MMORPGs Aren’t Dead, But They Won’t Be As Lively As They Once Were Either

Two more MMORPGs bit the dust recently. The most talked-about was New World, which isn’t technically out of commission yet, but Amazon Games pronounced its death sentence in last month’s announcement, even if the date of execution hasn’t yet been set.

The other game that “died” last month was Greg Street’s Project Ghost. When I was last writing for MMOBomb (hi again, by the way), Street was working for Riot Games on its League of Legends MMO – which itself I’d only give a 50/50 chance of ever releasing – before moving on to found Fantastic Pixel Castle to create his own MMO. That game is effectively DOA as of the company’s closure on November 17.

In the wake of these shutterings – as well as the end of development for Amazon’s Lord of the Rings MMO – I’ve seen more than a few people wonder if this is a sign that the MMORPG industry, at least in the West, is “dead,” by whatever definition that covers.

To which I answer: Yes, but also no.

The Golden Age

If you can remember that far back, cast your mind to the decade of the 2000s, when we were swimming in MMORPGs, several of which were big hits. EverQuest (technically 1999), Eve Online, City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, RuneScape, The Lord of the Rings Online, Final Fantasy XI, and, of course, World of Warcraft.

By the end of the decade, we had a slew of other highly anticipated games to look forward to, like Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, Star Trek Online, Final Fantasy XIV, and Rift. Before too long, they were joined by The Elder Scrolls Online, Black Desert Online, and countless others that, while not as large or as long-lasting, had their dedicated fans and received massive amounts of hype or were eagerly anticipated by legions of fans, even if the end result was generally disappointing.

The purpose of this not-remotely-exhaustive list isn’t just to game our SEO score (though that doesn’t hurt), but to remind you of the absolute deluge of MMORPGs that came out in that time frame and are still going today. I mention Black Desert specifically because, in my mind, there hasn’t been an MMORPG that’s come out since that has been considered well-received by the general public and been successful overall.

Black Desert released in the West on March 3, 2016. That’s just shy of 10 full years ago.

We cast a wide net here at MMOBomb, covering everything that could vaguely be called an “MMO,” including wildly successful games like Genshin Impact and Fortnite. But the traditional MMO*RPG*, the type of game that sends you on grand adventures with other players across a vast open world, hasn’t seen a significant, long-lasting entry in nearly a decade.

In other words, the answer to the question of whether New World’s and Project Ghost’s demises mean the MMO industry is “dead,” at least in terms of new entries coming our way, is “no.” It’s been this way for a long time already.

A Tough Sell

The primary reason for this change is, unsurprisingly, financial. MMORPGs represent a huge investment, both in terms of money and time, both of those being resources that a developer could better spend elsewhere. In addition, an MMORPG requires a very large player base to keep it alive and thriving, and to keep the revenue flowing.

The latter part is a tougher sell these days than it used to be. There aren’t any more hours in the day now than there were two decades ago, but there are tons of other ways to spend your time, from streaming video to scrolling TikTok to the thousands and thousands of games on Steam. All of that eats into an MMORPG’s potential player base, and nobody wants to play a “dead” game.

Even at the end of 2010, which I’ve marked as the endpoint of the “Golden Age” of MMORPGs, there were only about 1,250 games on Steam, which had launched seven years earlier. That’s about how many games launched on Steam every month in 2024. That’s not even counting the explosion of mobile games since the adoption of smartphones in the early 2010s.

And most of what an MMORPG provides, or provided near-exclusively circa 2005, can be handled by other products these days. You want a large and fantastic world? There are plenty of open-world (not MMO-) RPGs to choose from. You want to interact with your online friends? Social media and chat services barely existed around the time of WoW’s launch. Now they’re everywhere. You want to tackle epic adventures together? Pick your favorite shooter, zombie slasher, survival game, co-op RPG...

Is it any wonder new MMORPGs can’t find room to breathe, much less turn a sustainable profit? Or why developers think it’s a better, and less risky, bet to make a smaller game, even if it is a ubiquitous “game as a service” than a sprawling MMORPG?

MMORPGs are expensive endeavors, taking several years to create (well, to create right), and are the kinds of projects that only entities with deep pockets can produce. Amazon had those deep pockets, leading many to think that it could pull it off with New World, but that proved not to be true. NetEase, which isn’t a small company by any means, dumped Fantastic Pixel Castle, ostensibly because it’s more profitable to add new swimsuit skins to Marvel Rivals or something.

With the failure of New World, MMORPGs now represent a risk that even large companies will probably be unwilling to take in the near future.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying

I know all this comes off as rather doom and gloomy, but I’ve always been more of a factual than hopeful type. This doesn’t mean MMORPGs are dead or dying – there are still plenty of good and robust options out there, even if they’re a bit older, as well as plenty of smaller games, both from Western and Asian developers.

As for me, I’ve adjusted from being someone who looked forward to – and tried – all the new MMORPG releases and have settled into a semi-fan of the genre, while enjoying plenty of other games, multiplayer or no. I still play Guild Wars 2 regularly, log in every now and then to Final Fantasy XIV, and I’ve even been playing The Lord of the Rings Online again, after a break of nearly eight years. But none of them commands my undivided attention the way they used to.

It’s simply not realistic to think that we’ll have another groundbreaking, near-universally loved MMORPG launch again. Even if Riot manages to produce a League of Legends MMO, it’s going to face competition from literally everything else, which is a far bigger pool of entertainment options to choose from than it was 20 years ago. Maybe the game will be a 9/10, but if I can play one of the dozens, or hundreds of options that are 9.1 or 9.2, why not do that instead? Before long, the “new game shine” will wear off, and you’ll likely trudge back to good ol’ reliable Minecraft or Dota 2 or WoW.

My suggestion? Enjoy what you have now. Maybe try something older that you never have before. Be optimistic for the future, but don’t pin your hopes on something that may never materialize, knowing that, even if it does, it may not be exactly what you wanted. We should have all gone through enough lukewarm MMO launches by now to understand that.