Nostalgia or Innovation: Where to Seek the Future of MMO Games in Sunset?
Looking at the continuously decreasing search interest of “MMO” over the past 10 years, it to some extent indicates a dilemma of endangerment that MMO games are confronting now.
Changes in gamers’ consuming habits may lead to this. With increasing time spent on mobile devices, gamers, especially during their fragmented time, are largely distracted by mobile games. Consequently, gamers get more used to freemium payment on mobile games rather than “outdated” monthly subscription many MMOs use.
Also, MMOs are of less commercial value to hold esports events and less suitable to do live streaming online because they are usually less competitive and slower in rhythm.
Among those MMO players, some complained that many of today’s MMOs no longer bring the same impressed experiences comparing the past. Although this year Blizzard launched legacy servers, World of Warcraft: Classic, to take players back to those nostalgic memories, it didn’t protect WoW from many disappointed comments on its expansion 8.0.
Naoki Yoshida, the director and producer of FF14, recently told Eurogamer that FF14 didn’t play the role of catering to new younger audiences and it should be the task of the next generation of MMOs, which implying that innovations may be the direction of MMOs’ development.
For more opinions on whether “MMO is dead”, please check the videos below:
