Why MMORPGs like ESO, WoW, and Runescape are so hard to actually get into.
Firstly I want to say, none of these are bad games, heck my most played game is
WoW and the game I'm grinding right now is ESO (Elder scrolls online) but there are
major issues especially right now with MMORPGs.
I will not say the genre is dying, but it is slowly fading. If we go back 10/15 years ago,
(basically before Minecraft was created) WoW was the biggest game out there. Open
world, with countless customization, countless things to do. It,s the typical
MMORPG. But that's where the issues come in...
It got too hard. While I love the games and I don't want to discredit that it's
gotten too far, it's gotten to a point where for newcomers you are either at a huge
disadvantage or there is so much to do and your brain goes to mush. For example, I
am kinda new at ESO I haven't played much but the resources and crafting are a huge
deal in this game. I was doing fine and I finally recently maxed my skills in
Blacksmithing and Tailoring... only to find the resources I need to use have gone up
10x. From 15 ingots to 150 per piece of armour/weapon/amulet. There are 12 total
slots in the armoury. So that is 1800 ingots.
This for long-term players is easy because if you deconstruct everything as you have
played the game you are probably sitting on a lot of these ingots (especially if you are
on ESO plus using craft bag, and I will get into subscriptions later) however for the
newcomers, it's an abysmal journey, and I've quite abruptly become overwhelmed.
We also get our version of power creep which is where the base game (aka starting areas) items become more or less unusable as there are 10x better items in the DLCs
area. Now I will congratulate mainly ESO (as I don't have recent experience with the
other MMORPGs) as they have combated this by allowing you to essentially start
anywhere as everything scales to you. But this does also mess up the story just a tiny
bit. As you're starting a little in the future And if you like your stories to flow and
mesh well (like I do as I like to somewhat pay attention to the story even on my
3rd/4th character) it does become an issue.
Subscriptions... are the bane of MMORPGs. In WoW, you pay for the game. Pay
for the expansions, and then have to pay to use the service! Plus all the in-game
things you can pay for. This here is ludicrous. How can you expect a newer player to be
happy about spending up to £100? Thankfully if you buy an expansion pack you get
everything that came before (so if I buy WoW shadowlands I get everything that
came before that) however, I would have to buy the next expansion... this highly
irritates me as to how can a casual player warrant spending £15 a month to play a game
he's brought. And then buy a new DLC every 2-3years.
Eso has subscriptions where you gain access to DLC Content, gain double bank
space and a craft bag, and give you 1600 crowns which is their premium currency.
Sounds great... now the loophole, once you got it once, got that taste of the craft bag
and the double bank space. You realise how impactful it is. With all the resources I
hold, I can not stop paying for ESO+ if I want to play the game. Which means if I want
to stop playing. I gotta cancel the sub and then start it again when I'm on my ESO grind.
And for Runescape, don't get me started... to access certain gear requirements
and certain area-level requirements you need their version of a subscription (or a bond)
just to level up that attribute as they are locked behind a paywall.
Now, these games are great games. And MMORPGs are definitely a flavour but they can
be so hard to get into when 1 its a massive grind, especially for newcomers, and 2 there
are big paywalls that can drastically make the game easier for you or even enhance
you tenfold. And 3, it's not something you can just spend 1 hour on. You have to go
and spend a good 3 hours to get something actually done.
I love these games I really do but is there something that we can do to make
MMORPGs back up to the top? Can we take out this battle royale dominance we
have had for the last 5 years? No one knows.
Thanks for reading!