MMO videogames have always been one of the main economic pillars of the industry, as MMO developers must correctly manage their business model to make profits and thanks to this, successful game send upbringing significant profits in the videogame industry.
Currently, the MMO and MMORPG industry has changed a lot, since the number of videogames of this genre that are developed each year has increased considerably, but in view of this large number, only a few survive for at least a year, and those that survive for a long time, it is possible that at any time they may obtain considerable economic devaluations and all this due to the great changes that have occurred in the users of MMO and MMORPG.
One of the main changes that the MMO and MMORPG market has received is due to the great current popularity of Free-to-Play videogames over those that use a subscription model. Today, many Free-to-Play videogames have emerged, and many of them have achieved a formidable success, so the effectiveness of this model has already been demonstrated. For this reason, many companies that develop MMO videogames have already opted for this business model, and more and more quality videogames are using it.
Thanks to all this, players have already realized that free videogames can also have great quality. But, that change of thought in the players also produced a total impact in the industry of the MMO and MMORPG, this impact causes that the videogames of this type that still maintain their models of subscription, end up obtaining considerable reductions in their number of players. These reductions are due to the fact that players no longer need to pay a monthly fee to enjoy a good MMO or MMORPG videogame, so they end up rejecting or abandoning subscription videogames.
Currently, for a subscription videogame to continue to maintain its success, it must offer content that no other videogame can offer and thus justify the monthly payments.
A successful case is the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft, which after 14 years, still maintains a large part of its players, these are due to two reasons.
The first is due to a large amount of content and quality expansions that this game constantly releases, where you notice the great commitment of Blizzard, such as its latest expansion: WoW Classic. This remastering of the first version of WoW achieved instant success, especially among its most veteran players. The success was so great that it even modified the parallel businesses around the game, especially the one based on WoW Classic gold, where through websites like Eldorado GG, players are able to purchase WoW Classic gold.
The second reason for the current success of WoW is the great loyalty of its players, which was achieved thanks to the decade and a half of epic adventures that this game has offered.
There are still many other MMORPGs that continue to maintain their success with the subscription model, such as Final Fantasy XIV, RuneScape, Eve Online, among others.
In short, it is not known what the future of this genre will hold, but it would be a mistake to think that the mentality of the players ends up rejecting one model or another, there are opinions for and against both modalities of the game. What really matters is that development companies do not stop innovating in this business, which is constantly evolving. If the genre continues to advance as it has done in recent years, the continuity of MMOs is assured beyond the game model that companies choose.