Because it never innovates gameplay wise.
None of the combat is ever very satisfying most of the time, and devs even managed to fuck up stuff like Dragon's Dogma Online, which has great combat.
People want an MMO that has the playable quality of a singleplayer game, but unless you find a group or you're a socialfag, they are games you would not touch with a ten foot pole if they were singleplayer only.
City of Heroes was good though
The avatar creation was its only bright spot. MMOs are just another casualty of western developers and their inability to make anything of value.
He was asking everybody on the board, not implying everybody on the board has the same opinion on something
MMO's are dying for now.
I think a VR mmo would bring it back though, if such a thing comes about
I think there are a bunch of reasons.
The first is that, I don't think the MMO genre is dying. I think it is returning to it's pre-WoW popularity. I don't really think there was a huge boom in MMO demand, there was just a huge boom in WoW interest and the glut of games that were released (and failed badly).
Secondly, I think the constituent parts of the MMO genre that people enjoyed can be found elsewhere. Almost every single game these days has social features up the ass. Many people find hub games just as agreeable as a large static world. If not more agreeable. A large persistent world isn't useful if there is nothing to do with it. And as MMO's try to be more themepark than anything else, it always begs the question of why having the persistent world in the first place.
I also think there is this strange thing where game developers have lost the ability to recognize that there is a difference between these words: shallow, casual, accessible, simplification. A large part of WoW's success was making itself far more accessible without sacrificing any of the essential "MMO"ness of the games that came before it (I was playing FF11 before WoW, and man can I tell you what a shock it was to not have to spend 10 hours to do the most basic task).
But at some point they seemed to think taking out arduous and uninteresting mechanics (accessibility) was the same removing depth. Since they simply view depth as complexity. Which those are not the same two things. A lot of 4X games are complex but lack any real depth. In this case, when you confuse the two, you get what started happening with WoW: just remove anything which requires an actual decision or critical thought, and claim you are making it more accessible. It was already accessible, you are just making it more shallow.
It's this lack of subtle thinking which seems to dominate AAA gaming and most major developers. Apparently the mere existence of depth (even if it is hidden) in their games they find offensive. Even when the game is perfectly accessible to someone who has no real interest in understanding the mechanics in a deeper way, the mere fact someone COULD do that seems to upset them.
That, or the people working their simply don't give a shit anymore and that's why things play like no one ever sat down and went "Wow this is fucking lame".
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What's the deal with all these newfags who just can't lurk. Dammit just shut the fuck up and take in the place before buzzing in like a socially awkward bee.
It's less that MMO's are going down, but rather WoW is starting to crash and burn
It'll actually be interesting to see what pops up after it collapses in the next few years
hopefully nothing
Because ever since WoW devs just copy WoW. All of the exotic and interesting MMOs before that were never iterated, and we certainly get nothing original.