Massively Overthinking: Has the term MMORPG become toxic?

Back in 2016, when the MMORPG genre had just suffered a brutal one-two punch of losing EverQuest Next and the gutting of WildStar’s team, there was such a sense of panic among our readers and even our writers that I sat down and tried to write a reassuring column about the fate of the genre. I tried to remind everyone that there was a time when we had but one MMORPG, which had become many hundreds, which is still true. But even so, commenters were calling that year our “dark ages.”

“It’s tempting to panic over the fact that the last big western themepark to launch is floundering and the last inbound AAA themepark has now been scuttled, just as we panicked when Blizzard transformed Titan into a shooter,” 2016 Bree wrote. “I cannot say with absolute certainty that Massively OP will survive whatever comes next for MMORPGs, that we’ll still be here when the spiritual-successors-to and improvers-upon Star Wars Galaxies and EverQuest and yes, even World of Warcraft are finally launched and our genre has its day once again. But I’m confident that day will come.”

I bring all this back up again not to toot my 2016 horn but to add context to this Massively Overthinking – and to a common topic all serious MMORPG fans are worried about once again. We’ve lost a big MMORPG this year in Blue Protocol, and two major MMORPGs – New World and ArcheAge 2 – have rebranded so hard they’re hiding from the term MMORPG. I even just realized this week that Guild Wars 2’s Steam page, Twitter description, and most of the official website no longer describe it as an MMORPG but rather an “online RPG.” Absolutely no one would seriously argue GW2 is not an MMORPG. This is pure marketing, and it’s not an accident.

We have to talk about this. Has the term MMORPG become toxic – or is it the idea of an MMORPG itself? What exactly is happening to the genre, and when is it time to break glass in case of emergency?

Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): I quoted heavily from that 2016 piece, but I hope that if you have time, you’ll reread the whole thing – not for the EverQuest Next and WildStar ephemera, really, but for the sense of loss, worry, and yes hope we were sharing back then. And also for the fact that we survived another eight, almost nine years since then – the site, the genre, and all of you. MMORPGs kept MMORPGing the whole long while. In some ways, the genre has changed and unbundled to survive; we have everything from gacha games to survival games now bolstering our ranks. But we also have a few dozen flourishing core MMOs, all still making money and worthy of our time, some of them better than ever.

To directly answer my own question, I don’t think MMORPGs are toxic, but I certainly understand why marketers are veering hard away from the monster they created. It’s not fair to the good MMOs, but I think most of us would agree that bad MMORPGs and their willing studios have given the genre a reputation for grind, greed, and busywork, to say nothing of toxic players. Gamers – especially younger and console gamers – would just rather not deal with that when they can get most of the same experiences playing in smaller games with smaller player circles and smaller ambitions.

But we’re all capable of reading through the lines, and when a game is rattling off its features and describing an MMORPG, we’re not really fooled. So does it really honestly matter what they call it? I’ve never thought it does; I bin and categorize games by what I  see in them, not by what marketing people prefer. Who cares what they want, when they’re the ones who did this in the first place? We don’t work for them, and neither do you! The important thing is that we’re still getting massive and massively multiplayer content. And we are.

Besides, changing a name doesn’t fix the problems in the online gaming space, no matter how marketers want it to. And it might be nice to take this chance to refresh, reinvent, and reintroduce the massively online genre and shake loose some of its more unfortunate baggage.

Carlo Lacsina (@UltraMudkipEX, YouTube, Twitch): Nah, it ain’t toxic, but there’s a chance an MMORPG can be unprofitable. That makes it even more true in these days of live service. I just think it’s getting more difficult to create a good MMORPG. Seems like Throne & Liberty doubled down on the MMORPG part, and it really does feel like one too. So far it’s a pretty good game and considering how it’s Lineage 3; it can’t not be an MMORPG in my opinion.

I think the question really falls on whether or not a company making the MMORPG will be able to make money off of it. NCsoft and Pearl Abyss know MMORPGs and how to make money off of them, so it makes sense that they’re making MMORPGs. I wouldn’t be surprised if other game companies wouldn’t touch the MMORPG unless they know what they’re doing and they’re 100% sure they can make money off of it.

Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): I admit that my thoughts are entering realms of some very fancy tinfoil haberdashery (and are therefore stupidly wrong), but I think the term is toxic to the marketing guys.

Let’s consider that New World was only uncomfortable with the term when Aeternum was being bandied about, as if they were hoping that console players weren’t somehow paying attention to the PC version and are perhaps hoping that a low content update cadence would be covered by not calling it an MMORPG.

The marketing and money guy issue extends outside of New World as well, of course, but that’s one of the first examples of an industry that keeps trying to seek squeeze big fiscal gains out of every title as fast as possible (aka the live service effect), and it looks as if MMORPGs are the next potential source. Meanwhile, actually calling a game an MMORPG assumes long-tail development, support, and additions of content; a “shared world action RPG with other people online” is more palatable as a thing that’s shortly shut down once the blood has been drained.

On top of the monetization matter, it feels like those same suits believe that console gamers have menial attention spans. One could certainly argue that gamers in general have problems sticking to one thing being spoiled for choice, but there’s more than enough precedent to prove an MMO can establish a secure footing that both makes money for a studio and create a place that players want to come back to regularly, so there’s willful ignorance happening there.

Finally, there’s the overall presumptions of MMORPG gamers themselves. I recall an old interview on G4 with one of the EverQuest devs remarking how MMO gamers are a whole different beast, spending hours upon hours going through content. That behavior has not really changed much, nor has the perception that point elicits: Fans of this genre can seem like gremlins to all of gaming, from the devs down to the press, and that is likely terrifying. This perception is further given no help from pop culture. Who hasn’t held that South Park episode image in mind? Y’all know the one.

But what do we do about it? I’m not sure that there’s anything we can, short of wresting control of the industry from dollar-hungry investor boards, which is far simpler to say. In my opinion, all we can honestly do is watch the market balance itself out like all equations want to do and zero in on the MMOs that are interesting and fun. That support means a lot, I feel.

Colin Henry (@ChaosConstant): More and more, when I say I’m a big MMO gamer in generalist gaming circles, I end up either explaining what an MMO is, or insisting that they’ve gotten a lot more player friendly and story-focused and a lot less grindy over the past decade. So yes, I think there’s a perception problem with the term “MMO” outside of people who play them.

That said, most of the time, those people have at least tried an MMO or at least MMO-lite without thinking about it, games like Destiny 2, Warframe, or Path of Exile. So I don’t think the actual idea of an MMORPG itself is toxic, but yeah, there is certainly a widespread misunderstanding with what the term MMORPG means, and that’s hard to shake.

Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): Toxic? I’m not sure. It’s definitely not in vogue, although I thought it was making a comeback in the past few years before studios started shying away from it once again. “MMO” simply might not be a label that has as much of a draw in the current era, and so marketing teams latch on to other terms with less baggage and more vague interpretations. But changing a label doesn’t change the truth of what something is, no matter how badly some people might hope to redefine reality — and a genre — with flowery phrases.

Sam Kash (@thesamkash): There’s certainly a stigma attached to the term MMO. It’s simply loaded at this point. For those who actually play MMOs, we know what it really means: community and the ability to play with dozens or hundreds or thousands of players in a shared world. But for people on the outside, it’s likely games for your parents generation. Or it’s the South Park episode, which was pretty good, but the only thing the general population remembers is the old guy at the computer. Or for our parents it’s those games that people give up their real lives to spend all their time in.

So I guess I can see why companies would begin to shy away from the term. It’s annoying, but as long as the games continue to be MMOs, I guess it’s OK.

Tyler Edwards (blog): Yes, the term is absolutely toxic. I think it’s easy to not realize this if all you play are MMOs and/or you only interact with other MMO players, but any time I mention an MMO to a gamer who’s not already a fan of the genre, they check out the moment they hear the term.

MMORPGs have a widespread reputation for low-quality content and extreme grind, and while I don’t think that’s entirely accurate of the current state of the genre, the stereotype didn’t come from nowhere. The early entries in the genre didn’t hold a lot of mainstream appeal.

In my experience most people outside our genre also don’t understand that subscription fees have largely been abandoned; they still think an MMO automatically means paying every month. And again, if all you talk to are other MMO players, you might not realize how absolutely radioactive the idea of paying monthly for a game is outside our circles.

I think the problem is twofold.

1 – Mainstream perception of the MMO genre has not evolved at the same rate as the games have. These days most MMOs don’t charge you a monthly subscription, and you usually don’t need to treat them as a second job to participate. The genre is much more casual-friendly than it used to be. But most people don’t know that.

2 – People who’ve never or rarely played MMOs don’t understand the positives of the genre. They only focus on the downsides. We know there’s something special about watching a virtual world grow and evolve over time. We know the comfort of a home game we can keep coming back to year after year. But if you haven’t experienced these things yourself, you’re not going to understand the appeal.

Considering the widespread stigma, I’m not going to blame any studio for running from the term, even in cases where it feels a bit ridiculous to do so (i.e., New World).

Every week, join the Massively OP staff for Massively Overthinking column, a multi-writer roundtable in which we discuss the MMO industry topics du jour – and then invite you to join the fray in the comments. Overthinking it is literally the whole point. Your turn!