What kills multiplayer games

Rajaah

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I still play ESO and enjoy it. There is enough content to go through that it would take a year+ to get through it. If the goal is to just get to lvl cap and get 1 set of BiS armor for your spec, could probably do it in a few months or less. There is a ton to enjoy and explore if that is your cup of tea. Gear never gets reset and all content is still relevent due to their new sticker book system.

Lotro was a fun game long ago and had a ton of content. I enjoyed it for what it was. No clue how it holds up today...but i enjoyed it a decade or so ago.

LOTRO just recently added Mordor to the game, so the fact that it has a complete Shire-to-Mordor route is super appealing to me now. Last time I played it, I got to like level 30 and the only zones were the classic zones, so like up to Rivendell. Now you can walk all the way down through Rohan to Gondor to Mordor. They're still adding more, as well, like the mysterious lands south and east of Mordor that get no coverage in the books.

Was always weird to me that the Allies didn't attack Mordor from the east where it didn't have a mountain wall.
 

Ambiturner

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Other people fuck up MMOs. Seriously. In so many ways. They troll the content. They bitch and whine in /trade. The loudest shitbags are the ones you see the most of on the forums complaining about shit, and therefore the ones the Devs follow. Shit goes on and on.

It's not just shitty people whining, it's also idiot devs who are unable to filter out the good ideas from the bad. You also get some games like wow and a long period of EQ where they just lump the playerbase together as idiots and believe that they know what's best at all times while they become more and more out of touch with their player base.
 
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Lithose

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Because games are no longer about making as fun and enjoyable experiences as possible,it's about maximizing engagement to get you to buy that lootbox.

I mean, they are just now catching up to what people here have said about MMOs since forever; making games that avoid frustration, disappointment and negative emotions is a sure way to make a game boring as fuck.

You can't have a lot, but you need some in there to make things feel engaging--humans at their core are programmed to expect loss, to expect difficulty and when we don't have it the 'highs' of victory are not nearly as sweet, no matter how fun things are in the moment. When MMOs start to micro manage this stuff without doing the kind of research EA is clearly doing, you end up with sterile boring games. It's why some of the fastest growing multi-player genres are also known as being the most toxic (Survival games, MOBAs ect). IMO its why MMOs that gave the players as much freedom as possible found success, because humans naturally balance these proportions out in large populations.

Unfortunately EA will use this to do as you said, addict people for loot boxes, rather than gaining some insight into the darker side of the human condition in order to create great games.
 
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Tmac

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Repetitiveness, resetting gear each expansion, doing the same things every day/week. It becomes a job at some point, where you’re just going through the motions.

Just try a new one. FFXIV. Lost Ark in a few months. Learning classes and mechanics and going through story lines the first time can be fun. Once you’re logging in cause you feel like you have to, move on.
Sounds like week 6 of a raiding guild, kek.
 

Tmac

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Like Moonarchia and Aaron said, it's other people. Killstealers, hackers, ninjalooters, drama queens, whiners, moaners, reporters, morons. In the end, it is a microcosm of real life.

And, like someone else said, the natural bitterness and cynicism of age has it's effects too. I watch my kid grind through stuff I give up on fast, and realize it is purely age that makes that difference.

With age, the sense of wonder and newness is harder to come by. Kids can experience it on demand, while the cynicism you speak to dries up an older persons ability to experience it.

There are other benefits of course, but it does make the willingness to grind harder and the initial “Ohhhs and Ahhhhs” aren’t enough to keep you engaged.

Kids probably don’t mind the grinding bc they don’t have jobs. If you have a job, you don’t want another one in your game, haha. Daily quests are the AIDS WoW gave the world.
 
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Muligan

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For me its the lack of the new for the "Massive" aspect of MMO. You have different goals now than back in the day of EQ so the desire to explore, dungeon crawl, etc. has somewhat shifted to other desires.

I feel like every MMO is essentially no different than Diablo. I know a handful of people and I can either dungeon crawl with those few people I know or crawl with some random folks. There's really no need to communicate, build relationships, care for your reputation, or even really be accountable for your skill level / ability to play your class or role.

This translates into other games to an extent too.... most people really don't care and there are systems in place to where it ultimately doesn't matter if you care or not. Regardless if its LoL, Halo, or whatever, I play with people, give them props or report them, and move on. That's fine in those types of game but MMO's feel very similar to me when I don't think they should.

So i'm going to sound old and say community and systems are the biggest issues.
 
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zzeris

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Bots posting on message boards.

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Games are engineered to be addicting, and for most, that addiction becomes toxic and turns people off to the high they previously thought was fun. That's why in the end, all you'll find are bitter gamers. We're all recovering junkies.
the trick is to never fully sate yourself so much that you get jaded to the game. if your Real life is busy and involved enough, it should be something of a natural state.
 
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Chris

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So having just escaped a dying MMO to a hyped MMO, I feel like I have the answer to this.

It's as simple as this: MMOs are a massive time investment. MMOs die when that time investment is either not respected or the developers lose the confidence of the players safeguard that investment.

In WoW my vanilla character with maybe a year /played has almost zero advantage over a fresh character.

Levelling through 9 games is irrelevent as new players just do 2. Tradeskills and systems are basically deleted every expansion. Transmog and mounts are fairly easy to farm. So I got... an Amani Warbear you can get a recolour of anyway?

The devs are pozzed morons who clearly don't know what they are doing.

FF14 seems to be the opposite of all that right now.
 
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