Are MMOs Making a Comeback?

The Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) genre has had a rough last few years. Layoffs, delays, studio closures, and even entire game shutdowns have made the gaming community very apprehensive about even trying a new MMO. This is because MMOs are one of the biggest time-sinks in gaming, to the point where just becoming an average player of an MMO takes hundreds of hours. To put all that time into a game just for it to shutdown is not something that feels good to many gamers. In fact, there have been more MMO failures in the past few years than there are success stories. Amazon Game Studios removed its MMO division, effectively killing Lost Ark, New World, and Throne & Liberty in the west. Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft: Season of Discovery has basically no players after massive content droughts. Ashes of Creation literally shut down before its launch. Those are five well-known MMOs that have failed with no new MMOs rising to take their place… until now.

Fans of the MMO genre are coming to learn that finding a new MMO means they need to look to eastern developers, where MMOs are still very popular with millions of players. Currently, western countries have a few very popular MMOs with dedicated fanbases, making it very tough for new western MMOs to break through. These include games like World of Warcraft Retail, Old School RuneScape, and, to a lesser extent, Maple Story, Eve Online, and Black Desert. It makes sense though, why would western developers want to spend a massive investment on a new MMO when it is more likely to fail than succeed? Thus, western players are forced to stick to the MMOs they already have until the eastern developers decide to make their games global.

Kicking of the trend is Aion 2, a new MMO that has begun to trend in the west and brought by a Korean Development studio. Streamers and average gamers alike have flocked to this game, just like many did for all the failed MMOs mentioned above. But will the hype around this game be long term? Only time can answer that question, but there are a couple of things that can be taken away now. First, Aion 2 is promising step in the right direction because it is the Korean Developer bringing it to the west rather than a middleman like Amazon Game Studio doing it. Second, if nothing else, it is a fun stopgap between the time it is taking for a new western MMO to be released. Hopefully, this is a sign to other eastern developers that globally releasing their game can be good for everyone, if done correctly.

So, what are these new western MMOs that are coming out? Well, coming very soon is World of Warcraft Forever, which has a ton of gamers super excited. While it is not necessarily new, it is new take on the classic experience of the most popular MMO in the world. There are so many new things in it that is basically a new MMO in many people’s eyes. Between Aion 2 and World of Warcraft Forever, both of which have had a huge amount of support behind them, hopefully it signals to western developers that the MMO genre is not dead in the west. It is alive and well if the MMO has quality and longevity that players expect from it.

This is not all though. In the more distant future, western MMOs like Guild Wars 3, RuneScape 4, and the Riot MMO (name still TBD) are in development. If these two games are good, an entirely new era of MMO gaming in the west could emerge, just like it did for the battle royale genre after Fortnite. Long story short, MMOs could definitely make a comeback in the next few years. However, if these new MMOs fail as well, it could spell the end of the MMO genre in the west.