5 MMOs That Deserve Another Chance In 2024 | MMORPG.com

System · December 2023

5 MMOs That Deserve Another Chance In 2024 | MMORPG.com

Here are five MMORPGs that deserve a look as we head into 2024 - and five singleplayer games that might get in the way.

IceAge · December 2023

If Skull & Bones will not flop hard, I will be very, very surprised.

I gave it a try in the last Beta. Played like 2 or so hours. MAN! The controls and character movements sucks big, BIG time. Also its very soulless so to speak.

In the water, its a bit better but when you .. land, its like a different game.

RexxarTheViking · December 2023

IceAge said:

If Skull & Bones will not flop hard, I will be very, very surprised.

I gave it a try in the last Beta. Played like 2 or so hours. MAN! The controls and character movements sucks big, BIG time. Also its very soulless so to speak.

In the water, its a bit better but when you .. land, its like a different game.

Considering how many times Ubisoft pushed it back, i'm not surprised at all. I feel like they HAVE to release it, try to get some money back and abandon it as per usual with Ubisoft.

blix2006 · December 2023

IceAge said:

If Skull & Bones will not flop hard, I will be very, very surprised.

I gave it a try in the last Beta. Played like 2 or so hours. MAN! The controls and character movements sucks big, BIG time. Also its very soulless so to speak.

In the water, its a bit better but when you .. land, its like a different game.

agreed...on land it is really bad but thats not something that matters at all since it sonly a hub to pick up quests...anyone who loved sid meirs pirates back in the day may like this alot.i enjoy the ocean part of the game alot.just hoping they add alot more to it over time..i want a mix between sids pirates and pirates of the burning sea and im hoping to get it there..if this is indeed being put out to die just so the Singapore government leaves them alone i will never buy another ubi game again.

Splattr · December 2023

blix2006 said:

IceAge said:

If Skull & Bones will not flop hard, I will be very, very surprised.

I gave it a try in the last Beta. Played like 2 or so hours. MAN! The controls and character movements sucks big, BIG time. Also its very soulless so to speak.

In the water, its a bit better but when you .. land, its like a different game.

agreed...on land it is really bad but thats not something that matters at all since it sonly a hub to pick up quests...anyone who loved sid meirs pirates back in the day may like this alot.i enjoy the ocean part of the game alot.just hoping they add alot more to it over time..i want a mix between sids pirates and pirates of the burning sea and im hoping to get it there..if this is indeed being put out to die just so the Singapore government leaves them alone i will never buy another ubi game again.

I see what you are saying about the land. I had a blast just sailing around and getting into battles though. And I also hope there is a lot more to the game than what we saw during the test.

mercster · December 2023

Fallout 76 is a good game.

strawhat0981 · December 2023

Most of those games are just not good.

Greatsword · December 2023

Unless ESO fixes it's combat and the crappy animations, it will never deserve another chance. At least for me. But New World and F76? Will definitely give those another shot.

Ricardo5802 · December 2023

strawhat0981 said:

Most of those games are just not good.

Tell you a lot about the state of the MMO Genre doesn't it?

I mean, the best MMOs putting out generally good content are over 10 years old... XD

DigDuggy · December 2023

I really want to enjoy BDO. It has a lot that I enjoy. I just can't because it's just too 'busy' Everywhere on the screen is packed with visuals. It looks nice, but for me, it's overload. Less clutter would really make me give it a second chance.

Sindariel · December 2023

I've been enjoying the new season of PoE lately.

Scot · December 2023

Sindariel said:

I've been enjoying the new season of PoE lately.

Welcome to the forums!

waveslayer · December 2023

fall out 76 is good and I play it off and on, skull and bones looks great to me will give it a go, played ESO a few years ago have a level 50, talk about an easy mode game, its almost worse then WoW for being to dumbed down, the rest of them I have no interest in except HW 3, especialy the anime stuff, sorry anime artist some of you are very talented but I personally cant stand anime style art

Splattr · December 2023

strawhat0981 said:

Most of those games are just not good.

What do you recommend? Every year it gets harder and harder to find an MMO to play.

Quizzical · December 2023

Splattr said:

strawhat0981 said:

Most of those games are just not good.

What do you recommend? Every year it gets harder and harder to find an MMO to play.

Uncharted Waters Origin. It launched just this year. You probably haven't even played it yet, so you're not already sick of it. The Christmas events on now will give you three high end ships, among other things, which will help you get started quickly.

ShinyFlygon · December 2023

Splattr said:

strawhat0981 said:

Most of those games are just not good.

What do you recommend? Every year it gets harder and harder to find an MMO to play.

It's a dying genre. No publisher wants to take a chance on these extremely expensive games unless they are allowed to add all kinds of free-to-play garbage, which will boost the short-term profits while strangling any chance of building a long-term paying customer base.

The fact that they have to wedge brain-dead titles like ESO and Black Desert onto this list is a true death knell. The good news is that there's plenty of room in the market if anyone should ever prove brave enough to build and publish the kind of game that got the genre off the ground.

Scot · December 2023

ShinyFlygon said:

Splattr said:

strawhat0981 said:

Most of those games are just not good.

What do you recommend? Every year it gets harder and harder to find an MMO to play.

It's a dying genre. No publisher wants to take a chance on these extremely expensive games unless they are allowed to add all kinds of free-to-play garbage, which will boost the short-term profits while strangling any chance of building a long-term paying customer base.

The fact that they have to wedge brain-dead titles like ESO and Black Desert onto this list is a true death knell. The good news is that there's plenty of room in the market if anyone should ever prove brave enough to build and publish the kind of game that got the genre off the ground.

The player base is there, but the huge risk weighs against the huge possible rewards.

Robokapp · December 2023

Splattr said:

strawhat0981 said:

Most of those games are just not good.

What do you recommend? Every year it gets harder and harder to find an MMO to play.

World of Warcraft, of course.

Morbeous · December 2023

Quizzical said:

Splattr said:

strawhat0981 said:

Most of those games are just not good.

What do you recommend? Every year it gets harder and harder to find an MMO to play.

Uncharted Waters Origin. It launched just this year. You probably haven't even played it yet, so you're not already sick of it. The Christmas events on now will give you three high end ships, among other things, which will help you get started quickly.

A mobile game which on steam only has 42% you mean?!!! A game full of Gacha and microtransactions. Surely you are joking

Angrakhan · December 2023

Scot said:

ShinyFlygon said:

Splattr said:

strawhat0981 said:

Most of those games are just not good.

What do you recommend? Every year it gets harder and harder to find an MMO to play.

It's a dying genre. No publisher wants to take a chance on these extremely expensive games unless they are allowed to add all kinds of free-to-play garbage, which will boost the short-term profits while strangling any chance of building a long-term paying customer base.

The fact that they have to wedge brain-dead titles like ESO and Black Desert onto this list is a true death knell. The good news is that there's plenty of room in the market if anyone should ever prove brave enough to build and publish the kind of game that got the genre off the ground.

The player base is there, but the huge risk weighs against the huge possible rewards.

This. It takes now hundreds of millions of dollars to build an MMO and 10+ years. If you gave me $100 million in cash and told me I could do anything with it other than spend it on myself for 10 years and after the the 10 year I could keep whatever was left plus any extra, I could build a diversified investment portfolio and probably come close to doubling that money in that amount of time. If I pick the right real estate investments I could more than doubled it. Anyway, the point of me saying that is not to beat my chest about investing but to say this is the same question investors and publishers face when considering starting an MMO project. Risk your money on this idea for a game or go invest in more traditional channels and get pretty much a guaranteed return on your investment. Oh and by the way there's an entire wasteland of MMOs that have failed to launch, shut down, or limped along under the shadow of WoW.

What would you do? I can tell you building an MMO is the LAST thing I would do.

If it cost a half million dollars and 6 months of time to build an MMO, you'd see all sorts of crazy things being released every month. Unfortunately that's just not the case. Maybe AI will save the genre?

Sovrath · December 2023

Angrakhan said:

This. It takes now hundreds of millions of dollars to build an MMO and 10+ years.

Hmmm, I don't buy the 10+ years. I'm not saying that's beyond the pale if there is mismanagement or changing scope/direction, but it used to take much less.

Lineage 2 was a 3 year development.

Everquest was 3 years ...

Now, what is expected of mmorpg's is a bit more. World of Warcraft was about 5 years.

I suspect with a good development team and a clear design mmorpg's can still be made for around 3 to 6 years.

It's just that there are so many crowdfunded projects with people "taking chances" that they don't seem to have a clear development arc and suffer from little management experience, changes in scope/feature creep and money problems.

Dammam · December 2023

Sovrath said:

Angrakhan said:

This. It takes now hundreds of millions of dollars to build an MMO and 10+ years.

Hmmm, I don't buy the 10+ years. I'm not saying that's beyond the pale if there is mismanagement or changing scope/direction, but it used to take much less.

Lineage 2 was a 3 year development.
Everquest was 3 years ...

Now, what is expected of mmorpg's is a bit more. World of Warcraft was about 5 years.

I suspect with a good development team and a clear design mmorpg's can still be made for around 3 to 6 years.

It's just that there are so many crowdfunded projects with people "taking chances" that they don't seem to have a clear development arc and suffer from little management experience, changes in scope/feature creep and money problems.

I agree that 10+ years isn't necessary, but I think some of where that reasoning comes from is that a new MMO entering the market has to compete with games in their current state as opposed to how they were at launch, and with all the continued development these games get over the years that can be challenging. Even ignoring the various QoL systems added to these older games over the years that a new MMO would need to have built-in from the start, there are zones, dungeons, and raids that were gradually added to a decade old MMO that would take that long to implement in a new one as well.

As for Angrakhan's point about MMO development being a poor investment, I don't fully agree. There are plenty of things that are more difficult than investing money in real estate, but there are other drivers beyond that. But I do agree that this is partly why we don't see so many attempts to compete in this space. Can AI help lower the barrier to entry? Perhaps. There are a lot of design issues that need to be improved in MMOs as well, so if AI can speed up the iteration cycle then maybe that'll enable the development and testing of new ideas and some forward momentum in this space.

Sovrath · December 2023

Dammam said:

Sovrath said:

Angrakhan said:

This. It takes now hundreds of millions of dollars to build an MMO and 10+ years.

Hmmm, I don't buy the 10+ years. I'm not saying that's beyond the pale if there is mismanagement or changing scope/direction, but it used to take much less.

Lineage 2 was a 3 year development.
Everquest was 3 years ...

Now, what is expected of mmorpg's is a bit more. World of Warcraft was about 5 years.

I suspect with a good development team and a clear design mmorpg's can still be made for around 3 to 6 years.

It's just that there are so many crowdfunded projects with people "taking chances" that they don't seem to have a clear development arc and suffer from little management experience, changes in scope/feature creep and money problems.

I agree that 10+ years isn't necessary, but I think some of where that reasoning comes from is that a new MMO entering the market has to compete with games in their current state as opposed to how they were at launch, and with all the continued development these games get over the years that can be challenging.

It's a very on point "point."

However, it needs to be an "is what it is." And of course partially the players' fault.

there is no realistic way a new mmorpg is going to compete with a game that has been going on over a decade. Just not possible.

It would be massively stupid for a developer to put that much work into one without a guarantee of making bank.

The only saving grace is if they had more player made content such as sieges/pvp goals as well as pve content that could get ever harder such as Elder Scrolls Online new pve "tower" activity.

And the game needs to know its audience. mmorpg's where the players come for "quests and raids" do them and then leave until the new update might have a harder time of it. There are only so many quests that can be added and a percentage of players are just content locusts. Quite frankly, if I was a developer, I wouldn't cater to them at all.

Angrakhan · December 2023

Yes exactly my point that I should have spelled out more clearly is that a new MMO, like it or not, is going to be compared to other MMOs, namely WoW, that has potentially decades worth of expansions of content in them. The bar, feature wise, content wise, polish wise, and graphically is much higher now than it was for EverQuest or even WoW. If vanilla EverQuest launched today it would be lambasted as being ugly, primitive, and very light on content.

10+ years may be an overstatement. I'll concede that. However at this point I'm dubious it can be done in 5 simply due to the goal posts moving ever year. Less than 7 would be very optimistic I would think and that's a long time for an investor to wait to see ROI on millions of dollars.

I am hopeful that AI can streamline things that are currently very labor intensive such as level design and 2d/3d asset creation. If AI could knock out the bulk of that with human artists and designers following up to tweak and refine then maybe these things can have a significantly shorter development cycle which in turn lowers development costs and makes the risk more appealing to investors and publishers. I'm sure smarter people than I are already working on this very problem.

richrem1 · January 1

I think the only MMO here that deserves another try is ESO, but I go in expecting nothing has changed. I'd give New World another try, since I upgraded my game drive to a nvme, but I don't trust their engineering. It wasn't just a issue on my drive, the dam game cooks my CPU and GPU; also it constantly accesses the drive which is unusual for a game to do that. So no, I don't trust New World to not eventually break my PC.

Xiaoki · January 1

Angrakhan said:

Yes exactly my point that I should have spelled out more clearly is that a new MMO, like it or not, is going to be compared to other MMOs, namely WoW, that has potentially decades worth of expansions of content in them. The bar, feature wise, content wise, polish wise, and graphically is much higher now than it was for EverQuest or even WoW. If vanilla EverQuest launched today it would be lambasted as being ugly, primitive, and very light on content.

Yeah, that doesnt matter. Like, at all.

When a new MMO comes out people dont care about how many decades of content WoW has. People want to like any new MMO that comes out but they have all sucked hard.

New World got a million buyers right out the gate but it launched in a terrible state. It has steadily improved since but its been 2 steps forward 1 step back for them.

Lets look at another from the list above: Fallout 76. Sold well over a million in its first month then nearly everyone left because it launched in a terrible state.

The only thing a new MMO has to do to compete with the content and features of older MMOs like WoW is to not completely shit the bed. Which seems impossible.

Howdy, Stranger!

5 MMOs That Deserve Another Chance In 2024 | MMORPG.com

Comments

Howdy, Stranger!

Quick Links

5 MMOs That Deserve Another Chance In 2024 | MMORPG.com

Comments