Why do so many MMO's fail?

[Sockmonkey]

There are so many forum members posting about MMO's that had so much potential but ended up being hugely disappointing. Why is this?

[Necuno]

must be dem casual gamers. they keel everything.

[larch]

[Start Sarcasm] Because MMO`s are like girlfriends as soon as there is a new pretty girl on the block they leave the old faithful girlfriend (WOW) for the new girl on the block. Only to realize 3 months down the line that the new girlfriend is pretty much exactly the same as their first girlfriend (WOW) but just with a new pretty dress, so the leave the new girlfriend and go back to the old girlfriend till the next pretty girl shows up. [End Sarcasm]

MMO`s is a niche market catering for a niche group of people I dont like MMO`s purely for the fact that there is no instant gratification like when you play a single player game. Here it takes weeks and months to get to a level only to find that 1 million other people did exactly the same as you only better.

[Tank]

i believe it's because the "mmo veterans" can't just stop and be realistic about new games. they believe that new games must automatically have the same levels of content and polish their 5/6 year behemoths have from the get go. it' just not economically feasible for any company to even remotely attempt that on a first game

and then when the new games get released "it sucks, no content, i'm a loser, bitch, whine, moan"

[shadowfox]

i believe it's because the "mmo veterans" can't just stop and be realistic about new games. they believe that new games must automatically have the same levels of content and polish their 5/6 year behemoths have from the get go. it' just not economically feasible for any company to even remotely attempt that on a first game

and then when the new games get released "it sucks, no content, i'm a loser, bitch, whine, moan"

I actually think you have a good point there Tank.

One of the biggest complaints I see about Aion is the lack of content. And the people loudest about the lack are the former WoW players.

Lucky for me, the only pre-Aion MMO I've played is Guildwars - which has enough differences to make Aion something new.

As larch pointed out, there is no instant gratification, which might be a huge disappointment to people who try it out for the first time - especially if they've spent the majority of their time playing FPS or Racing sims.

For myself, I've always preferred slower paced games - I grew up playing games like Civilization and I've been a general fan of the RPG genre in general, so I don't expect quick developments.

Although, sockmonkey - just because a lot of people aren't happy with an MMO I don't think you can call it a failure. Not by a long shot. It would be like me saying Audi fails because I happen to like Opels - it really comes down to your personal preferences. Sometimes playing the game is the only way to find out you won't like it - and many people make the mistake of expecting too much from an MMO simply because its new.

Sort of like what happened to me when I went to watch Avatar

[tehNihilist]

I think everyone needs to stop expecting every MMORPG to be like WoW (but still different ), or a WoW killer. Maybe then they can enjoy it for what it is and not keep on thinking about how much better WoW did this or that, and proceed to moan about it. Peoples expectations have gotten too high and their attention spans have gotten too small. That combination equals disaster.

WoW made me lazy, physically and mentally. Took me a good few years to get that out of my system. That game created a mentality where if one encounters any challenge they just Thott it, or the like instead of working it out yourself. Lazy.

[TheKnowing]

I believe a lot of MMO fail as larch says many of them are the same, so why put all the new effort for a new dress, unless the old Girlfriend is getting wrinkly :P I played out a few MMO's personally i really enjoyed Metin UK, was there spent 8-9 hours a day on that game, sadly lost every thing to a noob friend. So the main problem is many people also leave because there effort is stolen from them, get board, find a better MMO, go back to there old MMO or just move on with RL.

[tehNihilist]

Over-saturation is a key element. Too many games, not enough people to properly fill them all up, and keep them going ingame or more importantly, financially.

People like their little slumps or ruts. They then stick to one MMO (this happens in competitive gamers as well I have experienced), and seldom handle change well.

Also too many developers / publishers / or whatever trying to cash in on the popularity that is WoW. This has lead to some seriously subpar games being released, and actually some great ones too, but they often are lacking the development skills and/or proper longterm funding.

Then there is also the influx of the more 'casual' gamer into the MMO scene. Before MMO's almost required that you had no job, no life, or responsibilities so you could get ahead in this genre. With the advent of WoW that has largely changed, and with that change came an influx of people with shorter attention spans (*cough* larch <3), and they are seldom happy with almost anything, even their game of choice.

[Jabberwocky]

Maybe because its a considerable investment of time, and when you invest months building a character you don`t want to do it on a server that is probably going to shut down.

[sycogrim]

One of the reasons I can point out which I saw recently was that an MMO released itself without releasing a Beta version for users to try before they buy and ended up putting themselves in Debt and going under because they refused to let people try before they buy and what made things worse was the MMO wasn't all that good either...