Isometric Fox Presents: Too Many Options

The bastardizations of MMOs came in the wave of casual gameplay and protecting players from each other by eliminating PvP and looting mechanics. People participated in unforgiving grinds that meant something to them if they completed it, that often could result in having to start over because of a lack of skill. Collecting parts throughout a complex series of quests to unlock access to a dungeon that you could not complete alone for example!

How do I know that this is what people want? Because of the rise of the MOBA scene, Battle Royale genre, and competitive play. Everything about these is both hardcore and unforgiving to grind when you are attempting to RISE in the rankings of these games’ competitive features. 

Spend 20 to and hour in a game of League of Legends and 5 players will either win or 5 players will lose. A huge success for one team or a unforgiving waste of time for the other. Not only is your time wasted in a loss, but depending on how much rank you lose it could cost you the points from your previous wins.

In the same token MMOs have activity that you spend time completing and in a competitive full loot environment dying represents losing time of not only what you had set out to do, but also the time represented from all the gear you just lost! 

If you want to make the switch from one big title to another not only do you need to buy the base game, but their expansion as well. Some make that easier than others, but when you have friends in different games it gates expensive to keep up on that.

MMO gaming is pretty unforgiving when it comes to being luke warm about the game. Very casual gameplay that requires a lot of time. I honestly would prefer a hardcore playstyle that rewards skill over time spent in the game. But gameplay aside there is a difficulty in just the cost in keeping up on expansion prices on games you may not feel overly enthusiastic about.

I purchased WoW: Legion when the expansion came out to play with friends. Had a great time with them for a month or two before we split into other games. I also had spent time in the Beta and Launch of Elder Scrolls online but currently don’t have friends in that game. I enjoyed the soloing in ESO quite a bit. But with the release of Morrowind expansion and already being behind on changes, I don’t have a lot of motivation to pick the expansion up without friends being excited for it. The same goes for guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy, and others with a price tag on top of their expansion content as well as the pseudo Free to Play games that force players through inconvenient mechanics of play in order to encourage them for premium sign ups like Star Wars The Old Republic.

I believe its situations like this that have driven part of the MMO population to KR grinds that are given at flat rates with massive cash shops. With how Black Desert Online treats progression in the game I truly believe Archeage would still be a large force in the MMO scene had it not been terribly mismanaged by Trion.

This is really setting the playing field for new games like Crowfall, Ashes of Creation, and even other KR cash shop simulators like A:IR to do well. I think each of those will be big names in the MMO scene this year if they manage even a mediocre launch. A BAD LAUNCH WILL KILL THESE GAMES. Crowfall seems the most at risk for this due to his central mechanic being hinged on large scale pvp which MMOs have drifted away from in recent years in part due to server load and costs. I hope they are investing in DDoS protection, because all it would take is one person (or company with plausible dependability) to ruin the launch.

Just as YouTube announced that it would be demonetizing all creators that had less than 1000 subs and less than 4000 HOURS of watched footage in the past 12 months as of February 20th, Twitch announces a new feature coming to Twitch TV for pre-edited footage called Video Producer.

See their release here:

watch.twitch.tv/2mTufe9

***RE-INSTALLS LEAGUE***