It's time to put XIV to rest....

[RaideDuku]

Nah. FFXIV is going to be the last big MMO. I'm sure there will be niche projects, but as far as multi million dollar projects? It's not happening. "Oh what about Riot's?" Ha. 4 years of work. Nothing but a few bits of concept art. Reset the project a few months ago. Within 2 years it's going be taken out back and put down.

If someone's going to make "The Next Big MMO", their going to bring something completely new to the table. Completely redefine the genre. Companies with the resources to do it will never do it. Why commit that much time , effort, and resources, when you can churn out a new live service game at a fraction of that?

So out of the big MMOs that are out there, I hope there's one you like. Or tolerate. 'Cause this is it.

[Themarvin]

I've played since closed beta, champ. /pet

The join date you see is when I joined the forum, not the game. Since you don't know this, you haven't been around long enough to be taken seriously.

Not with 4K hours.

[koko-on-da-forumz]

Nah. FFXIV is going to be the last big MMO. I'm sure there will be niche projects, but as far as multi million dollar projects? It's not happening. "Oh what about Riot's?" Ha. 4 years of work. Nothing but a few bits of concept art. Reset the project a few months ago. Within 2 years it's going be taken out back and put down.

If someone's going to make "The Next Big MMO", their going to bring something completely new to the table. Completely redefine the genre. Companies with the resources to do it will never do it. Why commit that much time , effort, and resources, when you can churn out a new live service game at a fraction of that?

So out of the big MMOs that are out there, I hope there's one you like. Or tolerate. 'Cause this is it.

This is an insane take. Successful MMOs have a decade(s) long lifespan because that's what they're meant to do. They're supposed to be persistent shared worlds. Contrary to the narrative of MMO players being migrating herds, most people really only have one that they go into regularly. So a new hotness can come around, but people will almost always go back to their favourite flavour. The style of themepark MMO has inherent drawbacks that are really difficult to overcome on a new game--namely you really have to have strong, long-lasting endgame content that players adore because levelling/story is a joke. Otherwise they'll just treat it as a single player game, come back to it when there's DLC. FFXIV, frankly, has the same problem. It overcame it largely through a narrative in the public conscious (rebuilding ARR), and name recognition (and barely, at that).

Like, look at the most popular MMOs. WoW was genre-defining (and killing) and even though it hasn't had a sequel, it has changed so much it kind of is its own sequel. FFXIV was built on the back of FFXI. GW2 from GW. ESO from ES. Lineage II from Lineage (which I only bring up because I recently found out that it's still active and very profitable???) Runescape. They shepherd their communities from one game to the next, and they're not going to do that until they can justify the investment--that is to say, until the previous entry shows signs of dying.

We're not going to stop seeing MMORPGs, we're going to see the trend continue that only the big names with pre-established fanbases are successful.

I also think the narrative that young people don't like MMORPGs is overblown. Specifically FFXIV and WoW, with their subscription models, cater to older demographics. But, like, I've met a similar proportion of 20 year olds in XIV during Endwalker as I did in Heavensward. People just age into the demographic. Younger people play free to play or one-time purchase games.

[Delsus]

its true the next generation of gamers aren't exactly interested in those types of gaming, even from the player point of view,

1.) Time investment, many of us players have well over 1000 hours in this game. Someone said if you did just the core MSQ in ARR that's over 40 hours of game and that's skipping cutscenes. So yeah ask a Valorant or some other COD-like game player if they want to talk to an npc and return to the waking sands for 40 hours and I'm sure they'd tell you to back off. Kids these days want their games to reward them within the first 20 minutes of gameplay, no time for 12-year-long game development with trickle-down storytelling, and so on. Also I only recently heard this but 14 is now being called the retirement home for fighting game players, it's for the aging gamer demographic apparently, not necessarily retirement home age, but middle-aged gamers. So perhaps that was the outgoing demographic of when MMOs were the top dogs, MMOs used to be the best way to interact virtually but now we have VR Chats and Facetime, and whatever else kids these days prefer for interacting digitally.

2.) Graphics, Kids ourselves like the prettiest shinies, they always have, and despite the graphical update, ff14 isn't the spring chicken it used to be, games like First Descendant walk all over 14 graphically, however, the difference in graphics in 14 is still closer to the latest anime-looking games than say Wow is to 14. In other words, there is a ceiling cap to graphics depending on the visual aesthetic one is going for, if the goal is 2nd anime looking games then you can only go but so far, and I think we're reaching that threshold now if not already hit it like a truck into a brick wall, now its about making the environmental worlds look as crisp as the characters that inhabit it.

3.) Monetization, kids want their rewards faster I already said this but it begs to be repeated cause when you look at the spending in these newer games, its kids who want to be cool with the cool rich kids who are begging their parents to give them 20 dollars for the newest character or weapon skin, ain't no kid these days grinding Bozja for 100s of hours trying to get field notes for a damn hoverbike mount that resembles one from another almost 20-year-old game in the franchise when mommy and daddy can just buy them the newest cool gun skin, or character skin for the big boobie anime waifu they have.

I rolled a new character to speedrun the MSQ on the EU datacenter (My main is on NA) and it took me well over almost 200 hours to beat the post endwalker story to get ready for DT, that was with no extra content just playing the story and skipping all cutscenes (except post endwalker because I hadn't seen that) I can't remember exactly how long. as has been said most people don't have that kind of time to commit to a new MMO.

[Mapleine]

Square is broke, the tech market is damaged and Japan hurting in terms of recruiting talent.

Probably not the best timing for an expensive new gamble in a problem plagued genre.

[RaideDuku]

Snip

That's a very roundabout way to agree with me, more or less. The only way that a "big" MMO being made is if some big dog makes it. Probably with an established IP, as you said.

However, no company these days that would have access or resources to licence a major IP isn't going to sink that much money/time/resources into a MMO. MMO's that are worth a damn take YEARS of development time and insane costs, and a large continuing cost while it runs, with no guarantee of a return on the investment.

Do you think any modern big video game company is going to go through that? No, I don't think so. If they were, we would've gotten one, or at least heard of one being made by now. There was only a 5 year gap between EverQuest and WoW. 10 years after the last of the current "big" MMOs were released, the only big one that's been announced is Riot's League MMO, but that was announced 4 years ago with nary but a few concept art to show for it AND its development was just recently completely reset a few months ago. Spoiler: It's not coming out.

Sure, you had a rash of "us too's" when WoW first came out, but almost all of them have fallen to the wayside, the companies finding out you can't just crap out a MMO without those investments and have it print money, even if you are able to staple a popular IP on it.

Big companies these days are only interested in quick and cheap development with promise (false or not) of quick and large amounts of return.

So. Again. Hope you like what's out. 'Cause we're not getting another full on MMO anytime soon.

[Lorika]

The fact we've had not one, but *two* Star Wars MMOs where one died and the other limps along is definitely proof of this. Keeping in mind said MMOs came out years *before* people started to have less fondness for the franchise as they do nowadays, so one can't even blame disfranchised fans or haters for it.

Well, SWG didn't die, it was killed by SOE himself when they released NGE.

[Zarkovitch]

Let's be for real. To all peeps who wants a new mmo there be none until someone change the mmo meta, like how wow did it. Until then nope.

[Lorika]

Let's be for real. To all peeps who wants a new mmo there be none until someone change the mmo meta, like how wow did it. Until then nope.

The only thing WoW changed at release is : Blizzard took all the good idea from all others succesfull MMO and did a game with all of them in it.

And don't say no, i was there, and i was already playing MMO for a while at that time (a bit over 5 years)

[CuteBucket]

Why would they abandon a model that is clearly working for them to go make an entirely new game?

I'm afraid that any new attempt from Square-Enix at an MMO will just turn into yet another gatcha game pay to win legalized gambling hellscape, because that's where all the money is right now. Like have you seen the shit SE was trying to do with live service games in the last few years? Babylon's Fall, Chocobo GP, DissidiaFFOO, Marvel's Avengers, SINoALICE, Dragon Quest Tact, Engage Kill, Final Fantasy 7 First Soldier, and Echoes of Mana. All live service games that are now shut down or discontinued in some way in the last few years, most of them because they either sucked or no one even knew they existed.

Yeah FFXIV may be repetitive in a lot of ways but at least it's a functional game and has a community. It would be very unwise to throw that away for a new game, especially looking at their track record of new games as of late.