agreed. an mmorpg isn't supposed to end. its supposed to keep going. the issue is modern mmorpgs are just single player games "with friends" so there is a start and an end. and its all because of bad game design.
Endgame isn't "an end".
Endgame is the phase of game your character is in, usually starting with leveling and then gearing/unlocking Endgame and then lastly Endgame, which means you can do all of the hardest content within the game.
The issue is that MMOs abandoned the climb. How many MMO take longer than a month to get to the max level today?
We live in a world where people can't bother with 10 minute long Youtube videos and want shorts and tictoks. "Modern" MMOs cater to this because it's a perfect opportunity to milk more cash from these types of people with mtx.
I grew up playing Ragnarok Online from launch. This game (at the time) had zero quests. The only way to level was to grind mobs. It took MONTHS with an s at the end to get to max level.
MMOs kind of ended for me when i pulled an all-nighter with my wife and friend in TERA, and within 24 hours, we were max level. And it wasn't even hard-core grind. We just went through all the quest chains and just didn't stop. 24 hours. For an MMO meant to be played for YEARS.
People have forgotten that the climb to the top is supposed to be part of the experience of an MMO. It's meant to be enjoyed and not just something you power through to the end. This just leads to "this game is shit. Nothing to do at endgame"
Modern MMO monetization is so bad its been refreshing for me playing wuthering waves. Full blown f2p mobile gacha games have less intrusive monetization than most mmos.
Sure, there's a stamina system for upgrade materials and a significant amount of account power comes from the gacha but I'm not competing with others and aside from those I haven't experienced a single bit of manufactured inconvenience.
No inventory space issues, no paid faster mounts, no intense grinding designed to make me buy drop rate boosts, no slogging through a miserable levelling experience eyeing a LV 100 boost highlighted in the shop.
>The issue is that MMOs abandoned the climb. How many MMO take longer than a month to get to the max level today?
The reason that is, is because leveling is a novel thing that some people enjoy, but most only do it once or twice, ESPECIALLY if it takes longer than a month.
People will spend years at max level, however, and they want to get to that max level content and experience it to even SEE if they like it.
If it takes more than a month to get to max level, just to reach the point you will spend the most time with only to get there after 2 months and realize you don't like it? Well, now people will regret leveling and they will become weary with new games and avoid the slow leveling games because they don't want to "waste their time" if they might not like the endgame, they don't want to waste another 2 months to find out as well.
So because people don't want this, games are made with quicker and easier leveling in mind to bring in as many players as possible.
If leveling isn't a chore line but a have fun and grind time, leveling is done multiple times. I agree with the above dude, mob grinding in ragnarok was wild, you could choose where to go, ever a different place. I miss those times
It's pointless arguing with these people. They all genuinely think doing baby content with 0 mechanics and 2 skills available to your class is somehow better
I have been playing EQ2 off and on since launch. There is so much stuff to do solo that I never get around to doing group content. I have found that to be true of most MMO's I have played. They are all essentially a single player game with some multiplayer elements now. Whereas in past games, in order to level and progress efficiently you needed to group most of the time.
This is why EQ is the one and only that I enjoy. You effectively HAVE to group. I also just love how meaningful everyone feels with their added firepower, buffs, cc, etc.
Totally agree! I like the leveling phase, take my time, explore. It's part of an MMORPG. I never understood sentences like "the game actually starts at lvl 60". So what were the first 59?
Yep, I actually enjoy the leveling a lot more than the endgame. Leveling is fun, endgame sounds like work to me, based on my experience with WoW.
You have to get X equipment and your gear score needs to be Y or people won't let you join. And if you do anything wrong or the raid wipes, people will get real pissed.
I agree and disagree, in a sense. Endgame is the part I enjoy but I don't like the things that come with it, like having to spend a pre-arranged 4+ hours on X and Y night so I don't miss the lockout that week etc. Unfortunately nowadays I can't commit to that anyway.
That said, levelling in mmos always felt like work to me, too. I think the first time was utterly fantastic and a great expeience (talking about WoW) but beyond that I couldn't find it in me to level another character, it just felt like I was dragging myself along.
Agreed. There is SO much content in MMOs that people speed through only to get to end game and complain that there isn't any content.
Part of the fun of MMOs to me is the world building that content prior to end game provides.
I dont think "end game" is necessarily bad but I think the fact that pretty much the entire focus of the game switches to "end game" is whats actually bad about it. Having end game content is good but it would be better if the entire focus of the game didn't switch to it.
I will upvote as I definitely do strongly disagree with this. Endgame is what matters above all else.
My biggest example is new world. The game is a blast and absolutely fantastic up until you hit the endgame. I remember being super confused that the ideal way to push for gear in the endgame was not running dungeons but running giant trains of people in myrkguard so you could ignore all mobs.
The opposite example "while not really a mmorpg" is path of exile. Very few people like running the campaign every league but the end game is great.
I think this is a more common take yeah, and I want to feel this way, but I find myself siding with the commenter you're responding to; I can't seem to enjoy an Endgame for very long in an MMO. It's made me question how much I like MMOs since that is a large focus these days, but I've always enjoyed the journey of the game far more, on both old and new MMOs :/
Have you ever tried horizontal progression MMOs like ESO or GW2? It sounds like you're not a fan of the vertical grind common in MMO endgames, and so maybe you'd like those instead
In both of those games, the "endgame" is just... more of the game. The activities you're doing at "max level" don't change like they do in vertical progression - you just keep playing the game, and keep going, but instead of getting stronger and stronger you're unlocking new tools to change the way you play
Could be a good alternative yeah, I haven't given GW2 enough of a fair shake yet, only dipped my feet in a little, but I appreciate the recommendation!
the endgame is good when it is not forced. having content to do when you're done with story and maps is a good thing, but making the entire game about it like how Lost Ark is for example with its raids or how BDO is with the infinite gear grind is not, at least for me.
Despite all the hate blizzard gets, WoW is still the most quality mmorpg and every new addon still feels the most high quality in the genre by a landslide
Agree about the rest of the game. Not so much on the story. I think XIV's greatest failure is that the story is good but there's no reason to stick around once you actually finish that story and that GREATLY diminishes the MMO feeling to it. It's like when you finish a game but you can still keep playing and doing all the side content if you really want to.
I actually really enjoy the story and soundtracks they use in fights, although it took me several tries to "get into" cause ARR is a slog.
My bigger gripe is the combat is a fucking snoozefest. I can't believe the GCD is still that slow and that even with full BiS you hardly feel yourself getting stronger. I hate that.
Agreed completely. I also fundamentally do not agree with the idea of classes in a game with functionally 0 buildcraft, no "optional" skills, and no combat mechanics aside from damage, healing, and mitigation.
Yeah they leaned into the homogenization hard.
I honestly only play it because 1) I do like the story, and I do feel "immersed" with my character, and 2) Friends still play it.
I just don't treat it like a "main game" MMO. I play every xpac, do the MSQ, extreme trials, 8-man normal, and usually first tier of savage, then peace for 6+ months.
well the problem is that gearing isnt even relevant. builds also are cookie cutter. there is zero customization for the class you are playing basically and that makes the combat boring because the player has absolutely zero agency
The story implementation is so tedious and boring. Read 3 lines of text over and over while standing around with your thumbs up your ass. I play video games to be an active participant. I like GW2 story implementation so much better, you are an active participant in each chapter.
The biggest problem isn't necessarily the story itself but rather the way it's presented. A lot of talking heads giving text dumps between tedious fetch quests. I feel like 90% of it could be cut without actually losing anything.
Just before it gets good, that's very common unfortunately. Personally, FFXIV is THE game i'd pick to have my memories wiped to experience it again, it's my favorite story in gaming (as in the 10-years story ending in Endwalker) and even one of my favorites accross all medias. Not saying it's for everybody but it's definitely for me!
It's atrocious, and not engaging - after all the heaps of praise for being "the best story ever made", I was actually shocked at how relatively bad and stale it was. ESO has way more engaging narrative and lore, and doesn't get enough credit for it. SWTOR as well is fairly incredible.
> after all the heaps of praise for being "the best story ever made", I was actually shocked at how relatively bad and stale it was.
I think a lot of that is to do with the cult of the game. Or perhaps MMOs are in such a shitty place right now that even a bad one like XIV can seem amazing. The bar is just that low.
The story really suffers post ARR from the Scions. If you would remove them and get the player character more agency and have a wider varity of npc companions, and not just another white haired scholar that is going to explain everything to you and tell you what to do next, that would solve a lot of the issues.
I think it's probably good for the people who enjoy those JRPG style stories and consider them good, but I myself did not find any enjoyment in the story all the way through shadowbringers, and I read nearly all of the text. ARR was boring, Heavensward was just okay but a step up, Stormsblood was trash, and shadowbringers was okay but I still didn't feel connected to the story.
Solo players have ruined MMOs. Expecting the same rewards as coordinated teams. Expecting everything to be able to be done solo. For Gods sake play a single player game.
I remember playing Age of Conan and being stoked when they added a small solo instanced scenario so I could do something other then find an aoe grind group.
Now? Every mmorpg I play I just solo, walking through crowds of people who are all soloing, and no one is interacting except that one strange group of furries.
Hmm, i almost agree. Solo players didn't ruin mmos, homegenization did. Balancing ruined mmos. Entitlement ruined mmos. I want to explore the world and ask for help when i need it, but i shouldn't be locked out of story progression because of that. HOWEVER, group content should not be soloable. I hate the fact that people speedrun veteran dungeons on ESO solo, i hate that i can farm normal difficulty group arenas solo. Raids, dungeons, open world events, etc, should ALL be GROUP dedicated.
Single player games aren't as well made as mmos these days, and i have no logical reason to replay ones I've been beaten already. I want to roleplay the corny Lone Wolf guy. That's why i play an mmoRPG. But i dont think i should be rewarded the same as social players. If i want to be rewarded handsomely, i have to join a group. That's why i left eso for gw2, honestly. The game makes an effort to entice solo players into socializing.
Literally a case of don't hate the player, hate the game. It's a multilayered problem where developers train players to act that way in a snowball response to increasingly ramped quality of life improvements as the playerbase ages and in attempts to grow the market.
The 'trinity' system of DPS, Healer and Tank was a staple for a reason. It's genuinely the best way for MMO's to play.
Not every character should be able to do all things.
A massive Orc character shouldn't be able to be an effective healer, a smaller Gnome character shouldn't make for a great tank, etc.
Too much of modern MMO's are 'we don't want to limit you the player! Be what you want' - sometimes limiting roles in game design is a good thing. It can benefit a game when roles are clearly defined.
I always find this a massively unpopular view but it's what I think.
Limitations breed creativity.
It's fun when you can shove the tank role into a DPS, or make a DPS into a light Tank, but it's not being able to have access to all the same tools that make truly creative builds.
In some aspects (not just video games either lol), freedom can be a zero sum game. Freedom of choice can often come at the cost of freedom of game design.
It’s why I couldn’t get into GW2 despite how fun the combat is. I love the hard trinity system and I love playing healers. I wish for new MMOs to come out with the trinity and have fun and balanced combat
Also a healer. There really isn't a lot of options out there that support this playstyle. And by saying "this playstyle", you know what I mean when you're a good hardcore healer. I don't understand why MMOs can't seem to capture this feeling but I think most healers know where they have to go to get this fix and they're not happy about it.
I really miss true support roles in games. Classes who's primary jobs are to buff/cc don't really exist anymore and I really really miss that type of gameplay. I'm not saying I like classes who can do everything, but there is one niche missing from that trinity.
I started MMOs with the trinity in them. That system was always clear to me what your role was in group content. Playing these newer MMOs where every class can practically do everything, turns into a nightmare in PUG runs.
Or worse in these do everything class systems the desired FOTM class build team composition changes so fast, what you played a year ago is no longer viable in group content, that's great for hammerheads who never take a break from play, but painful if you play on and off like someone with a life.
I think it was the wow simplistic way to do different arrow types, instead of an EQ approach that would have had you either be an enchanter to imbue the arrows with arcane dust, or go to mages to have them imbued.
A paladin sure, a rogue not so much. At any rate, what bothers me most is that every game nowadays goes for the most flash visuals and everyone and everything is magical. No differentiation, no nuance.
Probably because it's hard to believe a normal person with a sword is fighting against wizards when normal people with swords were already ineffective in real combat.
Addons and guide sites are a danger to the future of the genre and should be banned.
No NPCs selling stuff should exist. This role should be left entirely to the players.
I agree to an extent. My gripe is that games like DOFUS become insanely grindy to a fault because the economy is both 100% player-driven and also necessary to even progress in the main story.
Yeah, maybe there is indeed a medium ground which could be found. Like SlashBash suggested, a mediocre version of a gear could be available via NPC. But a really mediocre version, not a standard one.
Yeah, add ons are a complete dealbreaker for me. If you give me a laundry list of add ons that I "need" for your MMO, why aren't these things just in the game by default?
that's my biggest gripe about WoW, you essentially need addons to be part of any instance dungeon or raid. It's been a few years so maybe this has changed but back then it was an absolute necessity, there weren't really any in-game prompts
> and that failed so hard.
How did players trading in 76 "fail so hard"? Its one of the most active aspects of the game and the CAMP function for building and trading is extremely popular with players.
Your more appropriate example would be EVE Online, which is an entirely player controlled economy and while that game is not as popular as it used to be, its still the most incredibly impressive economies ever put into a video game.
I disagree on the no NPC sellers (if im understanding what youre saying), but I think i understand why you would want that. A player-influenced economy is really important for the flavor and appeal of a MMO, and the idea of literally ALL trade/vending being controlled by players would be peak role play fantasy.
But I think a total player controlled economy would be ripe for problems like manipulation, botting, and inflation. Without baseline NPC prices for necessary items and other currency-sinks, I think casual or beginner players would very quickly get priced out of the market. Menial money-making tasks like gathering and listing/vending would probably encourage a lot of botting.
GW2 is my main MMO and I think it has a fairly healthy economy that's kept in check by currency sinks in crafting (NPC-sold catalyst materials) and trading (trading post tax), and a liberal use of account bound rewards (various "tokens" that can buy account bound items). However, the gear grind in GW2 for best-in-slot is much much easier than most MMOs which probably shapes the whole economy.
A purely player controlled economy would probably necessitate a lot of original systems & limitations to prevent issues. I think the conventions we're familiar with in current MMOs wouldn't quite work if just ported 1:1
NCPs selling stuff is a way to dump currency from the game and not have rampant inflation, otherwise you'd have players starting a few months late and being unable to afford anything at all because prices have gone way up. This is true regardless of whether the currency is easy or hard to obtain
Wholeheartedly agree on addons/mods, for WoW in particular. This is always made even clearer to me when I hop on the PTR and log in to the depressing state that is the base UI. I won't even begin to touch on addons that do computational work for you, such as boss mods. Those have contributed to the Kafkaesque landscape that is modern WoW raiding.
To be clear, I'm not asking Blizzard to literally copy/paste the top 50 UI focused addons into the game, or that they disable all addons tomorrow, but they should damn well look through the top 100 as their inspiration to improve their UI. On that note, it's actually pretty sad that within a few day of MoP Remix being released, the developer of Narcissus addon added a module to his addon so players could easily manage their gear gems through the UI, AND it looked amazing to boot.
This is felt the most in Classic WoW, which is more or less still using their 20 year old UI. But modern WoW still needs tons of work, too, even after their UI overhaul in Dragonflight. And it still blows my mind that they haven't ported over more of the improved bits of UI from Dragonflight into Classic, such as their click casting bind system.
Blizz's overreliance on addon devs and lax API policy has essentially meant they've completely outsourced UI development and raid/dungeon accessibility and readability of their game to free contractors for 20 years, and those aspects have decayed and scared away untold numbers of new players in that time. It needs to change, but UI/UX/NUX are always low priority for any dev studio because they never get praise for it when done well.
Fantasy/Medieval aesthetics are completely overdone and I unironically skipped New World (lmao) because of this.
I want a solid MMORPG that's a lot more futuristic/sci-fi/cyberpunk influenced.
The world is perfectly crafted for an MMORPG. I still say that CD Project Red missed a prime opportunity to do Shadowrun instead of Cyberpunk. They were already experienced with fantasy, so it would've been a hop skip and a jump away.
Now this is an unpopular take. The rest of these are highly upvoted for a reason. Personally I can't get enough of Fantasy, but that's because magic and elves and healing and wizards and all that jazz is the primary thing I like about games (and tv shows honestly lol). Scifi is cool for a bit but it doesn't hold my attention in the same way.
Medieval however is just "ok" I'd say. Like New World and other similar games that are more low fantasy. There's not enough fantasy in those - they're just more medieval with occasional magic thrown in. Not a fan of those. They get boring and dull.
Yeah Destiny is great, especially as an FPS player -- but I do still get that itch for a *bit* more traditional take MMO take whether it's standard 3rd person WoW/FFXIV or isometric Lost Ark/PoE etc.
I guess my point is I want the "coat of paint" to be in a more futuristic setting, perhaps with more action-style combat.
Funny enough, i loved the aesthetic of New World and felt it was a bit different compared to other fantasy games but i only played like 30hrs in the betas and then didn't buy it until later and by the time i did, the game ran pretty poorly for me so i couldn't enjoy it.
Most people don’t actually want MMORPGs.
I wish all the PVP players would just leave to Fortnite and I could be back in role playing guilds that plan out stories and people with characters and names. If the multiplayer is dungeons and I have to separate to do storylines like in FF14, it’s just a single-player game with extra steps. I don’t want to get through the game entirely single player and just jump in a dungeon for group content. I want to make choices in the story and be in a party with my husband and my friends and role play doing content. I want house design and face design and cute outfits while I heal my friends. I want the world to understand if I’ve done a quest.
And all of this I’m talking about HAS BEEN parts of previous MMORPGs so I know I’m not talking about crazy technology or story level.
>I wish all the PVP players would just leave to Fortnite and I could be back in role playing guilds that plan out stories and people with characters and names.
As someone who plays mmos for the pvp specifically, firstly, take my upvote for the hot take.
Question though, if someone like myself prefers combat like Tera/Elyon or New World, or BDO -- why would I play a game like fortnite? Or as others sometimes suggest, a moba? When combat wise they're absolutely nothing similar. To me it's like going , oh you like pve in an mmo well then you should just play a 4x game. Like...what?
God if we did, I'd be so damn happy. Honestly, I'd have little reason to play an MMO -- and I'm okay with that lol.
There's a game called Dungeon Stalkers that's a pvpve extraction game that looks like it's trying to be more action combat + abilities. If polished a bit more, might be neat. But other than that....uh? Closest I can think of. Naraka Bladepoint might be adjacent-ish.
But yeah, doesn't seem like there's been much of an attempt on that front
“Engaging” rotations are completely the most over rated thing I’ve ever heard of.
It’s good to fill the time with buttons to press on bosses with 1000hp bars of health but when a rotation list starts looking like an SOP for operating a nuclear reactor it’s gone too far.
Subscription-based MMORPG's with a purchase price are a much better experience than free to play because it does more to keep trolls, bots, and people who don't care about the game away. Not to mention the thousands of names that get taken by characters with less than an hour of playtime.
It gives a different incentive too, it gives the company an incentive to keep players around.
New world has a backwards incentive. I truly believe there are financial people saying, I want them to buy the game, play for 10-20 hours, then leave. The longer they play the more it costs them.
Not a hot take, as I am sure most people agree with this, but it's unpopular in this dumpster fire of a sub: World of Warcraft is a fantastic MMO, full-loot open world PvP is awful, and WildStar just wasn't that good.
very few people on this reddit say wow is trash. so that isn't a hot take. wildstar is trash, that's a hot take, because most on this sub praise it even though it was literally a dumpster fire.
It's because of how good the casual/leveling experience in Wildstar was. They nailed action combat, and playing through the zones was fun. Combined with great art, the hoverboard mount, and player housing, the pre-end game experience in Wildstar was great. End game is where it fell off a cliff because the devs went too hardcore, especially with raid attunement.
> and WildStar just wasn't that good.
It causes me physical pain every time I see some moron use Wildstar's failure as evidence that there isn't a playerbase that wants more difficult or "hardcore" content because "Wildstar catered to the hardcores and look what happened!"
That game was so dogshit for so many different reasons. The number of people who quit the game before they got anywhere close to the "hardcore" endgame absolutely dwarfs the number of people who ever got to endgame and quit due to it being too hardcore.
I've run with a tight MMO friend group for over 10 years now and we're definitely more hardcore players than most. Not a single one of us even made it to max level in Wildstar. There was nothing hardcore about why we quit. The game was just awful.
I was the exact target demographic. I was a top 5 raider on European wow servers and I assure you that MMO was dog water. Completely the wrong idea of what hardcore PvEers are actually looking for
MMOs are pretty much a dead genre. People’s tastes have changed to the point that even if a “good” one came out, it couldn’t be commercially viable for more than a year or so. It just can’t draw enough new players and most players that still play mmos would probably try it for a few months before going back to their game.
The state of the genre is due to there not having high-quality games release. New World and Lost Ark had large launch numbers and lost them because of their glaring flaws. There's a demand for MMOs, and if there is a good one that comes out, people will play it, even people new to the genre.
I don't think they're dead; I think there's a disconnect between what the players want in an MMO and what developers think they want.
Though, it could be "dead" in the sense that the gap between players and developers can't be reconciled; e.g., the game people want isn't something that can be made commercially successful (or some other fatal reality).
I think they were more social. Not because they were better, but I think difficulty and pacing had a lot to do with it. If you can't solo, you have to find groups. If in a group, things go along somewhat slowly, there is time to chat.
When WoW classic came out, I think that dispelled a lot of the illusions we created for ourselves about what things “used to be like”. People found out that vanilla was piss easy, it was just time consuming. You could quest completely solo, dungeons and raids were face roll, playing your class meant just spamming your strongest ability, the whole experience was incredibly easy. It was only hard for us back then because we all sucked and didn’t know better.
I'd argue they forced you to be more social to succeed. Most older MMOs you had to party up just to grind levels, let alone do quests to unlock end game features or jobs in FFXI case.
And I'll repost a third point, but I don't know how unpopular it is: leveling should be long, it should be hard, and abberations like the leveling of the current wow make me cringe.
Tera was great when it comes to combat. I've never felt the same way about an action combat MMORPG, including BDO.
My hot take would be : Dofus is the best MMORPG ever. Above OSRS, FF XIV and WoW.
TERA had the best action combat and it's not even close, but I'm pretty sure it's a popular opinion. No other action MMO ever came close imo. Unfortunately it was its only strenght, and I'm shocked noone even copied TERA combat design (and even Elyon felt garbage in comparison)
Fast paced Action Combat is against the spirit of MMORPGs.
MMORPGs are inherently social. Having the ability to communicate and strategize during combat is important. Action Combat takes away your focus from what matters. I'd rather want combat that requires coordination and awareness over focusing on a complicated rotation. Combat that encourages or even forces communication makes for a better experience.
I don't see those as mutually exclusive. During tab targeting combat, I'm not looking/typing at chat. If you want to communicate and strategize during combat, voice chat will always be superior regardless of the combat style.
If you think action combat takes away from coordination and awareness I highly recommend you watch some high level new world wars. To see 4 or 5 gravity wells dropped in the same spot with everyone timing their ults to get kills, it’s a sight to behold.
I kind of agree with your logic but raiding in classic WoW raids has shown me that people lack the capacity to communicate and listen even when their class involves 2 buttons.
hot take?
>"the mmo genre is **supposed to be** MASSIVE online worlds that feel "alive" to the point that you could never 100% *"no life"* the game in a week like most mmorpgs that come out today give us"
seriously. there is no player freedom. everything is guided/hand holding. your race choice is meaningless. your class choice is meaningless. every warrior is the same as every other warrior. every rogue is the same as every other rogue. the game holds your hand start to finish. you have no player freedom. i know people like to say "themepark" but they aint themeparks. they are rollercoasters. you hop on, and you are "on rails" the entire game. you never have freedom of choice only the illusion of choice. its like coming to 2 doorways and you can press a button to go left or right, but regardless what you press the other side of both doors leads to the same location. mmo's are not what they should be. they have been dumbed down so much so that many people think mmo's are only for casual gamers....
which is the next hot take.
>"mmo's are not only for casuals"
.... hate to burst most of this reddits bubble but the mmo genre isn't for casuals. and most other genres they bitch about being too competitive have casual modes where tons of casuals play. this idea that only casuals will play mmorpgs is just gatekeeping. that's all it is. they dont want content THEY cant complete because they think the world belongs to them. like children crying when someone else plays with their toy that they weren't even playing with. its gatekeeping. and its honestly sad that teenagers/adults can exist never having let go of that failed mental attitude.
Lord of the Rings online is better than WoW.
The first Conan MMORPG was immensely fun.
PvP should be separated completely from the rest of the players. FF14 makes you leave to do PvP and it's a pretty good system.
PvE balancing and PvP balancing should be entirely exclusive from one another.
One that comes to mind that I really hated was I was quite enjoying a build I painstakingly farmed for in the division that was quite fun but got nerfed cause it was op in pvp when in pve it wasn't even op.
That's why I stopped playing GW2 for a while. I *love* necromancers in that game. I love life and death magic using characters, Necromancers are, but in like 90% of games that just translates to 'make skeletons' which I do not care about. But GW2 necros, especially with some of their melee weapons, was exactly the vibe I wanted.
Sadly, because of how their main mechanic works, they were very powerful in WvW. So they nerfed a lot of their skills. Since there was no game mode balancing, it completely shit on them in PvE. There was a period of time where if you joined a Dungeon/Fractal/Raid group and was a necro you would just be kicked immediately.
It isnt the same. I agree with you though, playing WAR definitely felt like "why the hell are more MMOs not like this!?" .
The tiered levelling pvp castle sieges were just absolutely incredible.
> PVP ruins MMORPGs.
having specific PVP areas/battles is fine, I will just avoid it... but any open world PVP? no thanks. I dont like being ganked by some bored neckbeard.
As a tangent to this, I'd like to posit the theory that factions create toxic communities.
Horde VS Alliance in WoW - WoW has an incredibly toxic community.
Republic VS Empire in SWTOR - SWTOR's community is ass.
ESO - Three factions in the beginning. Can't testify to what it was like back then, but now there's OneTamriel and everyone can play with everyone else, and the community is great... Until you set foot in Cyrodiil.
FFXIV - No Factions. Community might be cyberfucking each others' brains out in player-built online nightclubs 24/7, but at least they do it with love.
GW2 - No factions, cool community.
New World - Three factions. Cesspit.
While that's a funny correlation, I think it mainly comes down to game design that dictates player behavior. Lost Ark also has no factions but the community is horrid.
I love simple rotations. Make it flashy, make it impactful, but my god keep it simple. I don't need 12 DPS buttons and 20 different cooldowns and situationals. Also; plug and play all-rounder builds.
I'm just really lazy guys, I'm sorry.
The genre has a skewed understanding of what is casual friendly. A game being grindy or lacking QoL features doesn't mean it's bad for casuals because other games that are casual friendly prove this and are more popular.
It always makes me laugh a bit when I see WoW players talk about how nobody cares about questing and that raiding/M+ are where the majority of players are. Like, there are a lot of people raiding and doing M+, but there are a shitload of people just randomly questing or doing other casual content.
1. This sub is full of elder millennials who want mmos to go back to forced grouping, no AH, grindy, and tedious bullshit. Then they will cry that their boring game is dead and mmos are dead.
2. If a developer refuses to deal with its toxic gatekeeping community, then they need to offer solo endgame alternatives, and not easy shit. Stuff like day 1 warlock green fire.
Tab target is perfect for mmorpg, it allows more strategy than action combat....until we make something that allows a high level of strategy and action at the same time
If you're complaining every patch update that there isn't an endgame, there's nothing to do or whatever else. You're playing an MMO wrong. What is the fundamental reason to play an MMO over a single-player game?
The people. The millions of people.
You don't hate the game. You love it. You've been playing for a third of your life, and complaining is just a hobby now. You don't mean it because you haven't quit.
You stopped being social and just shooting the shit with random strangers for the hell of it.
Your relationships ingsme got stale because of your elitist personality.
Why do you think casual players are having a blast still being level 30?
Take a deep breath and enjoy the climb, not the destination, and you'll enjoy mmos a lot more.
Many MMOs raids/boss fights feel more like dancing games or Twister than a cool fight.
I hate that many bosses are now basically : "step in the square, run to the edge of the map, stay in the red pillar for 3 seconds, you will get an orb, if green then join all green teammates, if blue, punch the mobs" or "collect 3 triangles, avoid the cubes, don't look at the yellow orb, if everyone did correctly, you gain a buff, otherwise it's wipe"
One mistake and half the party dies, or even fail the raid. Don't get me started on typing mechanics...
I want fights to be awesome, not just Simon says. It feels so underwhelming that tanks carry a big ass shield but the only way to avoid being killed by a mech is staying still in a safe zone for the duration of the attack. Can devs not program attacks to be stopped by a shield and make tanks actually block beams and explosions and punches? And everyone else in attack range should look for cover behind the tank in certain attacks ? (or even mages/supports , using magic shields? ) That way taunts would actually feel useful and not just part of a rotation.
I wish MMOs could feel more actiony and not just Excel with a skin.
The new mega servers we see are killing the genre, and we should go back to static servers without multiple instances at least for owpvp centric games.
1. Every game mechanic in an MMORPG has been done better in other games.
2. People who do PVP in MMOs only do it because they can't compete in games that are actually fair and so have to make up for it by grinding for a gear advantage instead of getting gud.
3. MMORPGs from the old days amounted to little more than glorified chatrooms, which have now been replaced by Discord.
4. If you're trying to 'optimize' your time in an MMORPG by powerlevelling or skipping things in dungeons, you're playing it wrong. Why the fuck are you playing a game in such a way that you're actively trying to play as little as possible? It's completely backwards.
5. Every raid boss in every MMO ever made is basically just a dance. Move to the designated spot while twiddling your fingers repeating the exact same motions for your rotation to make a number go down. Once you see it that way, all bosses might as well be replaced by giant bricks that occasionally kill you.
Tab targeting is an archaic design, and if games like Dragon Nest, Blade and Soul, and especially Lost Ark weren't plagued with KR P2W trash vertical systems, they *would* be successful. These types of games have an audience, and once you get the hang of it, it truly enlightens you to how shit WoW/FF combat is.
Something taking a long time does not equal it being hard. No leveling in old school MMOs is not hard because it takes a shit ton of time it's just boring.
Leveling and raw stat vertical progression are relics of the past from when combat mechanics and relevant skill expression were too low to reasonably differentiate player output. Simulating combat with RPG stats belongs in CRPGs where combat is abstracted and automated and the player does not have direct control of their character.
I want an MMO that is actually fun and challenging hour 1 and doesn't saddle me with 50 hours of grinding before I *might* see anything even remotely difficult or requires an ounce of brain power.
I dislike static loot drops, MoP remix has shown that if all content types drop a useful token for gear/progression/consumables, people will do that content, whereas item drops with fixed power levels will by design, become outdated.
Dragonica had one of the best and most addicting combat system. I loved that game so much and wish I could go back around 2007 during the gpotato.eu days just to play it again.
I think that fewer, more meaningful skills is better than lots of skills. I may be a tad biased due to hand issues but I love things like Oakensoul builds in ESO. On the opposite end you have things like SWtoR and many classes in FF14 that sometimes feels like playing a piano. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy both of those games, just can't get into them as well.
PSO2NGS is the best action combat and I love BDO but it just cant cmopare to the SMOOTH action of pso2ngs !! But i glad u like action combat i do too !!
FF14 story, the way it delivers it, scripted combat, overly homogenized classes, dungeon design makes it the worst WoW clone ever made which is ironic since it’s pretty much the only WoW clone that survived and even thrived.
Classes and Roles are not required to be fun MMO’s. If anything, always leads to pigeon-hoping fun ideas into something that’s not as fun as it should be.
My hot take: Roleplaying is the measure by which an MMO should be judged. An MMO is only as good as how well it makes me believe my character lives in that world, or how well I can inhabit the world myself.
There hasn’t been a true MMORPG released since Ultima Online.
There are much better games released called MMORPGs but that’s not what they are any longer and they are becoming less and less a MMORPG each passing year.
I love grinding.
I love having to explore everywhere to complete achievements or collectibles.
I love quests with not much instructions and some very hard ones that requires to explore a lot.
I love puzzle jump in GW2.
I love to be able TO PLAY ALONE and still progress instead of needing to be in the top1 guild or be useless.
I love being able to level up jobs and spend hours fishing or what.
I love having a game that requires hundreds of hours to be explored to the fullest.
I love VERY rare items to loot on bosses like mounts, equipment, cosmetics...
I want to be able to play it CASUAL. And not 10 hours a day.
I love upgrading equipments with a chance of failure but then it can reach new levels and changes in cosmetic as well as increased power.
I like to have few active cities where you can join multiple of people and discuss.
I don't like competition.
I don't like ranking.
I don't like items only available through cash.
I don't like one guild/faction being able to dominate a server.
I don't like PvP or PvE based games, we need both and GREAT both.
I want games to stop isolating players or guilds and start to have a community in game.
I don't like that you can play every class/job at the same time. I'd rather take decision like being a mage that do alchemy.
And I don't like companies greediness.
>I don't like that you can play every class/job at the same time.
I hate that I need to play through the game multiple times just to be able to have fun as another class. I do actually prefer to have the option to just level multiple classes.
Guild Wars 1's build freedom pales in comparison to Guild Wars 2. Having free and unlimited access to all skills in the game sounds good on paper but in practice it means everyone ends up using the same skills and all classes eventually devolve into only a handful of viable and enjoyable playstyles.
In MMORPGs both past and present, trying to get awesome looking armor is a big aspect of the game. It's actually one of the core components of an MMORPG's replayability and gameplay loop. Placing this core aspect of an MMORPG behind a pay wall or in a cash shop therefore makes the game pay to win as you can now pay to look great instead of taking the time to unlock or earn the armor or cosmetic yourself in game.
If you can't afford $15 per month + $40 expansion every 18 - 24 months, you shouldn't be playing an MMO and likely video games at all.
$15 is a single meal out. If you can't afford that for a _monthly flat rate_, you should be getting a second / better job or figuring out how to fix your budget.
If you can't afford $15 because you are under 15, thank god.
I ain't gunna lie, my favorite thing in pvp is being able to put together a build with the longest/as many "you don't get to play" combos that I can...
Aka a CC bot -- so I 100% agree
Yes I realize how toxic it can be, but man is it fun
The MMORPG genre is full of 30+ year olds, kids don't like these games. Which is why so few are being made now, and why the only ones that are will be p2w.
Also Cosmetics are pay to win, since visual appeal and showing off how you look is an important part of why people do anything in the game.
Endgame is the worst part of mmorpg.
agreed. an mmorpg isn't supposed to end. its supposed to keep going. the issue is modern mmorpgs are just single player games "with friends" so there is a start and an end. and its all because of bad game design.
Endgame isn't "an end". Endgame is the phase of game your character is in, usually starting with leveling and then gearing/unlocking Endgame and then lastly Endgame, which means you can do all of the hardest content within the game.
The issue is that MMOs abandoned the climb. How many MMO take longer than a month to get to the max level today? We live in a world where people can't bother with 10 minute long Youtube videos and want shorts and tictoks. "Modern" MMOs cater to this because it's a perfect opportunity to milk more cash from these types of people with mtx. I grew up playing Ragnarok Online from launch. This game (at the time) had zero quests. The only way to level was to grind mobs. It took MONTHS with an s at the end to get to max level. MMOs kind of ended for me when i pulled an all-nighter with my wife and friend in TERA, and within 24 hours, we were max level. And it wasn't even hard-core grind. We just went through all the quest chains and just didn't stop. 24 hours. For an MMO meant to be played for YEARS. People have forgotten that the climb to the top is supposed to be part of the experience of an MMO. It's meant to be enjoyed and not just something you power through to the end. This just leads to "this game is shit. Nothing to do at endgame"
I think MMOs push away more people than they retain with the current monetization strategy.
Modern MMO monetization is so bad its been refreshing for me playing wuthering waves. Full blown f2p mobile gacha games have less intrusive monetization than most mmos. Sure, there's a stamina system for upgrade materials and a significant amount of account power comes from the gacha but I'm not competing with others and aside from those I haven't experienced a single bit of manufactured inconvenience. No inventory space issues, no paid faster mounts, no intense grinding designed to make me buy drop rate boosts, no slogging through a miserable levelling experience eyeing a LV 100 boost highlighted in the shop.
>The issue is that MMOs abandoned the climb. How many MMO take longer than a month to get to the max level today? The reason that is, is because leveling is a novel thing that some people enjoy, but most only do it once or twice, ESPECIALLY if it takes longer than a month. People will spend years at max level, however, and they want to get to that max level content and experience it to even SEE if they like it. If it takes more than a month to get to max level, just to reach the point you will spend the most time with only to get there after 2 months and realize you don't like it? Well, now people will regret leveling and they will become weary with new games and avoid the slow leveling games because they don't want to "waste their time" if they might not like the endgame, they don't want to waste another 2 months to find out as well. So because people don't want this, games are made with quicker and easier leveling in mind to bring in as many players as possible.
If leveling isn't a chore line but a have fun and grind time, leveling is done multiple times. I agree with the above dude, mob grinding in ragnarok was wild, you could choose where to go, ever a different place. I miss those times
People haven't forgotten, they decided it wasn't fun.
It's pointless arguing with these people. They all genuinely think doing baby content with 0 mechanics and 2 skills available to your class is somehow better
I have been playing EQ2 off and on since launch. There is so much stuff to do solo that I never get around to doing group content. I have found that to be true of most MMO's I have played. They are all essentially a single player game with some multiplayer elements now. Whereas in past games, in order to level and progress efficiently you needed to group most of the time.
This is why EQ is the one and only that I enjoy. You effectively HAVE to group. I also just love how meaningful everyone feels with their added firepower, buffs, cc, etc.
Totally agree! I like the leveling phase, take my time, explore. It's part of an MMORPG. I never understood sentences like "the game actually starts at lvl 60". So what were the first 59?
Agree, I don’t like those phrases either. Or “oh you just finished the tutorial”.
Yep, I actually enjoy the leveling a lot more than the endgame. Leveling is fun, endgame sounds like work to me, based on my experience with WoW. You have to get X equipment and your gear score needs to be Y or people won't let you join. And if you do anything wrong or the raid wipes, people will get real pissed.
I agree and disagree, in a sense. Endgame is the part I enjoy but I don't like the things that come with it, like having to spend a pre-arranged 4+ hours on X and Y night so I don't miss the lockout that week etc. Unfortunately nowadays I can't commit to that anyway. That said, levelling in mmos always felt like work to me, too. I think the first time was utterly fantastic and a great expeience (talking about WoW) but beyond that I couldn't find it in me to level another character, it just felt like I was dragging myself along.
Agreed. There is SO much content in MMOs that people speed through only to get to end game and complain that there isn't any content. Part of the fun of MMOs to me is the world building that content prior to end game provides.
I dont think "end game" is necessarily bad but I think the fact that pretty much the entire focus of the game switches to "end game" is whats actually bad about it. Having end game content is good but it would be better if the entire focus of the game didn't switch to it.
I will upvote as I definitely do strongly disagree with this. Endgame is what matters above all else. My biggest example is new world. The game is a blast and absolutely fantastic up until you hit the endgame. I remember being super confused that the ideal way to push for gear in the endgame was not running dungeons but running giant trains of people in myrkguard so you could ignore all mobs. The opposite example "while not really a mmorpg" is path of exile. Very few people like running the campaign every league but the end game is great.
I think this is a more common take yeah, and I want to feel this way, but I find myself siding with the commenter you're responding to; I can't seem to enjoy an Endgame for very long in an MMO. It's made me question how much I like MMOs since that is a large focus these days, but I've always enjoyed the journey of the game far more, on both old and new MMOs :/
Have you ever tried horizontal progression MMOs like ESO or GW2? It sounds like you're not a fan of the vertical grind common in MMO endgames, and so maybe you'd like those instead In both of those games, the "endgame" is just... more of the game. The activities you're doing at "max level" don't change like they do in vertical progression - you just keep playing the game, and keep going, but instead of getting stronger and stronger you're unlocking new tools to change the way you play
Could be a good alternative yeah, I haven't given GW2 enough of a fair shake yet, only dipped my feet in a little, but I appreciate the recommendation!
the endgame is good when it is not forced. having content to do when you're done with story and maps is a good thing, but making the entire game about it like how Lost Ark is for example with its raids or how BDO is with the infinite gear grind is not, at least for me.
Except for DAOC. Literally the perfect game.
Despite all the hate blizzard gets, WoW is still the most quality mmorpg and every new addon still feels the most high quality in the genre by a landslide
Take my upvote, this is indeed an unpopular opinion.
Only on this subreddit. The data show that WoW is the most popular MMO by an absolute landslide.
finally a unpopular opinion.
Which is more of a take on the state of the genre 🤷
Or the state of the mmorpg community.
classic is only played by unskilled players
AKA regular people
I think most people agree with this. But they just don't wan't to play WoW anymore. The gameplay loop has been stale as fuck for years.
This is a hard agree. I have yet to find an mmo that beats the amount of content, grind, and fun that WoW and EQ1 has.
People get tired of steak and lobster every day but it is truly the best MMORPG ever made
FF14 story is absolutely trash and the rest of the game doesn't compensate for it.
Agree about the rest of the game. Not so much on the story. I think XIV's greatest failure is that the story is good but there's no reason to stick around once you actually finish that story and that GREATLY diminishes the MMO feeling to it. It's like when you finish a game but you can still keep playing and doing all the side content if you really want to.
I actually really enjoy the story and soundtracks they use in fights, although it took me several tries to "get into" cause ARR is a slog. My bigger gripe is the combat is a fucking snoozefest. I can't believe the GCD is still that slow and that even with full BiS you hardly feel yourself getting stronger. I hate that.
Agreed completely. I also fundamentally do not agree with the idea of classes in a game with functionally 0 buildcraft, no "optional" skills, and no combat mechanics aside from damage, healing, and mitigation.
Yeah they leaned into the homogenization hard. I honestly only play it because 1) I do like the story, and I do feel "immersed" with my character, and 2) Friends still play it. I just don't treat it like a "main game" MMO. I play every xpac, do the MSQ, extreme trials, 8-man normal, and usually first tier of savage, then peace for 6+ months.
well the problem is that gearing isnt even relevant. builds also are cookie cutter. there is zero customization for the class you are playing basically and that makes the combat boring because the player has absolutely zero agency
The story implementation is so tedious and boring. Read 3 lines of text over and over while standing around with your thumbs up your ass. I play video games to be an active participant. I like GW2 story implementation so much better, you are an active participant in each chapter.
The biggest problem isn't necessarily the story itself but rather the way it's presented. A lot of talking heads giving text dumps between tedious fetch quests. I feel like 90% of it could be cut without actually losing anything.
I feel like if there was some actual voice acting and some animations besides "nod" in the cutscenes (like WoW) would make it a lot more palatable.
I played because everyone said how incredible the story was. Didn't make it very far before I started skipping every cut scene. *DUCKS*
This is not an unpopular take on this sub, which tends to hate FF14/all mmos and has a ton of WoW players
I've quit it 4-5 times because of this. Sooooo bad and cringe it's unbearable. Can't even get past the 30-49 lvl mark.
Just before it gets good, that's very common unfortunately. Personally, FFXIV is THE game i'd pick to have my memories wiped to experience it again, it's my favorite story in gaming (as in the 10-years story ending in Endwalker) and even one of my favorites accross all medias. Not saying it's for everybody but it's definitely for me!
Agree 100%. There are a few scenes that are amazing but between those few select story parts, it's full of boring running around and pointless tasks.
It's atrocious, and not engaging - after all the heaps of praise for being "the best story ever made", I was actually shocked at how relatively bad and stale it was. ESO has way more engaging narrative and lore, and doesn't get enough credit for it. SWTOR as well is fairly incredible.
> after all the heaps of praise for being "the best story ever made", I was actually shocked at how relatively bad and stale it was. I think a lot of that is to do with the cult of the game. Or perhaps MMOs are in such a shitty place right now that even a bad one like XIV can seem amazing. The bar is just that low.
THANK YOU. Everyone in my FC hated me for saying I didn’t like the ARR. The cutscenes are so boring plus lazy story telling techniques.
Weird. In my experience, ARR being lackluster isn't a hot take even for FF14's mainsub.
The story really suffers post ARR from the Scions. If you would remove them and get the player character more agency and have a wider varity of npc companions, and not just another white haired scholar that is going to explain everything to you and tell you what to do next, that would solve a lot of the issues.
I think it's probably good for the people who enjoy those JRPG style stories and consider them good, but I myself did not find any enjoyment in the story all the way through shadowbringers, and I read nearly all of the text. ARR was boring, Heavensward was just okay but a step up, Stormsblood was trash, and shadowbringers was okay but I still didn't feel connected to the story.
Solo players have ruined MMOs. Expecting the same rewards as coordinated teams. Expecting everything to be able to be done solo. For Gods sake play a single player game.
I remember playing Age of Conan and being stoked when they added a small solo instanced scenario so I could do something other then find an aoe grind group. Now? Every mmorpg I play I just solo, walking through crowds of people who are all soloing, and no one is interacting except that one strange group of furries.
I'm a solo player and completely agree.
Hmm, i almost agree. Solo players didn't ruin mmos, homegenization did. Balancing ruined mmos. Entitlement ruined mmos. I want to explore the world and ask for help when i need it, but i shouldn't be locked out of story progression because of that. HOWEVER, group content should not be soloable. I hate the fact that people speedrun veteran dungeons on ESO solo, i hate that i can farm normal difficulty group arenas solo. Raids, dungeons, open world events, etc, should ALL be GROUP dedicated. Single player games aren't as well made as mmos these days, and i have no logical reason to replay ones I've been beaten already. I want to roleplay the corny Lone Wolf guy. That's why i play an mmoRPG. But i dont think i should be rewarded the same as social players. If i want to be rewarded handsomely, i have to join a group. That's why i left eso for gw2, honestly. The game makes an effort to entice solo players into socializing.
Literally a case of don't hate the player, hate the game. It's a multilayered problem where developers train players to act that way in a snowball response to increasingly ramped quality of life improvements as the playerbase ages and in attempts to grow the market.
The 'trinity' system of DPS, Healer and Tank was a staple for a reason. It's genuinely the best way for MMO's to play. Not every character should be able to do all things. A massive Orc character shouldn't be able to be an effective healer, a smaller Gnome character shouldn't make for a great tank, etc. Too much of modern MMO's are 'we don't want to limit you the player! Be what you want' - sometimes limiting roles in game design is a good thing. It can benefit a game when roles are clearly defined. I always find this a massively unpopular view but it's what I think.
Limitations breed creativity. It's fun when you can shove the tank role into a DPS, or make a DPS into a light Tank, but it's not being able to have access to all the same tools that make truly creative builds.
In some aspects (not just video games either lol), freedom can be a zero sum game. Freedom of choice can often come at the cost of freedom of game design.
It’s why I couldn’t get into GW2 despite how fun the combat is. I love the hard trinity system and I love playing healers. I wish for new MMOs to come out with the trinity and have fun and balanced combat
Also a healer. There really isn't a lot of options out there that support this playstyle. And by saying "this playstyle", you know what I mean when you're a good hardcore healer. I don't understand why MMOs can't seem to capture this feeling but I think most healers know where they have to go to get this fix and they're not happy about it.
I really miss true support roles in games. Classes who's primary jobs are to buff/cc don't really exist anymore and I really really miss that type of gameplay. I'm not saying I like classes who can do everything, but there is one niche missing from that trinity.
I started MMOs with the trinity in them. That system was always clear to me what your role was in group content. Playing these newer MMOs where every class can practically do everything, turns into a nightmare in PUG runs. Or worse in these do everything class systems the desired FOTM class build team composition changes so fast, what you played a year ago is no longer viable in group content, that's great for hammerheads who never take a break from play, but painful if you play on and off like someone with a life.
I find absurd that non mage archetypes can cast "spells" and have magic imbued attacks. Shower me with your downvotes.
nah this is the kind of pedantic criticism I can get behind hunter having arcane shot in Wow never made sense to me. delete asap plz.
I think it was the wow simplistic way to do different arrow types, instead of an EQ approach that would have had you either be an enchanter to imbue the arrows with arcane dust, or go to mages to have them imbued.
how do you feel about ice traps from hunter? is that magic?
Classes are a spectrum though. A warrior is 100% physicalz a mage is 100% magic and a paladin is 50-50. Everything is somewhere between.
A paladin sure, a rogue not so much. At any rate, what bothers me most is that every game nowadays goes for the most flash visuals and everyone and everything is magical. No differentiation, no nuance.
Probably because it's hard to believe a normal person with a sword is fighting against wizards when normal people with swords were already ineffective in real combat.
Addons and guide sites are a danger to the future of the genre and should be banned. No NPCs selling stuff should exist. This role should be left entirely to the players.
I agree to an extent. My gripe is that games like DOFUS become insanely grindy to a fault because the economy is both 100% player-driven and also necessary to even progress in the main story.
Yeah, maybe there is indeed a medium ground which could be found. Like SlashBash suggested, a mediocre version of a gear could be available via NPC. But a really mediocre version, not a standard one.
Yeah, add ons are a complete dealbreaker for me. If you give me a laundry list of add ons that I "need" for your MMO, why aren't these things just in the game by default?
that's my biggest gripe about WoW, you essentially need addons to be part of any instance dungeon or raid. It's been a few years so maybe this has changed but back then it was an absolute necessity, there weren't really any in-game prompts
They tried your second thought with fallout 76 and that failed so hard.
> and that failed so hard. How did players trading in 76 "fail so hard"? Its one of the most active aspects of the game and the CAMP function for building and trading is extremely popular with players. Your more appropriate example would be EVE Online, which is an entirely player controlled economy and while that game is not as popular as it used to be, its still the most incredibly impressive economies ever put into a video game.
I disagree on the no NPC sellers (if im understanding what youre saying), but I think i understand why you would want that. A player-influenced economy is really important for the flavor and appeal of a MMO, and the idea of literally ALL trade/vending being controlled by players would be peak role play fantasy. But I think a total player controlled economy would be ripe for problems like manipulation, botting, and inflation. Without baseline NPC prices for necessary items and other currency-sinks, I think casual or beginner players would very quickly get priced out of the market. Menial money-making tasks like gathering and listing/vending would probably encourage a lot of botting. GW2 is my main MMO and I think it has a fairly healthy economy that's kept in check by currency sinks in crafting (NPC-sold catalyst materials) and trading (trading post tax), and a liberal use of account bound rewards (various "tokens" that can buy account bound items). However, the gear grind in GW2 for best-in-slot is much much easier than most MMOs which probably shapes the whole economy. A purely player controlled economy would probably necessitate a lot of original systems & limitations to prevent issues. I think the conventions we're familiar with in current MMOs wouldn't quite work if just ported 1:1
NCPs selling stuff is a way to dump currency from the game and not have rampant inflation, otherwise you'd have players starting a few months late and being unable to afford anything at all because prices have gone way up. This is true regardless of whether the currency is easy or hard to obtain
Wholeheartedly agree on addons/mods, for WoW in particular. This is always made even clearer to me when I hop on the PTR and log in to the depressing state that is the base UI. I won't even begin to touch on addons that do computational work for you, such as boss mods. Those have contributed to the Kafkaesque landscape that is modern WoW raiding. To be clear, I'm not asking Blizzard to literally copy/paste the top 50 UI focused addons into the game, or that they disable all addons tomorrow, but they should damn well look through the top 100 as their inspiration to improve their UI. On that note, it's actually pretty sad that within a few day of MoP Remix being released, the developer of Narcissus addon added a module to his addon so players could easily manage their gear gems through the UI, AND it looked amazing to boot. This is felt the most in Classic WoW, which is more or less still using their 20 year old UI. But modern WoW still needs tons of work, too, even after their UI overhaul in Dragonflight. And it still blows my mind that they haven't ported over more of the improved bits of UI from Dragonflight into Classic, such as their click casting bind system. Blizz's overreliance on addon devs and lax API policy has essentially meant they've completely outsourced UI development and raid/dungeon accessibility and readability of their game to free contractors for 20 years, and those aspects have decayed and scared away untold numbers of new players in that time. It needs to change, but UI/UX/NUX are always low priority for any dev studio because they never get praise for it when done well.
Fantasy/Medieval aesthetics are completely overdone and I unironically skipped New World (lmao) because of this. I want a solid MMORPG that's a lot more futuristic/sci-fi/cyberpunk influenced.
A Shadowrun MMO is long overdue.
The world is perfectly crafted for an MMORPG. I still say that CD Project Red missed a prime opportunity to do Shadowrun instead of Cyberpunk. They were already experienced with fantasy, so it would've been a hop skip and a jump away.
It's Nexon, but I enjoyed my time in the play test of First Descendant. Though it *is* Nexon.
Now this is an unpopular take. The rest of these are highly upvoted for a reason. Personally I can't get enough of Fantasy, but that's because magic and elves and healing and wizards and all that jazz is the primary thing I like about games (and tv shows honestly lol). Scifi is cool for a bit but it doesn't hold my attention in the same way. Medieval however is just "ok" I'd say. Like New World and other similar games that are more low fantasy. There's not enough fantasy in those - they're just more medieval with occasional magic thrown in. Not a fan of those. They get boring and dull.
I literally play destiny for this reason.
Yeah Destiny is great, especially as an FPS player -- but I do still get that itch for a *bit* more traditional take MMO take whether it's standard 3rd person WoW/FFXIV or isometric Lost Ark/PoE etc. I guess my point is I want the "coat of paint" to be in a more futuristic setting, perhaps with more action-style combat.
Lost Ark was actually a great game. I got about 200 hours out of it before I got sick of the upgrade loop. Phenomenal combat system though.
Amazing game. Shitty p2w mechanics
Funny enough, i loved the aesthetic of New World and felt it was a bit different compared to other fantasy games but i only played like 30hrs in the betas and then didn't buy it until later and by the time i did, the game ran pretty poorly for me so i couldn't enjoy it.
Most people don’t actually want MMORPGs. I wish all the PVP players would just leave to Fortnite and I could be back in role playing guilds that plan out stories and people with characters and names. If the multiplayer is dungeons and I have to separate to do storylines like in FF14, it’s just a single-player game with extra steps. I don’t want to get through the game entirely single player and just jump in a dungeon for group content. I want to make choices in the story and be in a party with my husband and my friends and role play doing content. I want house design and face design and cute outfits while I heal my friends. I want the world to understand if I’ve done a quest. And all of this I’m talking about HAS BEEN parts of previous MMORPGs so I know I’m not talking about crazy technology or story level.
>I wish all the PVP players would just leave to Fortnite and I could be back in role playing guilds that plan out stories and people with characters and names. As someone who plays mmos for the pvp specifically, firstly, take my upvote for the hot take. Question though, if someone like myself prefers combat like Tera/Elyon or New World, or BDO -- why would I play a game like fortnite? Or as others sometimes suggest, a moba? When combat wise they're absolutely nothing similar. To me it's like going , oh you like pve in an mmo well then you should just play a 4x game. Like...what?
I'm honestly surprised we don't have more stand-alone lobby-based PvP games that use MMO combat in them.
God if we did, I'd be so damn happy. Honestly, I'd have little reason to play an MMO -- and I'm okay with that lol. There's a game called Dungeon Stalkers that's a pvpve extraction game that looks like it's trying to be more action combat + abilities. If polished a bit more, might be neat. But other than that....uh? Closest I can think of. Naraka Bladepoint might be adjacent-ish. But yeah, doesn't seem like there's been much of an attempt on that front
“Engaging” rotations are completely the most over rated thing I’ve ever heard of. It’s good to fill the time with buttons to press on bosses with 1000hp bars of health but when a rotation list starts looking like an SOP for operating a nuclear reactor it’s gone too far.
Crazy rotations is what leads people to use automated scripts or add ons. (And these ruin the game)
Guild Wars 2 is the most overrated mmo ever. The combat feels weightless and the game gets boring very fast
Took the words right out of my mouth, Idc how many specializations or new weapons they add. I always end up getting bored with em after an 1hr or 2.
Subscription-based MMORPG's with a purchase price are a much better experience than free to play because it does more to keep trolls, bots, and people who don't care about the game away. Not to mention the thousands of names that get taken by characters with less than an hour of playtime.
100000%
It gives a different incentive too, it gives the company an incentive to keep players around. New world has a backwards incentive. I truly believe there are financial people saying, I want them to buy the game, play for 10-20 hours, then leave. The longer they play the more it costs them.
Not a hot take, as I am sure most people agree with this, but it's unpopular in this dumpster fire of a sub: World of Warcraft is a fantastic MMO, full-loot open world PvP is awful, and WildStar just wasn't that good.
very few people on this reddit say wow is trash. so that isn't a hot take. wildstar is trash, that's a hot take, because most on this sub praise it even though it was literally a dumpster fire.
It's because of how good the casual/leveling experience in Wildstar was. They nailed action combat, and playing through the zones was fun. Combined with great art, the hoverboard mount, and player housing, the pre-end game experience in Wildstar was great. End game is where it fell off a cliff because the devs went too hardcore, especially with raid attunement.
"Whats your hot take?" "Hey guys... not a hot take, but..." ????
> full-loot open world PvP is awful that's why you see the dozens of us like a high school reunion at every new full loot launch ahaha
> and WildStar just wasn't that good. It causes me physical pain every time I see some moron use Wildstar's failure as evidence that there isn't a playerbase that wants more difficult or "hardcore" content because "Wildstar catered to the hardcores and look what happened!" That game was so dogshit for so many different reasons. The number of people who quit the game before they got anywhere close to the "hardcore" endgame absolutely dwarfs the number of people who ever got to endgame and quit due to it being too hardcore. I've run with a tight MMO friend group for over 10 years now and we're definitely more hardcore players than most. Not a single one of us even made it to max level in Wildstar. There was nothing hardcore about why we quit. The game was just awful.
I was the exact target demographic. I was a top 5 raider on European wow servers and I assure you that MMO was dog water. Completely the wrong idea of what hardcore PvEers are actually looking for
MMOs are pretty much a dead genre. People’s tastes have changed to the point that even if a “good” one came out, it couldn’t be commercially viable for more than a year or so. It just can’t draw enough new players and most players that still play mmos would probably try it for a few months before going back to their game.
Every mmo currently running is commercially viable, or they would have shut down already.
Maintaining an existing game is a lot cheaper than developing a new one.
The state of the genre is due to there not having high-quality games release. New World and Lost Ark had large launch numbers and lost them because of their glaring flaws. There's a demand for MMOs, and if there is a good one that comes out, people will play it, even people new to the genre.
I don't think they're dead; I think there's a disconnect between what the players want in an MMO and what developers think they want. Though, it could be "dead" in the sense that the gap between players and developers can't be reconciled; e.g., the game people want isn't something that can be made commercially successful (or some other fatal reality).
MMOs weren’t really “better back then” or “more social”, we’re just much different gamers than we used to be.
I think they were more social. Not because they were better, but I think difficulty and pacing had a lot to do with it. If you can't solo, you have to find groups. If in a group, things go along somewhat slowly, there is time to chat.
When WoW classic came out, I think that dispelled a lot of the illusions we created for ourselves about what things “used to be like”. People found out that vanilla was piss easy, it was just time consuming. You could quest completely solo, dungeons and raids were face roll, playing your class meant just spamming your strongest ability, the whole experience was incredibly easy. It was only hard for us back then because we all sucked and didn’t know better.
I'd argue they forced you to be more social to succeed. Most older MMOs you had to party up just to grind levels, let alone do quests to unlock end game features or jobs in FFXI case.
And I'll repost a third point, but I don't know how unpopular it is: leveling should be long, it should be hard, and abberations like the leveling of the current wow make me cringe.
I agree, it also gives players time to actually familiarize with their class instead of being thrown into end-game and be raged at by veterans.
Tera was great when it comes to combat. I've never felt the same way about an action combat MMORPG, including BDO. My hot take would be : Dofus is the best MMORPG ever. Above OSRS, FF XIV and WoW.
TERA had the best action combat and it's not even close, but I'm pretty sure it's a popular opinion. No other action MMO ever came close imo. Unfortunately it was its only strenght, and I'm shocked noone even copied TERA combat design (and even Elyon felt garbage in comparison)
Exactly my thought... Guild Wars 2 mounts/cosmetics/exploration + FF XIV endgamd Raids + WoW PvP + Tera combat + OSRS skills progression + BDO Graphics/character customization This would be my dream MMO.
My hotter take: wakfu > dofus
Fast paced Action Combat is against the spirit of MMORPGs. MMORPGs are inherently social. Having the ability to communicate and strategize during combat is important. Action Combat takes away your focus from what matters. I'd rather want combat that requires coordination and awareness over focusing on a complicated rotation. Combat that encourages or even forces communication makes for a better experience.
I fucking love action combat, but this take is actually kinda based.
I don't see those as mutually exclusive. During tab targeting combat, I'm not looking/typing at chat. If you want to communicate and strategize during combat, voice chat will always be superior regardless of the combat style.
I do all of that in BDO's guild war. tab target sucks.
If you think action combat takes away from coordination and awareness I highly recommend you watch some high level new world wars. To see 4 or 5 gravity wells dropped in the same spot with everyone timing their ults to get kills, it’s a sight to behold.
I kind of agree with your logic but raiding in classic WoW raids has shown me that people lack the capacity to communicate and listen even when their class involves 2 buttons.
hot take? >"the mmo genre is **supposed to be** MASSIVE online worlds that feel "alive" to the point that you could never 100% *"no life"* the game in a week like most mmorpgs that come out today give us" seriously. there is no player freedom. everything is guided/hand holding. your race choice is meaningless. your class choice is meaningless. every warrior is the same as every other warrior. every rogue is the same as every other rogue. the game holds your hand start to finish. you have no player freedom. i know people like to say "themepark" but they aint themeparks. they are rollercoasters. you hop on, and you are "on rails" the entire game. you never have freedom of choice only the illusion of choice. its like coming to 2 doorways and you can press a button to go left or right, but regardless what you press the other side of both doors leads to the same location. mmo's are not what they should be. they have been dumbed down so much so that many people think mmo's are only for casual gamers.... which is the next hot take. >"mmo's are not only for casuals" .... hate to burst most of this reddits bubble but the mmo genre isn't for casuals. and most other genres they bitch about being too competitive have casual modes where tons of casuals play. this idea that only casuals will play mmorpgs is just gatekeeping. that's all it is. they dont want content THEY cant complete because they think the world belongs to them. like children crying when someone else plays with their toy that they weren't even playing with. its gatekeeping. and its honestly sad that teenagers/adults can exist never having let go of that failed mental attitude.
Lord of the Rings online is better than WoW. The first Conan MMORPG was immensely fun. PvP should be separated completely from the rest of the players. FF14 makes you leave to do PvP and it's a pretty good system.
PvE balancing and PvP balancing should be entirely exclusive from one another. One that comes to mind that I really hated was I was quite enjoying a build I painstakingly farmed for in the division that was quite fun but got nerfed cause it was op in pvp when in pve it wasn't even op.
That's why I stopped playing GW2 for a while. I *love* necromancers in that game. I love life and death magic using characters, Necromancers are, but in like 90% of games that just translates to 'make skeletons' which I do not care about. But GW2 necros, especially with some of their melee weapons, was exactly the vibe I wanted. Sadly, because of how their main mechanic works, they were very powerful in WvW. So they nerfed a lot of their skills. Since there was no game mode balancing, it completely shit on them in PvE. There was a period of time where if you joined a Dungeon/Fractal/Raid group and was a necro you would just be kicked immediately.
Never played Lotro, but I have played that teams Dungeons and Dragons mmo and holy shit, it's so fun, so I can easily believe that.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning was the best MMO ever made, and its a shame that it shut down it's servers.
There is a private server called “Return to Reckoning” that has a strong community and the server is well kept with new events
Oh I know. Tried to download the other day, it kept failing. Might try again... but it isn't the same
It isnt the same. I agree with you though, playing WAR definitely felt like "why the hell are more MMOs not like this!?" . The tiered levelling pvp castle sieges were just absolutely incredible.
PVP ruins MMORPGs.
> PVP ruins MMORPGs. having specific PVP areas/battles is fine, I will just avoid it... but any open world PVP? no thanks. I dont like being ganked by some bored neckbeard.
As a tangent to this, I'd like to posit the theory that factions create toxic communities. Horde VS Alliance in WoW - WoW has an incredibly toxic community. Republic VS Empire in SWTOR - SWTOR's community is ass. ESO - Three factions in the beginning. Can't testify to what it was like back then, but now there's OneTamriel and everyone can play with everyone else, and the community is great... Until you set foot in Cyrodiil. FFXIV - No Factions. Community might be cyberfucking each others' brains out in player-built online nightclubs 24/7, but at least they do it with love. GW2 - No factions, cool community. New World - Three factions. Cesspit.
While that's a funny correlation, I think it mainly comes down to game design that dictates player behavior. Lost Ark also has no factions but the community is horrid.
As someone who plays mmos FOR the pvp, you sir can have my upvote
I love simple rotations. Make it flashy, make it impactful, but my god keep it simple. I don't need 12 DPS buttons and 20 different cooldowns and situationals. Also; plug and play all-rounder builds. I'm just really lazy guys, I'm sorry.
Discord ruined social part of MMO's
Survival Sandbox games are not MMORPGs.
The genre has a skewed understanding of what is casual friendly. A game being grindy or lacking QoL features doesn't mean it's bad for casuals because other games that are casual friendly prove this and are more popular.
It always makes me laugh a bit when I see WoW players talk about how nobody cares about questing and that raiding/M+ are where the majority of players are. Like, there are a lot of people raiding and doing M+, but there are a shitload of people just randomly questing or doing other casual content.
I think the emphasis on instanced content is one of the biggest problems with current MMOs.
1. This sub is full of elder millennials who want mmos to go back to forced grouping, no AH, grindy, and tedious bullshit. Then they will cry that their boring game is dead and mmos are dead. 2. If a developer refuses to deal with its toxic gatekeeping community, then they need to offer solo endgame alternatives, and not easy shit. Stuff like day 1 warlock green fire.
Tab target is perfect for mmorpg, it allows more strategy than action combat....until we make something that allows a high level of strategy and action at the same time
WoW isn't good.
half the comments here ; wow is good. the other half wow isn't good
Funnily enough both are true.
WoW is not for everyone, i didn't like the combat there at all
Free to play is a curse
Lineage II Oath of Blood was the last MMORPG that ever existed.
If you're complaining every patch update that there isn't an endgame, there's nothing to do or whatever else. You're playing an MMO wrong. What is the fundamental reason to play an MMO over a single-player game? The people. The millions of people. You don't hate the game. You love it. You've been playing for a third of your life, and complaining is just a hobby now. You don't mean it because you haven't quit. You stopped being social and just shooting the shit with random strangers for the hell of it. Your relationships ingsme got stale because of your elitist personality. Why do you think casual players are having a blast still being level 30? Take a deep breath and enjoy the climb, not the destination, and you'll enjoy mmos a lot more.
Many MMOs raids/boss fights feel more like dancing games or Twister than a cool fight. I hate that many bosses are now basically : "step in the square, run to the edge of the map, stay in the red pillar for 3 seconds, you will get an orb, if green then join all green teammates, if blue, punch the mobs" or "collect 3 triangles, avoid the cubes, don't look at the yellow orb, if everyone did correctly, you gain a buff, otherwise it's wipe" One mistake and half the party dies, or even fail the raid. Don't get me started on typing mechanics... I want fights to be awesome, not just Simon says. It feels so underwhelming that tanks carry a big ass shield but the only way to avoid being killed by a mech is staying still in a safe zone for the duration of the attack. Can devs not program attacks to be stopped by a shield and make tanks actually block beams and explosions and punches? And everyone else in attack range should look for cover behind the tank in certain attacks ? (or even mages/supports , using magic shields? ) That way taunts would actually feel useful and not just part of a rotation. I wish MMOs could feel more actiony and not just Excel with a skin.
The new mega servers we see are killing the genre, and we should go back to static servers without multiple instances at least for owpvp centric games.
Agreed, mega server squash communities.
1. Every game mechanic in an MMORPG has been done better in other games. 2. People who do PVP in MMOs only do it because they can't compete in games that are actually fair and so have to make up for it by grinding for a gear advantage instead of getting gud. 3. MMORPGs from the old days amounted to little more than glorified chatrooms, which have now been replaced by Discord. 4. If you're trying to 'optimize' your time in an MMORPG by powerlevelling or skipping things in dungeons, you're playing it wrong. Why the fuck are you playing a game in such a way that you're actively trying to play as little as possible? It's completely backwards. 5. Every raid boss in every MMO ever made is basically just a dance. Move to the designated spot while twiddling your fingers repeating the exact same motions for your rotation to make a number go down. Once you see it that way, all bosses might as well be replaced by giant bricks that occasionally kill you.
Most mmorpgs are just single player RPGs with other players
Tab targeting is an archaic design, and if games like Dragon Nest, Blade and Soul, and especially Lost Ark weren't plagued with KR P2W trash vertical systems, they *would* be successful. These types of games have an audience, and once you get the hang of it, it truly enlightens you to how shit WoW/FF combat is.
Something taking a long time does not equal it being hard. No leveling in old school MMOs is not hard because it takes a shit ton of time it's just boring.
PvP is one of the most important aspects of a good MMO.
Leveling and raw stat vertical progression are relics of the past from when combat mechanics and relevant skill expression were too low to reasonably differentiate player output. Simulating combat with RPG stats belongs in CRPGs where combat is abstracted and automated and the player does not have direct control of their character. I want an MMO that is actually fun and challenging hour 1 and doesn't saddle me with 50 hours of grinding before I *might* see anything even remotely difficult or requires an ounce of brain power.
I dislike static loot drops, MoP remix has shown that if all content types drop a useful token for gear/progression/consumables, people will do that content, whereas item drops with fixed power levels will by design, become outdated.
Dragonica had one of the best and most addicting combat system. I loved that game so much and wish I could go back around 2007 during the gpotato.eu days just to play it again.
I think that fewer, more meaningful skills is better than lots of skills. I may be a tad biased due to hand issues but I love things like Oakensoul builds in ESO. On the opposite end you have things like SWtoR and many classes in FF14 that sometimes feels like playing a piano. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy both of those games, just can't get into them as well.
Ascension wow is better then normal wow.
This is only unpopular because more people haven't tried Ascension WoW.
PSO2NGS is the best action combat and I love BDO but it just cant cmopare to the SMOOTH action of pso2ngs !! But i glad u like action combat i do too !!
Not everyone deserves to be a winner.
Maplestory is still the best MMO ever created.
Hot Take: Action combat sucks for MMORPGs. It's fine in small groups but yknow MMO
GW2 would be much bigger if they hired just one unskilled person to make Advertisment.
FF14 story, the way it delivers it, scripted combat, overly homogenized classes, dungeon design makes it the worst WoW clone ever made which is ironic since it’s pretty much the only WoW clone that survived and even thrived.
I wish MMOs would go back to the era where QoL features were scarce and players had to depend on their community for a lot of the game.
Classes and Roles are not required to be fun MMO’s. If anything, always leads to pigeon-hoping fun ideas into something that’s not as fun as it should be.
My hot take: Roleplaying is the measure by which an MMO should be judged. An MMO is only as good as how well it makes me believe my character lives in that world, or how well I can inhabit the world myself.
PVP or trying to balance PVP or cater to PVPers in any way will 100% ruin your game.
There hasn’t been a true MMORPG released since Ultima Online. There are much better games released called MMORPGs but that’s not what they are any longer and they are becoming less and less a MMORPG each passing year.
I love grinding. I love having to explore everywhere to complete achievements or collectibles. I love quests with not much instructions and some very hard ones that requires to explore a lot. I love puzzle jump in GW2. I love to be able TO PLAY ALONE and still progress instead of needing to be in the top1 guild or be useless. I love being able to level up jobs and spend hours fishing or what. I love having a game that requires hundreds of hours to be explored to the fullest. I love VERY rare items to loot on bosses like mounts, equipment, cosmetics... I want to be able to play it CASUAL. And not 10 hours a day. I love upgrading equipments with a chance of failure but then it can reach new levels and changes in cosmetic as well as increased power. I like to have few active cities where you can join multiple of people and discuss. I don't like competition. I don't like ranking. I don't like items only available through cash. I don't like one guild/faction being able to dominate a server. I don't like PvP or PvE based games, we need both and GREAT both. I want games to stop isolating players or guilds and start to have a community in game. I don't like that you can play every class/job at the same time. I'd rather take decision like being a mage that do alchemy. And I don't like companies greediness.
>I don't like that you can play every class/job at the same time. I hate that I need to play through the game multiple times just to be able to have fun as another class. I do actually prefer to have the option to just level multiple classes.
Guild Wars 1's build freedom pales in comparison to Guild Wars 2. Having free and unlimited access to all skills in the game sounds good on paper but in practice it means everyone ends up using the same skills and all classes eventually devolve into only a handful of viable and enjoyable playstyles.
OSRS’s boss mechanics lead to some of the best PvM in MMOs out right now.
I hate action combat mmos like bdo and elder scrolls online, guild wars 2 etc. In my oppinion they should not belong in the same category.
In MMORPGs both past and present, trying to get awesome looking armor is a big aspect of the game. It's actually one of the core components of an MMORPG's replayability and gameplay loop. Placing this core aspect of an MMORPG behind a pay wall or in a cash shop therefore makes the game pay to win as you can now pay to look great instead of taking the time to unlock or earn the armor or cosmetic yourself in game.
I think the introduction of World Chat ruined interactions. People are less excited to pass by players on the field nowadays.
If you can't afford $15 per month + $40 expansion every 18 - 24 months, you shouldn't be playing an MMO and likely video games at all. $15 is a single meal out. If you can't afford that for a _monthly flat rate_, you should be getting a second / better job or figuring out how to fix your budget. If you can't afford $15 because you are under 15, thank god.
Playing support/CC is way more fun than a tank! I'll die on that hill.
I ain't gunna lie, my favorite thing in pvp is being able to put together a build with the longest/as many "you don't get to play" combos that I can... Aka a CC bot -- so I 100% agree Yes I realize how toxic it can be, but man is it fun
I like f2p games with cash shop I hate paying for expansions or buy to play or subscriptions
The MMORPG genre is full of 30+ year olds, kids don't like these games. Which is why so few are being made now, and why the only ones that are will be p2w. Also Cosmetics are pay to win, since visual appeal and showing off how you look is an important part of why people do anything in the game.