No one can see the future, but it is sure to be fun guessing, and essentially what would’ve been done for the MMO genre in this end-of-year-themed massively-overthinking? I asked our writers and readers to prognosticate what we expect from this genre in 2023; but not what we wish would happen, but what we think would happen, and the better so, without excess embarrassment. Even though it does, then laugh about it coming November of next year! Join our table and get our MMO predictions for 2022.
Andrew Ross (@dengarsw):I’m mostly going to stick with Not So Massivley games in this one, out of Orna: The GPS RPG, which continues to upgrade its art, mechanics and surprise us with player-inspired classes, specializations, weapons, and pets. Maybe even new GPS-constants will be available.
In some cases, it will still be too late. But the smaller companies came back. If FFXIV does something right, OW2 might indeed be able to do it if Blizz does something right. I don’t think that WoW will be so lucky this year, however.
I want to be positive, but realistically, I don’t have enough expectations from Daybreak, Star Citizen and Elyria. To be positive, but I’m not surprised that it has to come back to its glory day, even if it was not true to be.
I think Splatoon 3 will try and balance the Big Run and traditional Splatfests, but I think the latter will end up turning some players off since the PvE is much a skill check, but we can also get TableTurfBattles (the card game), online, possibly without going to need an expansion pack.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet will announce their own expansion that will bring in new paradox pokemon, we know about but more old pokemon, particularly the Kanto Starters, which aren’t currently available in-game. I honestly believe current multiplayer bugs will be fixed and those who have lasted will have fun hunting paradox mon in the end-game area(s), but still not much closer to a Pokemon MMO- the best hope would be for the series to become more Monster Hunter-esque.
I think Niantic will sadly sunset Pikmin Bloom before the year ends. Peridot may introduce and not be canceled because it has its in-house IP, like Ingress, which, uh, persists. The new NBA game will be fine enough, but the Marvel game won’t survive, either. A new promotional game for Nintendo will be available now and it may be possible that Nintendo can help ensure this one lands better than Pikmin. Pokemon GO will be on the production of the year ahead of the year over the holidays, and Niantic will not be prepared for the event of the Gen 3 release, despite the fact that it signals their worse fears: a limited amount of premade main game series content. I believe that Niantic as a whole would continue to be disappointing, both in gaming and public relations.
Andy McAdams: Blizzard continues with its not-great, not-terrible improvements of WoW, and Dragonflight becomes its first expansion in half a decade to achieve Levels of the Okayiest Expansion. In spite of the faringly old way, the rich Chinese market and its endlessly profitable activities, and as well as reminiscence, D4 launches on a number of very bad design decisions, as a result of a certain failure, such as Diablo.
New World continues to climb slowly. It is mostly under radar.
Guild Wars 2 continues to grow and become successful, but without ever changing its formula, in contrast, it was shown again that resolving to faceplant is a mark of excellence in the MMO space.
Star Citizen continue to sell ridiculous amounts of things that don’t exist even in-game while the game continues to scream how hard they are because they have exactly asinine user experience.
In wake of the crash of NFT and cypto, the techbros will latch on to chatGPT as second coming of web 3.0 which will change the gaming industry by using its spine to build cross-functional collaboration native the web 3.0 evangelists.
Microsoft, Epic and Roblox will go through the metaverse space in massive ways, learning lessons from Facebook’s innocent failures in that space.
The MSFT-ATVI acquisition will end in court, and while it won’t complete the entire recovery, it will be 2024 before it opens.
Ben Griggs and his wife are looking for more old versions of their products, and will introduce them overstocked DVDs of the original Overwatch, and label them the Overwatch Classic.
Amazon will buy and distribute Lord of the Rings online. From the beginning, all future expansions will be made, let’s play the game as a sword-wielding Galadriel and go to the Elronds library where it was nearly a floating shelf, a few of Percy Jackson novels and a squishy dummy stress reliever.
Star Citizen will introduce new revenue streams: NFTs. The player rejoices. Those three games cost eight cents.
World of Warships will introduce six new ways that players can spend money on the game without damaging the old coin sinks. I’ll write a column about that.
Elder Scrolls Online finally breaks from its year-long content cadence and announced that upcoming releases will introduce the story into two-year storylines because it’s going to be twice as fun. Pete Hines shocks everyone when he announced that the new system to be released in Q4 is actually TES6, included in the ASO minigame. Even Todd Howard’s head explodes.
When the Lost Ark ends abruptly, a teenager finds the ark in Athens, Georgia.
I just got a few shots from Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blogs).
All the items included: Lost Ark and World of Warcraft, and New World will announce all of the new games for the end of 2023.
New World will finally come up with a monetization plan that is sustainable; I’m banking on a subscription fee built around the seasons.
World of Warcraft will announce Cataclysm for WoW Classic coming by Thanksgiving, but WoW continue to lose subscribers over the course of the year anyway.
Diablo IV will be too complicated at launch. Diablo Immortal will arrive in maintenance mode.
Dual Universe can pivot hard towards the blockchain. Bluehole is going to become a P2E monstrosity. Upon arrival, they will never walk on.
If ArenaNet will announce next expansion of Guild Wars 2s, we won’t see it until 2024. It’s going to be epic the next living story season.
NCsoft will announce its cooperation with Amazon to launch Throne and Liberty in the west.
ArcheAge 2 is going to move on to 2024.
Lord of the Rings is planning to announce a Grey Havens expansion.
Blue Protocol is going to be the sleeper hit of 2023.
We haven’t heard some famous name from a long time and will try to kickstart a new MMORPG.
The genre continue to mock them mercilessly in 2022, the games that tried to infidel NFT garbage will get their comeuppance next year.
Roblox is planning to announce Roblox 2. (You have to spend that much money on something.)
Carlo Lacsina (@UltraMudkipEX, YouTube, Twitch): Overwatch 2 will take its PvE mode, and the people who like it will stay, and everyone else will find flaws for it. I know that I’m really serious about that, but that’s usually what happens.
I think that WoW will do great for those who want to. Finally, Diablo v will have a lot of influence with Diablo IV. Read on with any questions regarding login.
This year will be a very quiet year for Amazon as it continues to build on New World.
World War 3!
Stormblood will be part of the first in-law free trial. Deep dungeons. At least one news outlet will report the brothels in Balmung.
The untitled Runeterra MMO finally gets a name, we see some key art, and perhaps even the most basic of the basic gameplay. I’m probably going to push for this MMO for the most anticipated MMO of 2023. The first time is the first charm.
At least one member of the ESO staff might be in trouble for trying to read the Elder Scrolls.
Daybreak is a normal year for the year.
Another $300 ship for Star Citizen, and it pulls a Fortnite and happens to become the metaverse we’ve been waiting for.
Black desert and Lost Ark will be good for everyone. I worry that we won’t see much more of Swords of Legends Online, and it’ll come to a stop.
Kickstarters are very big in 2015. Don’t know if you get any more worthwhile Kickstarter activities.
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): Microsoft’s deal will go through, but it won’t make a change at all the time after the fact that it’ll arrive after a few months.
Kickstarter will probably shriek in the MMORPG space, while games that started off on the platform may progress on the launch route (except Star Citizen).
Mobile gaming will continue to grow and become more sophisticated, even if it is all over the place.
And the Internet has begun to evolve, and the world is going on as it happens in most of regular games.
Colin Henry (@ChaosConstant): Guild Wars will have another good year next year. It isn’t as good as this year, but the same as that of the previous year. The Living World will continue the story of End of Dragons, filling out the map of Cantha with Eastern Echovald and the Eastern Jade Sea. The macguffin was built by Taimi and Joon looking for a new power source to replace the dragonjade. While their search attracts new baddies from the Mist or something else, their search attracts the attention of a new baddie. This season will include a new strike mission, a new one around once a quarter. We won’t get much information on the next expansion, but with one of our teases for the end of the year. There isn’t going to be mention of any new game from ArenaNet.
New World will be comfortable this year. It is going to never draw far from the numbers it had when the launch, but will close closer to where it was since the new players experience and fresh start servers became known. And that’s good! The higher level we do next year, like the low level we’ve given to our new arrivals. I’m expecting to see a change in business model. We will certainly see some convenience items like XP boosters in the cash shop, perhaps a premium subscription stipend that lets you purchase cash at your shop, and some quality-of-life features like a slightly increased XP, cheaper travel, and much more.
Elder Scrolls Online announced that it is cutting back on story content this year in favour of quality-of-life and one of the most requested new features. I’ve gone back and forth a lot about whether this will mean the game is simply declining and its fans will be disappointed or that it will finally be a big splash with a new weapon type or two that shakes up the stale meta. I have chosen to be optimistic and predict the latter. I have thought of magic tomes and spears. But I wouldn’t bet money either way.
Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot-Lefebvre, blog):Amazon has spent a year working hard in New World, but if it’s not enough to, then the dam is breaking. If it were not a significant source of revenue, it wouldn’t persist as a whole, so the game starts to get lower on the priority list and get shorter updates, and therefore it’s easier to attract people to the game. Having said that, since the Amazon’s bankroll a drop in progress can take a bit of a break, so it’s almost dead at the end of the year.
The lost Ark loses a lot of people and continues to drop out of notice, but the players who are there still remain loyal and there are no real risk of the title shutting down.
World of Warcraft follows up its routine of were changing all of 2022 by changing in 2023, in incremental but noteworthy ways. Cross-faction guilds are opened during the year, for example, and it’s becoming a normal thing besides the War Mode. Players gain access to some useful deterministic gear options in patch 9.1 and the Trading Post is very well-ceived and useful in encouraging people to play more. While people still don’t trust Blizzard through the year and theres pity and the constantly insistence that the game needs more, it really seems like the game is running better than it has been in a while.
Final Fantasy XIV continues to last. As part of the second fan festival, the new expansion will begin in July. While its a bit slower than in the past, the game knows what it does and makes fans and managers impressed. Controversies arise regularly, but it’s all about the past.
Square-Enix never does launch these non-standards promised. Nobody’s surprised. The corporate ghoul side of the company outside Creative Business Unit III continues to be corporate ghoul, just when you began to think the whole company was good or something.
Blizzard keeps kicking the Overwatch 2 PvE around the year long while trying to convince anyone that it would happen sooner if people would just play the existing game. Id give even chances that project is quietly scrapped and Overwatch continues its freefall. The studio is still in a negative state.
Guild Wars 2 announces its next expansion toward the end of the year while introducing players to warn the players about its importance to the beginning of the year, but that its not the beginning of the year. The studio always gets angry with updates and improvements, but when it comes to End of Dragons, its content does still feel a bit colder and becomes unfriendly. Some people argue that everyone’s standards are a bit bit loose after the Icebrood Saga.
The Elder Scrolls Online finally gets a year after its expansions and expansions all around the world. After years in which games felt like functional and not yet apparent, it got over. This is a good thing. Of course, some of the problems getting over are coupled with people noticing parts of the game that have never worked very well, so you know. Swings and roundabouts.
The total money of Star Citizens increased rapidly and the number of people still willing to give up for the lack of meaningful progress continues to decline. Squadron 42 does not do more testing, and off chance it does, it is beyond underwhelming, even if the development is taken into account.
Blue Protocol is launching the summer/early fall in the United States after the recent testing that showed many stars in the beginning of the first quarter. A lot of people think that manga doesn’t exist to be hyped or a slightly higher-rent fantasy tower, but people who play insist that that it’s real not, and playwriting and the surprisingly well-spun story add this value to it. It’s a huge launch that has been running long enough and the people who love it (including me) continually argued that it’s a good game that’s slept on on.
Black Desert continues to hover slightly. The update isn’t stopping, but it seems the buzz is getting slowed down, and that game doesn’t inspire any fervent devotion to that time. Even its new classes are land with a thud. No disaster, but as it turns out in the big five, its place makes it much more like the big four. Black Desert frightening with anger and decency all over the place.
EVE Online does at least one catastrophically stupid thing and sinks more money into projects that won’t go anywhere. It’s bad after 2023.
Crowfall won’t return. At least one Kickstarter MMO has shuttered this year. Many of those that do the news don’t do that in any way they would like.
Daybreak continues to run relentlessly to no avail of plans to what it plans to accomplish next door. Initially, the game remained unchanged, but still hard in the making more money from existing players. Instead, it is difficult to keep it updated rather than in the new man mode.
At least one sunsetted title gets a surprising new rogue server that invites a lot of talk from the MMO community alike.
Book of Travels did not have bright future in 2023. On the contrary, it would not surprise me to see it go farewell.
New and old games continue to roll, and often don’t catch on, and then silently fade until the next one shuffles, the next time, it will work. People feel bad when they fail, but the financial speculators who tried to pressure them. Richard Garriott does at least one interview on his own that goes sillyly fine for him.
The aforementioned new MMO allows us to relax, as well as get a laugh. It remains to be seen whether that is good or bad.
The John Smedleys project for Amazon is discontinued. None of the other projects that were watching were not to be named but we don’t even have any name yet category get names or anything to expect they’re really going to happen.
Something big happens with the CoH rogue servers. Either really good or really bad.
People get very anxious when I post a WRUP, that includes an aging number of men who are most peculiar, and then go quietly for a week.
Sam Kash (@thesamkash): This year we’ll finally hear that the full follow-up to WoW is in development. Will a sequel or just a new game give you an old loot, like GW2 did from the OG? I’m not aware, but I should see more clearly. I’m paying for the latter.
New World will continue to improve and even become a game that players who want to play a PvP without spending 100+hours can really play. Lost Ark is going to continue to do much better than I can’t understand.
Guild Wars 2 is launching a new Living World scenario that aspires aliens and creatures to land in the space.
I’ll actually play ESO enough so I could reach the PvP area. The new expansion will be extended to the new Elder Scroll 6. This will sound amazing.
Eastern MMOs will land in an even bigger way. Blue Protocol is really amazing and became one of the top 5 games.
I was excited to the mobile Harry Potter Magic Awakening game. I didn’t expect anything about it when I first heard about it, so I am very excited because of the information and videos that they release. I didn’t expect that it would be a lot of real MMO, but the video shows me hopeful.
As with the two expansions, WoW dragonflight will enjoy a few months of honeymoon before public opinion will turn out against it. People may not sour on it as hard as Shadowlands did.
Overwatch 2 will begin its pvE content, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see it delayed more and/or scaled down compared to what was previously announced. You’re very well welcomed, but you are a bit disappointed, as it draws criticism over the fact that there’s a Left 4 Dead clone or otherwise unoriginal. Between long delays and general Blizzard malaise, it fails to get more attention from this genre. It helps fans just to continue development.
New World follows the same content release pattern as last year. Light at first: a new patch in summer, a new level in autumn, but a new full version of the old fashioned way, maybe a paid expansion, maybe just a new free patch. I heard the rumour that the next zone is a forest area in the north of Mourningdale, and the emphasis on ancient lore is concentrated, and that rumour might prove true. The next new weapon is the paladin style flail and shield strength/focus weapon everybody has been asking me for – I am delighted. We can also see daggers before the years pass. Mounts and transmog will arrive, and I will repeat my prediction last year that mounts are coming with some kind of associated grind that proves mildly controversial. In general, the game remains good at mid-tier success.
Guild Wars 2 spends the majority of the year releasing an animated-looking collection. This will receive mixed reviews. We receive an expansion announcement late in the year, and the release date is mid-2024.
Lost Ark will continue to chug along nicely and perhaps begin to be counted as one of the big five, and now replacing Black Desert.
Blue Protocol will see a launch delay, possibly until 2024.
Well see some progress in the Palia and Corepunk camps, but the dates aren’t set yet.
The TSW table-top RPG will miss its launch date for 2023.
RIFT and Shroud of the Avatar will take off.
It’s literally the opposite of thought. It’s your turn!