This week while doing routine maintenance on my blog, I decided to make sure that the links to other MMO blogs that specialize in critique on this site were still pointing toward actual websites. During this process I ended up deleting at least 30% of the links on my site.
I was shocked to see how many blogs that I used to love are no longer in existence or dormant. One particular wonderful blog by a insightful lady named MorningLark is no longer. Her domain is for sale as are some of the links to other MMO blogs displayed on this site. I felt like someone punched me in the gut. My first reaction was to ask the question: why?
While we still have a good number of blogs dedicated to MMOs, many of them seem to be journals of their experiences in virtual worlds. We also have MMO blogs that are all about theory crafting and speculation of how new expansions will impact their chosen class. All of those blogs are useful and worthwhile in their own right.
What concerns me the most are the blogs that deal in critique of the genre. From my own personal anecdotal evidence, those kinds of blogs are in decline. The big question is: why?
Have MMORPGs reached a state of perfection that we no longer need any form of criticism?
Hardly. If anything MMOs seem to be getting worse then better. In a previous article, I mentioned that the popular music genre is also in a downward spiral of producing infantile and sophomoric content. So it’s not just happening to MMOs.
Where is the MMO Wine Spectator?
The video game industry is obsessed by attaining high Metacrticic scores and many bonuses in the industry are tied to those scores, yet for some reason MMO developers seem oblivious to criticism. The only barometers they seem to care about are sales figures and stock prices. While I fully believe in the wisdom of Adam Smith’s invisible hand theory of the marketplace I am perplexed that the marketplace has not given us a better MMO mousetrap.
Maybe we need to consider that the MMO market which is a niche market within the entire video game market, is in actuality two sub-markets: mass market and niche market. The wine industry is like this as well. There are mass market big wine companies that produce cheap wine for consumers and there are mid-size to small wineries that produce award winning wines that show up in Wine Spectator. But the MMO industry doesn’t really have a highly respected authority like Wine Spectator to rate MMOs. The closest thing we have is a ranking list from MMORPG.com.
On the other side of the fence, there is no professional association of MMO developers. With the exception of the odd panel at GDC or PAX, MMO developers rarely get together to talk about their craft.
So the task of critiquing MMOs is left to bloggers and others.
The Rise of MMO Blogging
As the MMORPG genre blossomed in the late 1990’s with titles like EverQuest and exploded later in the mid 2000’s with World of Warcraft, many MMO players sought to understand the phenomenon of virtual worlds. As millions of players found themselves enthralled by this new form of entertainment, they pondered and subsequently deconstructed every aspect of how MMOs are made and why they played them.
At the time blogging was very popular with blog platforms like WordPress and others. So naturally many MMO players started to write about their passion for the hobby. There were blogs and websites devoted to: combat and theory-craft, trade-skills, itemization, maps and exploration and personal experiences in MMOs. There were also many forums at the time devoted to high profile guilds who at the time were the rock stars of the new entertainment medium. A few of the top guild leaders went on to work for major MMO companies.
Other websites and blogs emerged had more of a consumer watchdog purpose. They closely monitored what the big MMO studios were doing and offered opinion and commentary. This made sense because at the time MMOs were an ongoing investment. First you purchased the MMO, then you kept paying for it each month. Naturally due to this ongoing financial commitment, players felt rightly entitled to a high quality of service and ongoing improvements. I believe I can safely say that the MMO players became one of the first true video gamer communities in history.
Since I started blogging in 2004, the MMO genre has changed and so has technology and the way that people get their news and opinion.
YouTube Video Game Reviewer/E-celeb
A few years ago there was the rise of the YouTube video reviewer. People like TotalBiscuit and Angry Joe are a good example of this type of video commentary/entertainment. Many more have followed in their wake and the typical YouTube video game personality seems to be from the UK and is characterized by a snarky and dismissive tone that the Brits have turned into an art form.
Despite being a video site, YouTube is considered to be one of the world’s biggest search engines. Yes, you heard me right. Many people today — especially millennials — do not read actual newspapers or visit websites to get information, instead they use video almost exclusively.
If you want to share your opinions about a MMO today, chances are you’re more likely to start a YouTube channel than to create a traditional text blog. There are in fact quite a few YouTube commentators that are doing a podcast type show where they invite a few personalities to chat about video games and MMOs. I believe there is value in these kinds of videos as they seem to focus less on the entertainment value and more on actual substance.
Mega Gaming Websites
Then a few years later there was the rise of the mega gaming websites. With the increasing popularity of video games, suddenly anyone that played video games thought they could be a video game journalist. Video game journalism is perhaps the lowest rung on the food chain for idealistic graduates fresh out of journalism college bursting with progressive ideas and a desire to change the world™.
When the GamerGate scandal came to light, it exposed the danger of this trend when many video game websites ended up becoming infiltrated by these social justice warriors with a journalism major. Video game journalism ended up being used as propaganda vehicle for left-wing and progressive viewpoints instead of actually reporting and critiquing video games for gamers.
As the years passed, eventually Reddit came along and created a more centralized form of discussion based on votes from subscribers. The problem is that this format can be abused and can end up creating a tribal atmosphere and an echo chamber effect where anyone that strays from the narrative is ostracized. When an article is linked on Reddit very rarely to the people ever come to your site to comment; they post on Reddit instead because that’s where the action is. Although I am starting to warm up to Reddit, I have still have some problems with Reddit that I have outlined in a previous article and lately Reddit has been trying to censor and silence conservative and libertarian voices.
Throughout all of the changes I have noticed that people’s attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter. I am fully aware that the kinds of long form articles and essays I write are not as appealing to the current generation of TLDR afflicted gamers.
But the biggest problem with the decline of MMO blogging and critique is that something has happened to MMOs that people are no longer writing about them. The reason is simple: MMOs are in decline.
The Decline of MMOs
MMOs were once thought to be the future of video gaming. Today MMOs aren’t really a big deal anymore. But now that the future is here, other forms of video games have proven to be more popular and have captured the imagination of the public. The sandbox genre video game of Minecraft has sold an impressive 100+ million copies. MOBAs are very popular too.
The main problem is that the creativity of MMO developers has stagnated and atrophied. The creative energy that used to go into making MMOs more immersive is instead being diverted to make better cinematics in order to create so-called “epic experiences”. Other resources are being used to trim away traditional MMO features to make them more accessible in order to attract potential new and unskilled demographics on the periphery. We have gone backwards instead of forwards.
Blizzard spent probably $50 million dollars on their top secret Titan MMO and they had to cancel it because it wasn’t fun. Daybreak Games also spent millions of dollars on EverQuest Next and it too was cancelled for the same reason. The top two MMO studios in the world have now admitted they are incapable of making new MMOs.
Another reason for the decline in MMO blogs is that MMOs have become predictable and boring. It’s very hard to get excited about writing about the same mechanics, the same shopworn plots, the same tired quests over and over again.
The potential of MMORPGs is still largely unrealized and untapped. Virtual worlds are still nowhere close to being living and breathing. To this day there is still very little dynamic content in the MMO genre that lets players have an impact and adds replayability with ever changing and evolving virtual worlds. We are still inhabiting virtual worlds that are enslaved to the tedium of the Groundhog Day syndrome.
The Advent of the Single Player MMO
Perhaps the biggest reason for the decline, is that MMORPGs are no longer MMORPGs anymore. They are basically single player games that you are playing simultaneously with other players.
The MMO community that used to be so passionate and vibrant has vanished just like the community within MMOs. Nobody talks or socializes in MMOs anymore, so why should they talk about them on blogs?
Just as a rising tide raises all ships, so too does a falling tide lower all ships. MMOs have become too easy, too easy, too nonsensical and too juvenile that millions have stopped playing them entirely. The decline of MMOs like World of Warcraft that lose millions of subscribers each year is conclusive evidence of this. As goes WoW, so goes the MMO genre and the communities that coalesce around them.
As the fortunes of the MMO industry fell there have been other collateral casualties. Even WoWInsider — once the top WoW only news site — went out of business. It now carries on as Blizzard Watch which is run by social justice warriors and sycophants who routinely close comments when readers dare to stray from their progressive agenda. Blizzard Watch is one of the worst examples of video game journalism out there as they willfully failed to report on the Nostalrius incident until J. Allen Brack responded officially. They also refused to do any stories on the Tracer controversy.
Conclusion
For an art form to be healthy it requires criticism. Criticism is a noble pursuit that contributes to our culture. Criticism and dissent makes the food we eat, the drink we imbibe and the entertainment and art we experience better and the lives we all lead better. And those who are part of the creative process need to be open to criticism from their peers and the public instead of just relying on sales figures to gauge their success.
In the early years of the MMORPG genre, the MMO community took an active interest in the virtual worlds they were inhabiting. They cared enough to ponder and question how the gods (the developers) administered their virtual worlds. Many senior developers today were in fact some of the loudest and most vocal critics and parlayed their strong opinions into careers in the industry. People like Alex Afrasiabi, Jeff Kaplan, Steve Danuser and Scott Jennings just to name a few. All of them rose to the occasion called out MMO developers for their shenanigans and their criticism had the beneficial effect of improving MMOs. Sadly, those days are over.
Much like the Hollywood film industry, the world of MMO development has devolved into a sausage factory of producing the same MMO over and over again. We bloggers were the resistance. It’s been a long war of attrition but eventually the big companies won. MMO criticism is basically dead with just a few bloggers left to speak for MMO gamers who feel abandoned and disenfranchised. Of course there are still many MMO blogs that are interested in theory crafting and how much DPS (damage per second) in an upcoming talent build will bestow to their favorite class but MMO critique is in decline.
At some point as a critic, you can only voice the same concerns over and over again until it feels pointless to continue. The big MMO companies won’t listen and rarely if ever engage their critics. If they do it’s from the safety of blue text on official forums where they control the shots, make the rules and form the narrative. Instead, these companies have become echo-chambers of insularity where the status quo MMO design philosophy is rigidly imposed and worshiped.
For the past few years, I must admit I have been so utterly disgusted at how banal the MMO genre has become that I wanted to shut down my blog and walk away from it all. If it wasn’t for the assault on gamers by the collusion of social justice warriors and the corrupt video game journalists involved in the Gamergate scandal, I probably would have stopped writing about MMOs altogether.
With the decline and retreat of independent MMO bloggers, we are quickly losing a valuable source of independent opinion that is free from the pernicious influence of big video game companies and the corrupt cadre of sycophantic gaming websites that are only too eager to pander after receiving all-expense paid junkets to preview the latest blockbuster MMO expansion.
As we have seen with the Overwatch Tracer fiasco, video game companies like Blizzard Entertainment routinely censor and delete forum posts to suit their narrative. Blogs are one of the few places left where gamers can freely and openly discuss the issues that are facing gamers and the games they play.
Recently the internet media complex which is dominated by tyrannical big tech companies like Google who promote a progressive agenda both here in the USA and around the world, are silencing and censoring libertarian and conservative voices. Even Wikipedia — the self-appointed arbiters of knowledge — is rotten to the core with left-wing bias and manipulation of knowledge. Perhaps the most egregious example of this their odious, one-sided article on GamerGate.
We are living in dark times where freedom of speech and democracy is under assault all around the world by the soft tyranny of powerful forces. We are rapidly coming to the point where those of us who express conservative and libertarian views will have our expression labeled as “hate” speech and prosecuted for it by government regulatory bodies. I predict that personal blogs and websites will be the last outposts of freedom left on the Internet. Now more than ever we need to encourage people to keep blogging and expressing their views while we still can. We need to hear more voices rather than less voices. We need more diversity of opinion. We need more inclusion and tolerance of non-progressive ideas.
Are all the MMO blogs gone? No. There are some good ones that are still going. A few are still fighting the good fight. Even though I may not always agree with them or find the time to visit them, I salute them for their tenacity and persistence.
As mentioned earlier, part of the reason for the decline of MMO blogging is that technology is changing on how people like to get information on the Internet. YouTube e-celebs have an inordinate amount of power and influence now. But forever the critic, I must ask: have MMOs gotten better or worse since the arrival of the TotalBiscuits and others?
I have been blogging and writing essays about MMOs for over 11 years. I am proud of my contribution to the MMO genre in that I provided a counterpoint and a rebuttal to the Blizzard formula of how MMOs should be made. Most of my predictions about the industry have come true. Even with all the gloomy news these days about MMOs, I am still optimistic that someday we will find a virtual place we can call home again that is worthy of our dedication and support.
For my part, as long as I have money to pay my monthly hosting costs, I can assure you this blog will never go away. I will always do my best to speak truth to power. I will always be unafraid to take on the big MMO companies when they screw up. I will always stand up for the design principles that I believe in and that made me fall in love with MMORPGs in the first place.
I know I have many readers who still come here after all these years. I want to thank all of you for your continued loyalty and participation.
-Wolfshead
I’m in the “gave up” camp.
You hit the nail on the head on what MMOs could have been and the obvious problems with modern MMO design have not reconciled with the business case. That is mostly because no one has tried something new yet.
The group of “niche” crowdfunded games that are upcoming may change that but when Single Player “MMOs” routinely smash sales records I have little hope. (see: The Division. Fun game, RPG/FPS that is ruined by mechanics that force it online instead of single player experience)
I used to write about world building and rally against bad WoW-style game design (and I do vote with my wallet) but the business side has become too big for small voices to have impact. Even when WoW shrinks to a million users – people will point to how old it is, and how successful it WAS – not to how their decisions ultimately made it a worse experience. I still have recently argued that WoW would be a better lobby style game (like Diablo 3) than what it is today based on design decisions. The game consists of hiding in your Garrison clicking on things waiting for your group finder to pull you into 30 minutes of a faux-group that you won’t talk to, connect with, care about or see again when that 30 minutes is up.
And I didn’t even play Warlords of Draenor.
My blog has turned into a post every week or two, 500 words on whatever I am playing or feeling like at the time. Bite sized blogging based on my personal experiences, low research opinion pieces easy to digest.
I will play the new MMOs and share what I think and enjoy about them but my ability to influence their design has long passed.
I love reading your posts because of the obvious passion you still hold for the genre I have largely given up on, in a style and format (essay) that is rarely used.
Wonderful.
I love reading your blog. I check this site every week or so to see if you’ve posted anything new. I am glad to know that you’re going to be in the fight, for the foreseeable future.
Thank you for all that you do.
“For an art form to be healthy it requires criticism. Criticism is a noble pursuit that contributes to our culture. Criticism and dissent makes the food we eat, the drink we imbibe and the entertainment and art we experience better and the lives we all lead better. And those who are part of the creative process need to be open to criticism from their peers and the public instead of just relying on sales figures to gauge their success.”
Noble words. Too bad that in the same article you contradict them. You only consider conservative and libertarian criticism to be valid, while simultaneously heaping insults on left-wing criticism. You don’t even allow for neutral criticism from blogs that aren’t politically affiliated, but which don’t share your opinions about the state of the market.
The reason why the healthy discussion of the MMO blogosphere died? It is that most people prefer to discuss in echo chambers rather than to be exposed to diverging ideas.
Noble words. Too bad that in the same article you contradict them. You only consider conservative and libertarian criticism to be valid, while simultaneously heaping insults on left-wing criticism.
I’m saddened that you cherry picked my article and found one thing you didn’t like and decided to make some harsh accusations against me. I even stated in my article that even though there are blogs that are out there that I disagree with, that I respect them and salute them for their persistence. Your long running MMO blog and others came to mind when I wrote that Tobold. I suppose no good deed goes unpunished.
To address your accusations. Nowhere in my article did I say that left wing criticism is invalid or did I say that only conservative and libertarian criticism is valid. I stated my opinion and observations along with links as evidence that conservative and libertarian voices are routinely being excluded on the Internet due because of the bias of social media companies that are owned and staffed by progressives and leftists.
The growing censorship of opinions around the world is something that is a very serious issue that I care deeply about. As an American I enjoy the precious right of Freedom of speech guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. The right of freedom of speech is also contained in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
I just re-read my article. There were no insults in it. I’m sorry you feel that way.
You don’t even allow for neutral criticism from blogs that aren’t politically affiliated, but which don’t share your opinions about the state of the market.
I’m not sure what you are insinuating here. I have my own blog, I write articles where I state my opinions, observations and analysis. I allow comments as long as they adhere to my terms of service. I don’t turn anyone away as long as they are polite and respectful. This is my blog. I write what I want, when I want.
The reason why the healthy discussion of the MMO blogosphere died? It is that most people prefer to discuss in echo chambers rather than to be exposed to diverging ideas.
I would agree with you on this one. I think it’s easy to be convinced of one’s own righteousness and correctness on things. Therefore, it’s important to have healthy debates where we can challenge each other. Critics need critique just as much as the MMOs and video games we cover.
The problem is that the echo chamber effect has become worse as politics has entered the world of video games. Back in 2005 when I started my blog, nobody cared about politics. We just wanted better MMORPGs and better video games.
That’s all changed in the past few years as social justice workers have set their sights on video games and they are demanding that those games reflect their progressive ideology. I do not believe video games should contain any form of content that serves to indoctrinate and promote any political or social agenda.
In today’s political discussion, the left and the right have become echo chambers and this trend has made its way into video game blogs and websites. From my point of view as a conservative with libertarian leanings, how can you continue to have a dialogue with someone when if you disagree with them they immediately label you a racist, a sexist, a misogynist, homophobic and other epithets? You can’t.
We can’t have debate and dialogue when one side of the argument has decided that their opponents are horrible people and beneath their contempt. The problem with the Internet is that it’s far too easy to label people anonymously from the safety of your computer where you don’t have to come face to face with a real human being.
When I grew up, the world was a better place. People seemed more reasonable and polite. People didn’t have a forum like the Internet to treat people they don’t even know with contempt and disdain which is the case on social media. Sadly the Internet is a big reason why our society is so polarized.
You have made some valid points here. I have just started using Reddit and I have noticed that if you voice an opinion that is not what the majority of the people are thinking you will get down-voted. Similarly with YouTube, if you mentions something in the comments that is against the crowd then people will gang up on you.
The future of MMO’s are going to be in the hands of the big companies and if they keep getting the same boring feedback then they will continue to churn out the run of the mill rubbish we have been seeing lately.
Good work for making your opinion heard!
Good old Tobold – the gold standard in the barometer for wrongness.
Hi there, great analysis. You are mixing a bit political views into your thorough analysis, I regret that you got jumped just for that. Yeah, MMOs are in a state of decline. They are still there and the dream/desire of many players for a better MMO world is also stil there. People just no longer write about it, fewer people still play or are simply not nearly as enthusiastic. Or they got old, and the new generation isn’t as bedazzled by MMOs anymore. For many good reasons.
The bulk of MMO gamers these days is quite another breed than in the early days. Many old vets are probably still around, but they left the field to a rather low standard and low level “community”. Who really wants to bother posting about that, to be associated with something kinda shameful?
While the competition has given up on trying to copy and dethrone WoW or come up with something new, Blizzard lost touch to the playerbase. They lost it already with Diablo 3 despite its success, Hearthstone is really good, but that’s not what I and other MMO interested players expect from Blizzard. Overwatch is not going to stay for long, IMO. It’s not bad at all – it’s just not good enough, they are probably not going to convince Team Fortress players or win many news ones for the genre.
SOE is now Daybreak, and well, not much is to be expected from them anymore. The WoW design team still seems to be the most active, their ideas for Legion are quite interesting. The core problems still do not get tackled, the trend seems to be to have fewer buttons for players to press. It’s still not simple enough.
I find it interesting how much game designers struggle with the online and multiplayer parts of their games. They still design single player games and the multiplayer mechanics are not nearly as refined as they could and should be.
The idea of trying to design a fantasy world, I am afraid after many failed or so-so games not meeting expectations it’s just dead for many more years before someone might attempt and succeed again.
As a postscript to my article I want to share this with you. Every day we have more reports coming in of users being banned on Facebook and Twitter for speech that is not politically correct under the guise of “hate speech”.
Today it was reported that Reddit is deleting complete threads about yet another Islamic terror attack:
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/08/04/reddit-thread-on-france-firebomb-attack-closed-over-anti-islam-hate-speech/
This is just more evidence to prove my assertions made in this article about giant social media companies.
My advice to everyone that wants to engage in free speech on the internet. Go register a domain, put up a website and/or patronize websites that allow freedom of speech which is a right guaranteed to all citizens of the world in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is the only way we can speak out minds without fear of the scourge of censorship.
Here is where I will be adding more news stories about censorship on the Internet:
Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006
I think the shadowbanning and skullduggery of Twitter and Facebook is part of why blogging has chilled. There’s a pervasive SJW effort to ban wrongthink, and given that they seem rather rabid about pursuing wrongdoers, the wrong opinions can have an effect on a career. The annoying infusion of politics into games and the surrounding chatter sites has broken a lot of elements of the community and game design. It’s just an irritation when players storm Barrens Chat with that nonsense, but when the Powers That Be buy into the crusades, it causes problems.
On a more practical level, as my kids age and my career careens into various dead ends, I simply don’t have the time for blogging. It’s a luxury, and one that I can’t afford. I have no shortage of things that I’d like to write about, just no time, since I have to prioritize efforts that can pay bills rather than lounge about pontificating about esoteric game theory and such. I rather enjoy such pontification, but it’s something I can’t often afford.
Hi Tesh! Good to see you. You know, I never really thought about it but you make an excellent point. Saying the “wrong” thing on your blog can be the end of your career. The social justice warriors and cultural Marxists are drunk with power and are on a witch hunt to end the careers of anyone that disagrees with them. To them, the end justifies the means.
Companies like Blizzard who capitulate to these SJWs to signal their virtue are only making things worse.
Most corporations have social media policies that forbid their employees from posting anything that could damage the reputation of the corporation. We are now in an era where many people are afraid to speak out and share their opinions.
Free speech is slowly coming to an end as most social media companies routinely censor and ban accounts thanks to the brigading of the progressives and SJWs. Our minds will be the last place left of autonomy for humanity.
In their quest for utopia these progressives are creating a dystopian world of rigid and narrow orthodoxy. Turn on the news each day and see what is going on and how governments are becoming more repressive and restrictive. We live in scary times.
Blogging for me is a luxury too. I don’t write as often as I used to either.
Here’s a great article I just read that is further evidence that the big social media companies are increasingly censoring speech on their platform:
You’ve Been Restricted
Social-media sites are growing increasingly comfortable with censorship.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/youve-been-restricted-14829.html
You can thank the progressives for this. The will simply not tolerate any speech that contradicts their beliefs.
The Internet was nice while it lasted.
Just found your blog today and I’ve read several articles and have found the highly refreshing. I agree with you totally on the points you made in the death-penalty post and in the main thrust of this one.
I have been particularly frustrated lately with the modern Single-Player-MMO design. After 8 months of struggling to enjoy Final Fantasy XIV I have recently unsubscribed and am now gearing up to level a warlock on the Elysium Vanilla WoW Darrowshire server.
I expect you already know about it, you hinted at kick-started MMOs, but myself and several other like-minded friends are eagerly awaiting the launch of Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. I’m tempering my expectations, but even just the possibility that things might improve in my favorite genre gives me hope.
God bless, Wolfshead.