what makes an MMO fell dead

[Shinkuno]

Interesting how this thread has become almost exclusively about FFXIV.

However, the thread title is "What makes an MMO fall dead" - therefore am going to look at that question itself without the FFXIV focus.

Having played another MMO for over a decade prior to a friend recommending FFXIV, I'll reflect on the issues that pushed me away from that game (with the fact that it's a F2P game in mind):

- Heavy over-reliance on lootboxes

- Overpriced items in their cash shop (£300 'bundles')

- Community manager who produces sloppy news blogs (doesn't proof-read them, posts incorrect dates for releases) and doesn't care, as has been doing this for literally years and has never once even acknowledged the matter. Sadly this tends to suggest that his superiors don't care either. Said CM also tends to be condescending and patronising toward players and completely abandoned that game's official forum - granted, they post some nonsense, about once a year, claiming that they'll "do better", but actions speak louder than words and said person never does "do better".
And secondary to that, the Devs don't listen to their playerbase. At all. There was a particular item that players had been requesting for over eight years. The Devs rarely acknowledged the request and on those rare occasions they did their replies involved insulting crap about their metrics saying that players actually didn't want said item and the game's (cherry-picked) metrics and heavily implied that player requests/opinions are worthless.

- The over-emphasis on producing loot box junk and expensive cash-shop bundles has impacted on actual game development. The Dev team for that game are too busy producing reasons for players to get their credit cards out to actually produce new story content for the game itself.

- Powercreep; another negative byproduct of the over-emphasis on selling stuff. A piece of repeat-play endgame content that used to take approximately 30 minutes to complete can now be done in 11 seconds and I gather the map for that piece of content will quite often glitch out as the game often doesn't actually realise the instance is over.
And to be honest, its possible to complete the entire game in about five days because of this.

- Toxic community. A byproduct of the content being too easy is that players gather in a few particular areas out of boredom. And, in my experience, that led to arguments and trolling.

I do keep in touch with some who still play that game, and I gather from them - and from what I read on social media - that said game isn't in a good place right now despite the Devs claims to the contrary (saying that, the word of cooperate mouthpieces who are paid to only say good things about their game are not worth a great deal in my mind).

nothing of this makes a mmo feel dead.

GW2 has lootboxes, yet it feels alive

WoW has powercreep, yet it feels alive