Blizzard, in their "prime time" which is over now, made over 500 million profit a year from WoW (allone).

On the other hand, the "F2P" market, especially on the mobile phones but as well on PC (Fortnite is a good example for this type of game) is generating probably around 70% of the gaming industries revenue. So, while we look at it "as a waste of time", it is actually the thing the majority of gamers are looking out for...
I do think, as we got billions of humans... a lot of them at some point in their life, enjoy "wasting their time" as they lack any other perspective and a game is able to grant them the "achievement" they apparently fail to earn in real life.

However... not only the achievement is like a drug for a big mass, as well the "Gacha mechanics", so, able to win or buy items known as "micro transactions". People that are mentally weak totally will "fall" for it. It is apparently already that much of a issue that the EU commission is trying to limit this sort of "abuse" of a humans weakness.

Some good video about in order to understand:

The Brutal Reality of the $80 (And $100) Game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrfNSY2jft8

The Law Finally Caught Up, EVERY AAA Is In Trouble https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCkUUm0zDLY

Nonetheless: It is important to realize that those matters is only marginally affecting "core gamers" or any gamer NOT playing F2P games or games with micro sells in general. Because, lets face the truth: The console-market... no matter from which company... is only about 150 million gamers "strong" (so this is almost the limit we may achieve, which remains unchanged since decades) and on PC in overall as well not much more, at least if we consider NON F2P games. Those gamers, i call it "main gamers" usually got a real gamer system, so either a capable PC or a console.

The other gamers... which makes up around 60% of the revenue-based cookie... are mainly "mobile gamers". The big advantage is that almost every human on earth is owning a smartphone, at least rudimentary capable to play some games. So this "device market" is in theory several billion "phones" strong. However... of course not everyone is playing games on their phones and mainly the younger generation. Still, if i sum up this potential market it is probably around 1-2 billion gamers strong, reason why it is having such a big influence on the overall revenue.

Although, they way how those mobile-gamers pay for their games is in almost any case through F2P and micro transactions and by exploiting the "weakness" of those gamers (achievements, gacha mechanics). Which is slowly considered to become a issue due to many reasons.

In almost any case they got in mind "Its free... and i already got a phone, and obviously to much time"... but the truth is, many of them burn away their coins, by using it, like mad... the revenue is not lying, it is a solid proof of this "cash burned".

Those gamers do not care "if they own something" and if so... it is more of a illusion. Surely useless telling them "there is GOG and what else", there is as good as no interest, as they live indeed "in a different game world" in which they think they "earn something" but ultimately... they own nothing and it surely is not their life goal, at this point.

Hey CymTyr (and others who may be interested in "MMO but offline"),

I was browsing this topic and learned of this title:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/which_indie_games_do_you_want_to_see_released_on_gog_in_2025/post872

There is also an indie game called "Pagan: Autogeny"; GOG rules prohibit me from linking the storefront it is being sold on but it is the ".io" indie gaming site where gamers go to scratch an itch.

This is conflating "revenue" with "the majority of gamers." I don't think it is accurate to do that. It is well-known that microtransaction-based games tend to rely heavily on "whales" for their revenue; in other words, the gamers who are "actually" super-into these games (to the point of spending significantly) are a minority of the games' player bases let alone within the market itself (or, alternatively, a game might have a very small player base that is comprised of a majority of whales, but said whales in this example would still be a minority to the gaming market at large, even among other mobile games).


I disagree. These matters are absolutely affecting gamers like myself who have never ventured into mobile gaming whatsoever.

This store alone, which should be a haven for the "core" gamers you mention, features GWENT, an online-only game with microtransactions. Were it not for the mobile gaming market, this game would be unlikely to exist let alone be on a DRM-free store.

GWENT was then double-downed upon with Thronebreaker. That is a singleplayer game, but last I checked did customers the "favor" of having GWENT (the online-only one) added to their accounts. I feel that Thronebreaker was a vehicle to try and funnel more users to GWENT, "the game they actually want you to be playing". It's an identical strategy to how GTA V included the "free" bonus of GTA Online.

What people often miss is to consider the opportunity cost: were it not for having Thronebreaker as a glorified GWENT long-form sales presentation, we could have gotten a different game (say, a smaller scale singleplayer "mini-Witcher" RPG). And the same for GTA V, which lacked various offline content and features. Did they ever even release singleplayer DLC that was once discussed? They got too busy making their money on the online.

If I remember correctly, a few console generations ago, Call of Duty was cited as an influence on Final Fantasy XIII, specifically in terms of linearity. People who would have told RPG enthusiasts "don't worry about those popular online-focused shooter games, they're not affecting what you like" ended up being wrong. And, as with the earlier examples above, the core gamers could have otherwise gotten a better game.


Many of these people live in soul-crushing poverty so they shouldn't be "counted" as hypothetical customers for the microtransaction-fest games. And, of that cohort, the ones who are customers anyway are among the people being most exploited by the microtransaction strategy (while that is - reprehensibly - a "plus" from a marketing view, it is all the more reason for the rest of us in general to question the ethical issues with the microtransaction model).


I definitely agree with that, but the problem for "my" type of gamer is that corporations aren't content with picking a lane. They can't just leave the "real gaming" and "mobile gaming" markets separate, although I would argue that they should do so. And when the corporations do start to veer in one direction, it tends to be towards the DRMed/online-only/subsciption/microtransaction models. I think that's why it's important for us old-school-minded folks to remain vigilant and vocal in our dislike of any "incursion" of such models.

I had 2 friends I met in Everquest II that got married and same thing happened to another couple in Guild Wars 2.

Not sure they'd consider it a waste. :)

I also tried out Diablo Immortal for a short time and got to hang out with some people on Discord. Got to share each others stories and hobbies and such. It was fun for a while, both the game and the people I got to know.

Not sure they'd consider it a waste either. :) (though I have no idea how they can stand to play on a tiny phone screen lol)

Avoid any microtransactions like the plague though lol. (I spent $20 on DI and don't regret it, but will never do it again heh)

Overall, it's fun and a great way to socialize, since everyone is there for mostly the same reason, so you have things in common to talk about from the beginning. Though it can be time consuming at times, if you join guilds and raids etc. But if played in a casual manner, it's quite fun.

But if you get hooked on it, then yeah, you could be missing out on a lot of other amazing games.

If someone manages to come out with a serious VRMMO (RPG hopefully), I am soooo in and I wouldn't even mind beta testing it. And I mean one with full (or at least good partial immersion). I'd pause everything else to try something like that. (thinking something like Sword Art Online at least haha)
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The core problem with WoW is that nobody really knows why it was this successful, and nobody knows how to repeat this success.

Also that the success seems to have had the very ironic effect of killing Blizzard off. A flood of money flew Blizzards way and greedy Shareholders took control of the company.

What I also dont get is why WoW basically never improved again. They never introduced Bards, they never introduced housing, etc. Probably because greedy Shareholders dont care. They will sell you the worst product ever, as long as they're making a profit, they are perfectly happy with doing that.

So WoW only repeated the same formulas again and again. More raids, more areas, more gear, etc.

All in all WoW might have been an unhealthy development that actually may have killed MMORPGs in the end. Because MMORPGs are dead and have been dead for a while.

For starters, there are no more experiments.

The last really innovative MMORPG was probably Star Wars: The Old Republic, which argueably failed and probably could only fail, because a MMO with a focus on storytelling just leads to unsolveable problems.

Before that there have been some other really innovative MMORPGs, like Ultimate Online, EverQuest, Dark Ages of Camelot, Guild Wars (though I dont personally consider that a MMO, but many do), Eve Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

Ever since MMORPGs have become very formulaic, just repeating things done before, and not doing them as good as done before either.