Online role-playing games, and especially World of Warcraft, have moved too far from their roots in recent years, says Blizzard founder Mike Morhaime. The former CEO of the California developer studio spoke in an interview with VentureBeat in detail about why the genre of MMORPGs has lost popularity:
WoW: More accessible, but less social
According to Morhaime, what are the roots of the MMO genre? The founder of Blizzard explains that the origin of online role-playing games is based on the idea of offering a shared gaming experience:
"I think the power to share these experiences with other people is at the core of the experiences we are trying to create. The meaning [of the game] comes from the possibility of sharing these experiences."
World of Warcraft was the most "social" game in Blizzard's portfolio at the time of its release, Morhaime says – and that contributed to the immense success of the online role-playing game: players had to team up with other players, join a guild and cooperate to everyone Experience WoW content.
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In WoW Shadowlands you level up much faster
Why are online role-playing games no longer as successful as they used to be? The fact that MMORPGs have lost popularity in the meantime is directly related to this aspect:
"Accessibility and the time invested play a role here, and I would not say that MMOs will not be able to rebirth in the future. But there may be other types of games that can better convey this social experience. I also found that WoW has become less social over the years because by trying to make the game more accessible we removed some of the reasons that you had to keep playing with the same people over and over again, I think that takes away some people's reason why they do Play game at all. "
Morhaime therefore assumes that MMORPGs and WoW in particular are no longer as successful as they were ten or fifteen years ago because the developers sacrificed the need for accessibility to work together.
The market for online role-playing games has actually suffered significant losses in the past few years after the initial boom triggered by WoW, which is shown, among other things, by falling player numbers and discontinued MMOs such as Bless Online or the former hope bearer Wildstar.
Players don't want to be organized
The VentureBeat interview indicates what modern online games have in advance of the MMORPG genre: Interviewer Seth Schiesel notes that a central problem of online role-playing games is the organization of large groups of players.
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New World Invasions: Mass battles without PvP
Online shooters or cooperative games such as Destiny 2, Call of Duty or Borderlands 3 provide players with the desired social gaming experience and put a primary focus on it. For the most part, however, they do without an excessive search for fellow players, thereby simplifying access to the social gameplay that many video game fans obviously want.
Nevertheless, the genre of online role-playing games is not dead, even if there are no large AAA productions. Hope gives Amazon's New World, about which you can learn more in our detailed game presentation. Further Top stories and news about MMORPGs you also read from our colleagues at Mein-MMO.
