[deogeo]

The games are old, but they're still live. So it could just as well mean that the subscription MMO market is viable but saturated, so they're expanding into non-subscription. There's nowhere near enough evidence to go right for the players-won't-pay explanation, when there are literally millions of subscription-paying players.

I'd argue that the drawn out deaths of those MMOs shows how creatively bankrupt the MMO market is - people aren't leaving for new MMOs, they're staying with old ones till they get bored, because there's nothing better out there.

[fro0116]

That's one way to see it, and it's certainly not unreasonable to see it that way.

But looking at it another perspective, you can also argue that making MMOs with persistent worlds that can only be supported by subscription has become so risky of an investment that nobody is willing to experiment with drastically new paradigms/mechanics because historically an overwhelming majority of those who tried have failed, which could be what led to the creatively bankrupt landscape we have today.

It's impossible to know which perspective is more accurate because it's clearly a chicken-or-egg situation. But one thing that we can observe today is that practically (or maybe actually?) nobody even tries to make MMOs with subscriptions anymore, and new MMOs today end up defaulting to freemium (and all the morally bankrupt behavior that the model leads to), whatever the reason for that might be, and I think that's a shame.

[projektir]

> I'd argue that the drawn out deaths of those MMOs shows how creatively bankrupt the MMO market is - people aren't leaving for new MMOs, they're staying with old ones till they get bored, because there's nothing better out there.

Indeed. I like MMOs, but there's just nothing up my alley at this point and I'm waiting for the revival of a 15 year old game (WoW Classic) or the spiritual successor of an even older game (Pantheon).