So, I was playing some other MMOs that I haven't in awhile...

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

You literally just described every MMO in existence.

I mean, MMOs are changing. It's just that most are refusing to change fast enough and are losing players due to it while their current playerbase doesn't want to make things easier or more enticing for new players since they had to suffer through the grind.

[Hycinthus]

I don't disagree with anything OP said, but I also think it's a matter of perspective.

MMO players are a niche group already. Compared to the mobile-gamers, casual gamers, any MMO is a waste of time.

Agree that attention spans are shorter for general population, and continue to become even shorter in this era of short form videos. So yes, they will not stay long if it's not engaging immediately.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

I don't disagree with anything OP said, but I also think it's a matter of perspective.

MMO players are a niche group already. Compared to the mobile-gamers, casual gamers, any MMO is a waste of time.

Agree that attention spans are shorter for general population, and continue to become even shorter in this era of short form videos. So yes, they will not stay long if it's not engaging immediately.

There's a difference though. Time Wasters are like... Pathfinder in WoW. Which still exists in BFA (where all new players must go through). You can't even start Pathfinder until AFTER you beat the bfa main story. Thus no flying in bfa without an immense grind for no good reason than Ion hates flying and wants to punish players for not letting him remove it after WoD.

That's what I mean by a Time Waster.

[Larirawiel]

There's a difference though. Time Wasters are like... Pathfinder in WoW. Which still exists in BFA (where all new players must go through). You can't even start Pathfinder until AFTER you beat the bfa main story. Thus no flying in bfa without an immense grind for no good reason than Ion hates flying and wants to punish players for not letting him remove it after WoD.

That's what I mean by a Time Waster.

Nobody forces you to do the Pathfinder achievment in WoW. It is skippable optional content. And time wasters also exist in Final Fantasy 14. Bozja/Zandnor? Big Fish achievment? Have fun with the grind.


Cheers

[Amarande]

Like take flying. I can unlock flying on zones before I even finish them (and they made it easier in older expansions) and being able to just teleport nearly anywhere you want without a timer is amazing.

Definitely this, even with one of Endwalker's aether current quests being cursed up to eleven, LOL.

WoW meanwhile basically just party pooped on the whole thing, they went from "just be max level and pay gold" - a couple weeks' worth of dailies and farming, mind you, but that made it feel like an achievement rather than a box to tick off, and back then gold didn't have any legitimate RL value so what else would you do with it? - to "oh, by the time we let you have flying, you won't have any use of it but on an alt" combined with some of the most alt-hostile expansions we've had. (I don't even know how their actual focus audience, i.e. hardcore raiders stay sane, given this plus the whole "bring the class" crap combined - at the top anyway - with needing enough alts of the anointed class to get lucky enough on RNG on one to be on the dream team ...)

..which confirms my point about raiding...people dont work 9-5 anymore, time is at a premium and people cant..and wont... schedule their lives around a video game. The gaming population is ageing, and with it the priorities and necessities change, they HAVE to. MMO's that learn this have to accept one very basic rule:

Adapt..or perish

The demographics now include a SIGNIFICANT percentage of gamers over 65, both male and female. Times change, and industry will need to accept that, or lose people as their gaming playerbase says "I dont have time for this rubbish anymore"., They are happy to spend money, sure, but on games that meet THEIR expectations and their needs.

EXACTLY. You can hardly afford to schedule after work, because you don't know how much energy you might have left after a bad day.

You can't really reserve energy because then you'll be underperforming at work. We're getting to the point where people are even expected to min max LIFE, now I'm not even so surprised P2W is getting to be such a big thing because it allows players to leverage the thing they're being forced to max anyways, while traditional games expect you to be able to max a side pursuit in life (what work expects you to "min" so you can be "competitive and performant").

You only get a couple nights off of work. Do you want to be a complete hermit away from anyone? At least I can hang and talk with the housemates while I'm in Radz-at-Han bamming out the 50+ intermediate crafts it takes to make the next batch of collectables I'm using to level DoH.

Savage raiding? You need as much focus it might as well be a VR game at this point (and that focus matter is, I'm pretty sure, one of the main reasons why VR has failed to go mainstream as some expected!), especially when you can never be sure anymore if something is just pretty decor or the little cue you're expected to need for that mechanic that doesn't flash AoE until too late to respond (and sometimes this happens on Normal for that matter now, even).

Although, in the middle it can be both the devs and the community at fault. (Perhaps this is another reason the middle is rotting out?)

i will never go back to WOW. sometimes i get struck with nostalgia and think about it but i never will.

Yeah, I think I'm at least pretty near done with WoW, even though I do usually end up going back to it for a time every now and then when I run out of stuff to do in XIV besides endlessly grumping about raid culture, lol.

I'd have to buy another expansion pack, and then at least a month's sub (or use up my gold on a token, but I know in retail I'd certainly need that gold). I'd get to endgame, and then hit the usual point where it isn't fun to proceed - most annoyingly, not because of the actual difficulty (unlike XIV, where the cliff really is a little too steep) but because of all the endless "scoring" garbage.

Apparently, what we used to consider an annoying virtual male organ size comparison party is now to be seen as "it's like your resume, don't you understand?" and an important part of proving yourself and respecting people's time, so if you don't want to get into the measuring contest, you eventually just don't even get to play (and they'll tell US to "adapt or perish" into the bargain).

I'm not sure what can be done about this though, or if this is simply the youth generation finally successfully kicking us off the field, between the ridiculous hatred that what seems most of the young have for anyone over 30 or so these days (I'm barely old enough to be Gen X, and I've been unironically called a Boomer when I bring these topics up in WoW, for Twelve's sake), and the fact that the young increasingly don't grow up with the same spectrum of seriousness in team events that we did (as the traditional Little Leagues are increasingly becoming extinct due to financial asphyxia and replaced with a choice of ultra-casual "everyone gets a trophy" or of joining the super serious travel tournament circuit - which ... is pretty much what you see in MMOs lately too, even XIV).

That's right and there are several reasons for this actually.

• In Stormblood, it seems like they began to notice how the majority of people are just casual players and don't have time for grindy content like Eureka, so it shifted even more to "you can do the new patch in a day" then work on goals. The developers can relate - they don't exactly have too much time because they are busy developing.

Ironically, most of the casual players I've played with adored Eureka, as the NM train provided rewards at a reasonable rate while the downtime in between spawns provided lots of "hangout" time. The later expansions have not really provided much of a substitute (the closest gameplay wise maybe being hunt trains, but the pace is too frantic there to do any hanging out), while the "standard" endgame content divide has only become even more glaring.

Video games in general are time waster.

Yep. This is why I usually laugh at least a little at tales about "people not respecting my time."

I can get some of the sentiment but - maybe it's a generational difference here too? - aren't video games literally something you play to essentially enjoy wasting your free time?