this world.

R1ckyDaMan

loudent wrote: »

I think its too hard to make an MMO today that appeals to everyone. We're all expecting WoW levels right out of the gate and forget it took wow the better part of a decade to get where it was at it's height.

Do not speak for everyone, From what I have seen/heard I want as far the opposite of wow you can get

samueltannerb14_ESO

If you are talking pure numbers, then no single MMO will have the multi-million player base that WoW has. Players and developers both need to adjust their expectations, and realize that 1 million players is the new gold standard.

NakedSnake

Mark my words, in the future all games will be MMOs

renton1x1x1

When Wow came there were a couple of smaller mmo's asheron's call,ultima online, Doac, guild wars and couple of others. Now there are 100's of MMO's of different types in different markets.

MMo's matter to me because i simply have more fun playing these than other types of games. I was really looking forward to destiny once i played it to paraphrase angry joe "is that it". To be honest i don't why i like it i just get something from playing mmo that other games just dont have.