I watched
"Every Upcoming MMO & MMORPG 2019 And Beyond!" yesterday, and it was a little disheartening. I've been playing
Guild Wars 2 for years, I've racked up hundreds of hours, it is spectacularly awesome and beautiful, but I'm sort of running out of things to do in it. I'm looking for something new to play and the current PC MMO market isn't looking very promising.
You're probably going to smirk at this comment from someone who's making a "games as a service" game, but GAAS isn't really working out for me as a player.
Games are living far longer than they should. I'd be excited by a new Star Wars MMO, but there's already a Star Wars MMO, it came out in 2011 and shows no signs of being replaced. The Old Republic was good, I quite liked it, I played it for a few months, but at some point you're done as a player and want a new game. Publishers on the other hand, don't want to compete with themselves. "You want to play Star Wars? Here's the Star Wars game. It was really expensive to make." Similarly, The Lord of the Rings MMO was fun back in 2007 but
it's still going! Yes, there is apparently a new LOTR game in the works at last.
I think part of the problem is that in the past, AAA MMO developers have just aimed too big. Every game doesn't need to be on the scale of
World of Warcraft. I'd be quite happy with an experience that topped out at a hundred hours or so. That's still a big game for most people. Given that making content is a huge part of the cost of developing an MMO, maybe if developers didn't make so much of it, the games might not be so overwhelmingly expensive to make. Sure, if you have a massive hit then build an add-on, but maybe don't start with 12,000 hours of content. Amortize the tech cost over multiple titles.
Since I'm making a wish list, I'd also like some more options that aren't set in the middle ages. I loved
The Secret World with its twisted take on the modern age. I was so disappointed when after I watched the amazing
Cyberpunk 2077 Gameplay Reveal, I found out it was a single player game. I'm sure it will still be great, but I really like MMOs.
For a while I had been thinking that a Fallout style game would be really interesting as an MMO. It would have a futuristic open world, vaults to explore, loot to pore over, mutant beasts to flee or hunt. So I was quite excited when I heard Bethesda was making
Fallout 76 because their production values are generally pretty good, and it sounded like the scope was a little smaller, but apparently it's just broken.
The original plan for Secret Lair Games was to make more, smaller MMOs. Maybe it'll get there.