Do you think square enix will continue making new MMOs after this project?

[ErryK]

The fact that FF14ARR hasn't won any type of award since it has been out compared to XI I can see SE closing the servers down in 6 years time and during that time they will start working on the next MMORPG for the Japanese market which will then come out in the western side of the world. This game will not last as long as 11 did.

What are you smoking? They've got loads of awards because of XIV...

[Belhi]

FF14 has gotten tonnes of awards.

MMOs in general are less popular today both with players and investors. MMOs are usually big time sinks and for whatever reason people have less time today to invest in them even with the streamlining modern MMOs get. The other side of the coin is that MMOs are high risk investments, requiring a very large upfront cost to created, substancial infrastructure to run, a dedicated development team and sustained costs for further development and upkeep. Comparatively other game types, such as Mobile games, have small cost to produce and tend to provide a much higher return on investment, at least ratio wise.

Case in point would be Hearthstone and WoW. Hearthstone costed Blizzard a tiny amount of money to make with a team of only 20 people and its earnings last year were a sizable chunk of Blizzard's profits. Further development is also relatively cheap. It might not have made as much money as WoW but WoW is an established game and an outlier for MMOs in its popularity and even then Hearthstone still a major earner for Blizzard. Even FF14 only has a fraction of WoW's playerbase.

As a result I wouldn't expect another MMO from SE any time soon. At earliest not for another 10 years. Hell even producing a new MMO would take a good 5 years minimum.

[basketofseals]

I dunno why people say MMOs are a dying breed. You can't account WoW's success as part of an MMO market. There was never an explosion of successful MMOs because, for some reason, WoW didn't add to the MMO market. It just created a WoW market for some reason.

Those 100 million accounts WoW has didn't go off to play other, more personally suitable games. The just quit the genre entirely.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I dunno why people say MMOs are a dying breed. You can't account WoW's success as part of an MMO market. There was never an explosion of successful MMOs because, for some reason, WoW didn't add to the MMO market. It just created a WoW market for some reason.

Those 100 million accounts WoW has didn't go off to play other, more personally suitable games. The just quit the genre entirely.

Actually, they did. MMO statistics have been on a substantial decline for years. Look at the sheer number of big budget MMOs that collapsed; SWTOR, Wildstar, City of Heroes, The Division and Battleborne. Of that lot, only SWTOR managed to salvage anything, though it came at a massive cost. Elder Scrolls Online also struggled substantially, but turned things around before reaching the financial implosion the aforementioned did. We all know the FFXIV 1.0 horror story. There are simply too many options and people, on average, are less willing to dedicate the necessary time investment to a single game. On the other hand, I do believe the genre will have a resurgence to some extent, though I suspect it will move away from the tab-target style altogether similar to how turned base combat has largely died out.

[Jetstream_Fox]

OP meant, Blizzard only sticks to one MMORPG. Which is Wow. Though I'm no Blizzard expert, so enlighten me if they have another MMORPG.

In some regard Diablo is an mmoish dungeon crawler, but really it depends on what you classify as a mmo. For me, social aspects, such as chat rooms/hubs and trading between players, are qualities I'd deem related to the mmo genre.

But really mmo is a pure subjective term at this point given how Destiny is coined an mmo despite not having chat systems or trading. But because it has raids people classify it as a mmo, which is odd because that would also put Borderlands in the same category.

[Zojha]

[...] but really it depends on what you classify as a mmo.

Well, "Massively" "Multiplayer" "Online" are the words that make an MMO - and the last two are relatively trivial. The question is:"What is massive?" Many people simply relate it to the size of the world and how many people you can stack in one instance. If you relate it to the playerbase, just about every successful multiplayer online game becomes an MMO.

The RPG in MMORPG, "Role-playing-game" goes extra. You can have MMO-Shooters or MMO-Jump'n Runs or MMO-Hack'n Slays and something like Planetside might even qualify for the prior. And I like to think the Quicksand on Balmung ultimately is an attempt to create a MMO-Dating Sim >_> But that leads off topic.

Anywhoo, I wouldn't expect a new MMO from Square anytime soon and in fact, would assume the genre as such will fall a bit into obscurity. MOBAs are the new hot shizz and while I can see them getting competition from other, similarly accessible and low-committal game, I don't think MMORPG will have a big resurgence. Unless, of course, we make it so people will have to work less for their own and their families living, so they have more free time to commit to these games. And that can't work when the bottom 80% of a population owns like 7% of the total wealth and the top 10% keep having an income higher than the bottom 90% combined. That however is unlikely to change without some pretty radical political changes and as such, I doubt MMORPGs have a golden future.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Look at the sheer number of big budget MMOs that collapsed; SWTOR, Wildstar, City of Heroes, The Division and Battleborne.

City of Heroes/Villians was shutdown when it was doing fine due to NCSoft closing the studio working on it likely to shift the money involved to other things (including Wildstar which was supposed to be the new MMO hotness but had been in dev for 6 years at that time). You might be confusing it with Champions Online the other non-licensed superhero MMO that went free-to-play 14 months into its life.

[Rinuko]

At some point likely. But I dont see it happen in the next 5+ years.
Looking at FF11 which was their first and very successful MMORPG (up to 2010 at least, Abyssea and level cap increased destroyed the game imo.

[Antonio_Xul]

Even if SE decides to make a new MMO, I won't be back. This is my 1st MMO and will be my last. This game is a lot of fun, but it's time consuming and costs too much to keep playing. I play because I'm hooked. It is fun and like the people I met on here. I wish I could bring my real life friends to play as well, but they all have their valid reasons not to. A couple of them is do to language. They play WOW, but they only speak Spanish and wouldn't be able to understand the story. My other friends don't play despite being FF fans, because they know MMOs are time consuming and don't want to get hooked. My brother doesn't play despite showing interest, but doesn't want to continually pay for a game he already purchased. I usually only play sports or fighting games. I only got to play this game, because of my nephew who wanted me to join him. I did and got hooked. He's been off and on, but I've been playing since I started nonstop. The only thing that will stop me from playing is depending on how they deal with inventory in 4.0. My hoarding is a huge issue and can't seem to help myself. If it isn't solved by then, then I quit and that in itself will be hard to do.

[AsahinaMyLove]

I will think about this question in like 10-15years o_o;