Why Is Every MMO Dying EXCEPT This One?

when you look at the population of every major MMORPG and notice that every one of them has seen its player-based decline over the last 10 years except for two it makes you stop and wonder what are the declining MMOs doing wrong and what are the growing MMOs doing right what about the long-raning king of the genre World of Warcraft it's public knowledge that it's been bleeding players for a long time and yet you can tell there are so many players hoping each expansion will be the one that hooks them yet again each expansion creates a massive mountain of Interest whereas other MMOs are only generating mole Hills then there's Elder Scrolls Online it suffered a near-fatal launch but committed to fixing the game's major bugs and drop the requirement on its subscription to lure players back in since then the games had some good years and some bad years and it's held on to a respectable number of players but the trend is definitely there it has been on the decline especially in the last year Guild Wars 2 same thing another massively successful MMO trending down over the long run though it is worth noting over the last two years this game has reversed course on that Trend and is actually seeing some growth not surprising this game did a lot of things right in recent expansions between its mounts its story and its own exploration and what feels like a renewed focus on the game itself by the developers in recent years if we look at RuneScape same thing it's been bleeding players and interest for a long time now still holding on to a very respectable player base size but definitely a trending down while these are some of the biggest games bleeding players the trend isn't unique to these games it's across the entire genre let's take a look at a few more Black Desert online Tara Destiny 2 Everquest 2 Lord of the Rings Online ion swotor you can pick almost any MMO out there and the graph is going to look almost exactly the same interestingly there's only two games that escape this trend and they couldn't be more different from one another and that's Final Fantasy 14 and old school RuneScape when I see something like this it always makes me wonder when I look at something thriving where everything else is struggling to survive and even dying I want to know why I have hundreds and sometimes thousands of hours in almost every MMO I mentioned so far so in this video let's start by taking a look at what Final Fantasy 14 does differently Final Fantasy 14 teen is a buy and then sub to play MMO that gives you 60 levels for free to get the hooks in you right off the bat this is a great and confident approach to monetization you don't have to commit a dime to the game until you know you love it personal preference aside there literally is no reason not to give it a try then if you do decide that you enjoy it the mandatory sub that you're paying allows them to avoid the pitfalls that come with free to play games like pay to win pay for convenience and the general cannibalism of content that free to play games experience as they place all their Chase items in the cash shop let me explain some people say that subscription-based MMOs are history but first speaking of History rise of Kingdoms is the sponsor of today's video rise of Kingdoms is a history based strategy game with 13 different civilizations to choose from like Roman Viking or Egyptian each civilization excels in different stats based on their historical background and has commanders to pair up with your army with over 100 million downloads the developers have decided to expand a PC so that you can enjoy this great game on a bigger screen with smoother real-time strategy PC controls hundreds of players can participate in battles on screen at once and now on PC it looks better and smoother than ever before all the battles are happening in real time on the map and anyone can join or leave the battle at any time you can select troops by dragging your mouse and then send them off to battle with a right click just like a PC strategy game you can join alliances with up to 140 players and compete with other alliances for control of valuable resources to make your Empire stronger outsmart your enemies whenever you can if you see an ally being attacked it's your call to defend them or to fire off a surprise counter-attack on the enemy there is no limit to the strategy you can use to defeat your enemies so support my channel by downloading the game from my link in the description or scan the QR code on screen right now for the mobile version you can also get a special bonus on PC if you use code play ROK for PC have fun building your Empire in Rise of Kingdoms let's get back to it I think the subscription model has turned out to be one of Final Fantasy 14's best selling points not the fact that you have to pay 12 bucks a month to play it but the fact that you don't have to spend another dime beyond that in return you get a finished product which is incredibly rare these days Final Fantasy 14 does not engineer problems so that they they can save the solution and in 2022 that's honestly such a massive breath of fresh air that does not go unnoticed by the average player today we are so used to trudging through games that are built with obvious avoidable flaws put in the game to extract money from us a lot of times we don't spend the money out of principle or frugality and we endure this inconvenience or the next one until we decide not to anymore and we quit then there's the expansions themselves Final Fantasy expansions are massive and actually worth getting excited about the money the game is making is being poured back into the game you can see it in last year alone Final Fantasy 14 had the end Walker expansion that came with a ton of new zones not one but two new classes and a ton of new dungeons trials and raids and an enormous amount of earnable weapon skins Mount skins armor skins and pets on top of all of that every quarter or so Final Fantasy gets another patch for free that is often as big as other MMOs annual expansions this year they included things like quests dungeons raids and an entire new housing Island system and a slew of earnable Cosmetics now when you come compare this to what other major MMOs are adding the differences very noticeable swotor's most recent expansion added about two hours of story content on each side in a game that is most known for its story content eso's newest expansion added a new Zone and a raid and a card game video added a new Zone and a new class and Guild Wars actually had a respectable expansion with the new class spec for every class new zones and a new Mount type but it took three years to come out Wow's expansions are the only ones that come close in terms of size and scope with dragonfly adding a new class a new race and a new class of mounts among their other usual editions like multiple new zones Dungeons and raids again when you look at what each of these MMOs is adding year over year it's easy to see why some keep players coming back more than others the MMOs without mandatory subscriptions are really struggling in terms of content additions and enjoyable time syncs their expansions are smaller and the number of earnable weapons and mount Cosmetics are generally non-existent which means players have a lot less to do so they get bored sooner and leaves sooner so Begins the Unstoppable cycle of fewer people spending money in the cash shop which means the developers have to crank up monetization while cutting back on the scope of expansions even more further Expediting the decline of their population we have seen it so many times and we're seeing it again in almost every non-sub MMO today Final Fantasy 14 did not concede its sub despite its disastrous launch and I think that it owes a lot of a success today to that if Final Fantasy 14 was just another game where you paid for the best Cosmetics paid for the best weapons and paid for the best mounts and then paid for convenience on top of all of that I think it too would be experiencing the same decline in interest as the rest of the genre MMO developers figured out that they could make more money in the short term if they sold the coolest things in the cash shop and now they are realizing that they make a lot less money in the long term if they put all the coolest things in the cash shop saying that monetizing all of the best cosmetics in an MMO is better than going full pay to win is like saying jumping off of a high-rise is better than jumping out of an airplane you're killing your game either way one is just faster than the other it's incredibly simple as soon as an MMO starts asking how it can make more money out of players before they instead of asking what experience and rewards they can add to keep them around the cycle has begun the cannibalism of content by the cash up has begun the decline of the MMO is inevitable because the core philosophy of the MMO is being eroded the goal of the developer has shifted from retain the player to get the player to spend money in the cash shop explore kill loot doesn't work if the cool loot is in the cash shop why should you explore and kill the developer is now trying to sell you your rewards rather than encouraging you to go out and earn them almost all of the dying MMOs today suffer from a much more obvious problem Western audiences don't like pay to win and don't seem to stick around long when too much of the game's monetization model is based on pay for convenience which if we're being honest often ends up drifting all the way into pay to win for a long time wow did what Final Fantasy 14 is doing before Final Fantasy 14 did it while was adding tons of content while I was adding tons of burnable Cosmetics tons of burnable mounts and earnable pets so what changed for Wow Wow was once a sub to play MMO with all the best Cosmetics earned in game and no pay to win it was the biggest MMO of all time but wow changed it started making some of the best cosmetics and some of the best mounts cash shop items unforgivable you release a mouse and not just Annie YouTube George not a bear but the Mount the celestial steam it also added wow tokens which unfortunately is really just a fancy way to say pay to win exchanging real world money for in-game items and currency is the definition of pay to win wow tokens are probably the single most complained about feature in the entire game and literally every player saw that coming the only reason adding wow tokens didn't do more damage faster is that they weren't added until 2015 when many players had sunk a decade of their lives into the game and they didn't see an immediately compelling option to switch over to to be fair wow isn't the only MMO to make this mistake but it is certainly the biggest MMO to fall into this trap ESO has a similar feature with crowns where the developers sanctioned players buying in-game gold with cash as long as they use crowns to do it same thing in Guild Wars 2 you can exchange in-game currency for cash up currency and vice versa the problem with this is now every item in the game has real world value every item you can earn someone else can buy it devalues player achievements and demotivates them from seeking out more more importantly it condenses an entire day week or months worth of memories into a forgettable 15 second card swipe here's has been gold distilling down the leveling process in an MMO that allows you to exchange cash for currency step one get a job step two get your paycheck from the job step 3 use your money to buy a boost to level 70. step 4 pay somebody else to boost you through dungeons to level 80. step 5 buy gold step 6 go to a naxromus gdkp step 7 bid on all the gear into gdkp and get full gear step 8 pay for an arena carry and step 9 buy Boe gear step 10 finally now you can play the game these are three of Final Fantasy 14's biggest competitors and they all caved on this topic and I honestly believe it's a large part of the answer as to why Final Fantasy 14 thrives while they bleed players it's a death of a Thousand Cuts By monetization first it was just a random Mount then it was all the best mounts first it was an armor set then it was all the best armor sets first it was failing to ban arm tears and then it was condoning rmt through the cash up currencies Final Fantasy 14 just has the purest monetization of the bunch and as a result has held onto the core MMO experience of Explorer kill and loot to make your character as powerful and as awesome looking as possible if we look at the more pay to win games their decline is even more sharp it's almost as if there's a direct correlation between the amount of pay to win and the speed at which your game becomes irrelevant here in the west obviously Western players don't like pay to win and sanctioning buying gold with real money is sanctioning pay to win it's done the game now contains a significant form of pay to win and it's a genie that can't be put back in the bottle well I suppose they could but I doubt they will the accountants don't see the money they are not making because of it they only see the money they are making because of it it's hard to prove a negative when they make less money this year than they did last year they don't see it as being due to their over monetization pushing players away they see it as the result of their under monetizing the players that are left incredible the Damage Done by wild tokens crowns and gems for gold doesn't stop there the economy no longer needs to be based on what a player can afford in game it becomes in part based on how much gold they can afford to buy out of game with their credit card inflation goes nuts and a new player enters the game looking at unreasonable prices and is left with two options buy gold with cash or grind out a now inflated amount of gold for themselves neither of which is terribly appealing Final Fantasy 14 on the other hand still puts all the best rewards in game and does not sanction the ability to turn those into cash transactions instead it would rather you go out and earn it and just like that the player has something to do when they log in alright the next item on the list is going to be the content itself first let's talk about the solo experience Final Fantasy 14 was built for the solo player but not at the expense of the group Player it is a highly curated Journey from start to finish built with a short attention span of today's MMO player in mind there's not a moment that the game isn't leading you by the hand to the next objective it's always there in the top left corner ushering you to the next plot point there is a continuous 10-year story woven through the the game seamlessly this achieves two things one the new player never signs in and finds themselves unsure of what to do next they always have an objective it's worth noting that they can deviate from this path if they want to there's plenty of horizontal content optional trials optional Dungeons and even optional jobs to level but the player can also choose the on-rails experience and soak up that main story the second thing is the quality of the story it's amazingly written with twists turns and jaw-dropping backstabs complete with music and cut scenes it's not perfect nothing is it's got way way too many dialogue boxes in my opinion that really serve to age the MMO but the story those dialog boxes tell is so good that it keeps players moving forward and for the players that choose to skip the dialogue boxes the cutscenes do a good job of presenting the key plot points so that they are mostly able to follow along as well Final Fantasy 14 focuses on delivering a masterfully told story which is something a lot of MMOs treat is optional when it's really not a good story fantastic lore it's critical to any great RPG while Final Fantasy 14 is an RPG MMO emphasis on the RPG first it is no slouch when it comes to group content this is another thing Final Fantasy 14 handles brilliantly most MMO players today are solo players and if the MMO they are playing does not do a good job of introducing them to dungeons or trials and other group content they simply won't participate in that content the story in Final Fantasy 14 consistently and seamlessly sends players into group content many of the dungeons are part of the story and must be completed to proceed with the story same with many of the trials the difficulty on this content is tuned down to what we'll call story mode difficulty but it still serves to introduce every single player to that type of content and once there many find that they enjoy it and begin to pursue it horizontally they deviate from the story to seek out the optional trials the optional raids for the fun of completing them but also for the incredible rewards and cosmetics that can be earned inside so despite being a solo MMO through and through Final Fantasy 14 ends up having every member of the community participate in a ton of group content every expansion this means you can always find a group for any dungeon trial or raid in the game level scaling ensures that it will always be fun and there won't be one person in the group killing everything and trivializing the content while you struggle to keep up I think other MMOs should recognize the success of Final Fantasy 14's approach to Dungeons and specifically trials you spawn in front of a boss and you can already tell 100 of the developers time and effort are put into this one fight there are no boring trash pulls to Wade through over and over no filler DPS sponge side bosses with low effort mechanics no long runs back when you wipe you just spawn in front of the boss the Final Act there are boss Transformations stage Transformations music changes and cut scenes it's a cinematic experience as well as a mechanically heavy experience with multiple levels of difficulty so that you can choose how hard you want it to be and if you do choose the hardest difficulties there are great rewards for your efforts the trials are great bite-sized group content that I always look forward to because they're spectacle and they're fun some other MMOs are noticing it looks like Guild Wars 2 has been inspired by these trials and its strike missions recently and I think think more MMOs would benefit from focusing on this quick high intensity mechanic heavy group content all Thriller No filler get in get out it works and it works well there just aren't enough people that want to devote two to six hours of their day to struggling through a raid anymore Final Fantasy 14's trials are the best part of that raid experience the final fight and its Loot and none of the filler that leads up to that anyways these are the things that I noticed when I played Final Fantasy 14 the game launched horribly they shut it down and perhaps the best decision they made was to not give up the subscription model by retaining that they ensured that they could continue to outdo themselves from one expansion to the next they were able to continue to give players great in-game rewards for their achievements rather than locking them all in a cash shop they were able to crank the Cinematic spectacles to 11 on the group content and I think that's something a lot of them most forget raids trials and dungeons they should be spectacles in 2022 and Beyond no one is impressed by running through a cave and killing things along the way anymore those days are over developers have to think Beyond on that give us stage Transformations give us boss Transformations give us epic soundtracks and if you won't Final Fantasy 14 will Final Fantasy 14 isn't perfect it's not a one size fits-all MMO the art style is hit and miss for a lot of players some people are never going to be okay with a flying car pulling up next to them in their fantasy MMO the base game has way too many dialogue boxes that make it feel old compared to Modern RPGs the questing experience is definitely carried by the story there's literally almost zero combat while questing it's mostly talking to one NPC and then the next until you unlock a dungeon or a trial but when you do get a solo Duty or a dungeon or a trial it's amazing Zone exploration is not as good as it is in other MMOs the most exciting thing that you might find is an ather current there is next to no reason to interact with Mobs and Overland content it's almost always better to leash them and then talk to the NPC that they were standing next to which is rough on immersion and finally if you're new to the game you're gonna have to spend a lot of hours working through the story alone before you can spend any significant amount of time with your friends but but despite all of this Final Fantasy 14 is one of only two MMOs that fall into s tier for me I absolutely love it but I also recognize this shortcomings it's exciting to imagine an MMO that does what Final Fantasy 14 does well while improving on what it does not I think there's absolutely room for another big MMO to succeed alongside Final Fantasy 14 and to even surpass it there is so much to be learned from its success and from the failure of its peers for the sake of the genre I just hope future MMOs are paying attention as for the future MMOs if your plan is to build an incredibly inconvenient MMO and sell us the convenience if your plan is to try to sell a Pay to Win MMO in the west if your plan is to be an MMO with all the best Cosmetics locked in the cash shop rather than earned well you just haven't been paying attention if you're still here hopefully you enjoyed the video so be sure to like And subscribe for more MMO content and a massive shout out for my YouTube members for supporting the channel if you want to become a YouTuber click the join button below and if you're not sure what to do next maybe check out one of the videos popping up on screen right now this video ran long so I'm gonna have to break the discussion old school RuneScape into the next video be sure to subscribe so you're alerted when I post it [Music]

Channel: Lucky Ghost

Views: 718,973

Keywords:

Id: gHzsRPmCaIE

Length: 18min 44sec (1124 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 15 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/LufgtStarstrike]

It's not even wow-bad, xiv-good tbqh.

WoW could be as good if not better (in MY view) as/than XIV without taking on a single aspect of in-game XIV, overall.

WoW has fallen into the short-term gain mindset (on the business side as well as in-game) and has a brutal lack of leadership and vision. The pieces are there to get back to the Legion days of popularity and competence... the leadership is not.

For those that gaf what some boomer-avatar dude has to say:

1) WoW token begone.
2) Ensure that in game mounts, 'mog etc at least holds up against the store bought items.
3) Focus store bought cosmetics on more "faction" or "NPC" vibes rather than "okay, this will be awesome and everyone will want it".
4) Squish iLevel a bit from bottom to top of tier. Make it easier for people to get into content...
4b) ... and also allow people to join a PVP season without getting ROFLstomped.
5) No consumable loss on death, instant respawns at boss doors, etc. Remove the outdated bs mechanics like this.
6) Long, world spanning quests for weapons and armour of legendary proportions. Doesn't mean they need to be OP... but bring some ADVENTURE back.
7) Continue to eliminate factions
8) Find a way to make servers not matter. At all. Feeble relic of a forgotten age.
9) Make open world events, quests etc feel more immersive- make them random af, rewarding and more than anything F U N.
10) Every single system put into place has to have a simple question asked: is...this... fun?
That's it.

[u/EffingMajestic]

Eyy, Lucky. Remember this guy from my ESO days

[u/Historical_Paper4110]

Said that FFXIV is not perfect, the cash shop exists but when you take a look at it deeply is less problematic than other cash shops.

Half the items there are in-game rewards from seasonal events that are unobtainable now (Christmas stuff, Easter, Summer, Halloween, etc) So if you have been playing the game, you already got these by doing the event.

A quarter of the items look horrible... egg hats? bedtime sleepers? horsehat...

There are emotes to drink tea... or to dance.. etc. If you are a Role Player I can see this annoying you. It feels the cash shop is really there for the... Role players... (or ERP is u fashion to F** someone with a horse head lol)

Then is cheap.. sure is not that important to some people but when u compare changing your race and appearance for £5.75 in FFXIV that (One character include all your jobs/classes on it) or $25.00 in WoW for 1 character (cant see the price in £) it feels less aggressive, feels to me the WoW one should allow more than 1 character.

No WoW Token... that is the big win.

What is bad? IMO I would say the 8 sits mount because is the only one, and the Cruise Chaser mount (basically because is a boss in the game and should be a drop then) The rest of the mounts are meh, a meme mount or you can find a similar and better one in game (I see you Ixion mount..)

[u/TrungDOge]

The term of " dying " are useless if they still generate much more money so they don't even care

[u/gideonidoru]

Google search interest doesn’t equal player base. His statement of decline and growth is based on bad data. I’ve had my wow account since vanilla and I haven’t searched Google in a decade about it

[u/confetylol]

maybe having the idea of having casual player's content progression being world quests and a miserable raid experience like LFR because normal and above has had an increasing barrier of entry for mmo players that are older and have less time every year is not good for the game

[u/JohnTheCodMan]

The search compare graphs are so relative.

Every time Asmon does this on stream its almost embarrassing how badly WoW, FF, and such get destroyed by certain other games.

[u/Serasul]

i see an future where we as players pay an monthly fee so that an legal bot players the mmo

and we just look in our account to look at what the bot has collected.

than we transmog our char and stream it public to show off to other players how good paid our bot is, because with extra money the bot gets boost or even more rare loot.