Mostly referring to the release of the latest WoW extension which isn’t discussed anywhere (or maybe I missed it)
Just a thought, maybe the MMO player base is just aging out? I started with WoW back in 2005, I just don’t have the bandwidth in life anymore for an MMO. I imagine that is a similar feeling for a lot of us millennials.
I was always behind the curve of whatever the core game was on wow, so I was always trying to catch up to the guys who introduced me to it, never really had the time to do endgame stuff with them, because of having two little kids. By the time WOTLK dropped, I was PUGing a DK all the time because I was nowhere near the endgame where my buddies were. After that I became incredibly casual. Just questing the storyline of wherever I was. Dropped it and came back in classic. When Cata dropped on classic, with no era to play on with, and again, I was no where near cap the whole second time around I unsubbed. I have just rolled a PS and intend to casually bum around until my server falls over and I’ve maxxed out every char and class I want to.
Dead? WoW, FFXIV, RuneScape, ESO, have millions of players. What world do you live in that these games are dead?
Do you see the latest WoW expansion discussed anywhere on Lemmy?
I only look at !wow@lemmy.ml, which has a 3 comments on a 4 days post, maybe I’m missing something?
You don’t see anything except Linux discussed on Lemmy because Lemmy has a couple thousand active users. There are Facebook groups bigger than the entire fediverse.
I think you’re missing that lemmy is a pretty tiny slice of the internet and niche(ish) communities either don’t exist or are mostly inactive. Just because something doesn’t seem to be making waves on lemmy, doesn’t mean it isn’t popular. The community for it just isn’t really here (yet).
Indeed, so that’s my point.
There were quite active BG3 and Helldivers 2 communities when they released as those are worldwide hits.
If you look at !helldivers2@lemmy.ca vs !finalfantasyxiv@lemmy.world, you instantly see which one is a more active game.
https://steamdb.info/app/553850/charts/
https://steamdb.info/app/39210/charts/
I probably just wouldn’t use lemmy as an indicator of popularity/activity levels.
You’re right. I guess FFXIV players are too busy playing to be here too ha ha
WoW hasn’t been synonymous with the MMORPG scene since at least the last 5 years. You didn’t hear much from it because it’s just another expansion, for one of the many currently running MMOs. When was the last you heard about GW2 expansions? Or Elder Scrolls Online expansions?
Copy pasting the comment below
Indeed, so that’s my point.
There were quite active BG3 and Helldivers 2 communities when they released as those are worldwide hits.
If you look at !helldivers2@lemmy.ca vs !finalfantasyxiv@lemmy.world, you instantly see which one is a more active game.
But neither BG3 nor Helldivers were MMOs though. Activities in those was a spike when the game released. WoW released 20ish years ago lol
The next war in foxhole starts today, it’s a war MMO and I highly recommend it. No subscription (one time $30 purchase on steam), no microtransactions, no paid expansions, no cosmetic bs, grind is optional. New players are in the same spot as veterans, all resources are shared (regiments/people can have private stockpiles, but they decay after 48 hours of being inactive) and are all made by players. You don’t get anything for making or transporting supplies except for the joy of supporting the war effort - which is good because if no one made supplies, no one could fight.
Want to chill? Mine scrap and make basic materials, throw in your nearest seaport for anyone to take (or put in your regiments stockpile if you’re in one). Or transport supplies from far backline stockpiles to Frontline/closer via truck, train, or boat. Or drive supplies to the Frontline, just make sure you have a gas mask and radio! Or make bullets, medical supplies, or anything else in the game at factories. Or trucks, cars, boats, tanks, trains, etc.
Want to plan? Either start building up production centers at the start of the war, rebuild them as we take land, or build defenses in the backline or on the front.
Want to fight? Get on a ship crew in an artillery gun and listen to your captain to tell you when and where to fire. Get in a tank with a crew and go balls to the wall on the front line. Grab a gun and some supplies and charge into trench warfare. Mortars? Yep. RPG’s? Yep. Want to be a doctor? Move with friendlies and fix them up when they get messed up, or carry them back to your hospital to get new supplies for people to spawn from.
Want to be sneaky? Sneak past the Frontline and sabotage their logistics people or buildings.
Want to be a gigachad? Join the wardens now.
I keep looking at Foxhole, but I’ve never tried it yet. Is the non combat segment of the game pretty chill overall? I’m not really a big fan of competitive MMOs, but the behind the scenes aspect does interest me. I hear about a decent amount of positivity in the playerbase, but I’ve definitely heard negativity about the recent state of the game.
Yep it’s still chill. The war just started so I’ve spent the past 2 hours driving materials from my regiments stockpiles to the Frontline, eventually partisans (enemies behind the Frontline) took out my truck so I flagged the location, next time I drove through they were all gone and I kept delivering supplies. Even if you mess something up in logistics, no one is going to get mad at you. It’s competitive in that each team hates each other, but largely unless you start trolling or team killing people are positive.
If you do end up getting it I can help ya get started learning stuff if you need
Okay, thanks for the information! I appreciate the offer, I’ll have to keep that in mind if I decide to get it. I think the logistics end of the game could be a lot of fun.
I used to be a heavy industrial player in EVE Online and Foxhole fills the hole, surprisingly. Each faction has at least one group whose sole purpose is logistics, and they’re both decent.
I had been talking with someone else on here about trying EVE in that playstyle a while back! I never tried it, but it always sounded interesting. Logistics sounds like it could be an interesting thing to try in Foxhole, I may need to give it a go.
Man, some of my buddies picked it back up and I just can’t understand. How much fuckin money have they given that piece of shit company over the years? And now it’s Microsoft? Sigh
WoW is still massive btw and the latest xpac seems to be a success so far.
Interesting, thanks!
I still play guild wars 2. It’s the only MMO that doesn’t piss me off. No subscription fee. Never raised the level cap. Only added a new tier of gear once close to launch and said that’s it. Plays like a real video game.
Because the level cap and gear cap doesn’t change, you can take a break and come back just fine. My characters I made years ago are just as mechanically viable as anyone else. (Knowing how to play them is a separate question. I’m pretty bad at thief, but some people are little immortal jerks with it)
It also feels more like a real video game than some MMOs. You can dodge attacks. Like there’s a dodge button that moves you and gives you iframes. There’s a lot less of the old timey “your character moved away on the screen so the monster did its attack animation way over there, but you still get hit”.
They also solved a lot of the anti social problems of old MMOs. You don’t need to form a formal group for most content. There’s no kill stealing. You just go into the world and do stuff.
There’s no mandatory quest chains. There’s the main story you can follow, but there’s very little MMO filler. There are “hearts” you can do that are kind of MMO busywork, but you can also just not do them.
I know the game is old but it’s still very good. I haven’t been able to get a lot of friends to play it. I think they think it’s like a shitty MMO where you just grind for gear to grind for more gear, and level up so you can level up and grind for more gear. It’s not.
Many might have also played Guild Wars 1 which had a lot of that content you could only access with a certain minimum party size from what I remember.
Oh yeah GW1 was harder at launch because you only had limited NPC support, but the later expansions really expanded that (no pun intended) by adding more robust npc Heroes that could join your party and be customized.
Though GW1 came out 19 years ago, so a good chunk of potential GW2 players were in diapers when it came out. Gosh, I’m so old.
GW2 is very “solo” friendly. I put solo in quotes because there will typically be other people around, but you don’t have to talk to them or wait on them for most stuff. Like, earlier I was flying around one of the maps doing a little quest thing, and I joined in several events to fight monsters with other people. Didn’t say a word. It’s all very seamless.
I still play Old School RuneScape and Guild Wars 2, and they are both very active.
However, I’ve not tried a new MMORPG in ages. I don’t even really know if any relatively new ones could be interesting to try out.
I just don’t have time. RPGs are still my favorite genre, and I used to even work in the MMORPG space. I have a fulltime job, a house I just bought and have to upkeep (I was renting until now), and farming. On top of that, spending time with the wife and all of the regular shopping and chores still exist. Further still, I try to always be learning something for fun, but I haven’t even really had time to do that. The most entertainment I have these days is listening to podcasts and youtube vids whilst working outside.
I am playing turtle wow—a private server game.
It’s mostly like the vanilla wow, but has some optimized updates.
I played a bit over there a while ago, how is it going now?
I don’t know when you last played. They added two new races: High Elf for the Alliance and Goblin for the Horde in 2023, a few new dungeons, some new glyphs/challenges, and a radio feature. But mostly, it’s the same as the original game.
I don’t think they’re dead. They were wildly popular in the earlier days of the internet when it was still a relatively small place. Now there’s more people playing games than ever before. And a much lower proportion playing MMOs
Star wars the old republic is pretty great, not perfect but super solid story, essentially just Kotor 3. I played it reguarly for last few months and truly enjoyed it like how I used to enjoy WoW back in the day. I know certain fans are going come at me with knives for saying this, but imp, it has much better story content than FF14.
Do you know if people still play galactic starfighter (GSF) in SWTOR? Or if it’s gotten any updates? It became my favorite thing to do in game, but it wasn’t very popular, and last time I tried I sat in queue for a while before giving up. (I liked Squadrons but that also tapered off quickly.)
The rest of the game is great too. I treat it like FFXIV - play every now and then to catch up on the story, though it’s been a while since I’ve played SWTOR. I don’t know if I agree the story content is better than FFXIV (after ARR at least - especially Shadowbringers and Endwalker), but I can see why some people would like it more. It’s consistently good from start to finish. Anyone who likes Star Wars and gaming is missing out on a huge variety of stories and fun if they don’t play it.
Anyway, might need to give it a go again.
So they have a couple servers and I had charcters on all of them. On most, yeah GSF was kinda dead. But omg on Star Forge? You can chain pop matches all day. It’s by far the most populated NA server and much more active than the others. Would highly recommend heading there if you wanna scratch that dog fighting itch. 😉
(after ARR at least - especially Shadowbringers and Endwalke)
Oh yeah, those were the best storylines for sure. And I am absolutely not here to say the story in FF14 is bad, I’ve played most of the FF games and the story is always solid. But the amount of choices, variations and alignment options really seals swtor as my favorite in this regard. Absolutely no shade for anyone that disagrees, just my personal opinion. ♥
My understanding is that at least some WoW players switched to ffxiv, which does seem to be popular and well updated. If you’re looking for a new game, might be worth a look?
I stopped playing MMORPGs around the Blitzchung incident. FF14 didn’t hook me the same way WoW did, and Warframe isn’t really an RPG, but it did end up filling the space.
I’m attempting to host a private Ragnarok Online server for my small group of friends. Its a shame that game is all but forgotten, the music has not been topped… except by ffxiv maybe.
It’s not too terrible to set up a RO server. There’s even a guide to running one on a Raspberry Pi.
I followed the guide a few years back and it worked out pretty well. Instead of setting up a site to create user accounts I just ended up manually adding users to the database.
I got it working, my issue was a commented out ip_bind variable in one of the .conf files. And you can also allow the new account variable. Users just type in their account name as if logging in, and put an _M or _F at the end and the server knows to append their account info to what password they input to the login server
Though my friend swear they want that 1x rates… we shall see.
HMU if you do and want another player, it’s my favorite game of all time. SoundTEMP did SO GOOD with the music… I still listen to the soundtrack today. Bless them for just including the MP3s with the game.
Old School RuneScape is alive and well, we got a new boss yesterday, and we’ve been getting drip-fed content all year this year.
