Just a thought, maybe the MMO player base is just aging out? I started with WoW back in 2005, I just don't have the bandwidth in life anymore for an MMO. I imagine that is a similar feeling for a lot of us millennials.

FF14 has taken over most of the MMO hype, but plenty of others like Runescape and Path of Exile are also doing really well. It's just that if you don't have people you know actively playing them, you won't hear much about it.

The next war in foxhole starts today, it's a war MMO and I highly recommend it. No subscription (one time $30 purchase on steam), no microtransactions, no paid expansions, no cosmetic bs, grind is optional. New players are in the same spot as veterans, all resources are shared (regiments/people can have private stockpiles, but they decay after 48 hours of being inactive) and are all made by players. You don't get anything for making or transporting supplies except for the joy of supporting the war effort - which is good because if no one made supplies, no one could fight.

Want to chill? Mine scrap and make basic materials, throw in your nearest seaport for anyone to take (or put in your regiments stockpile if you're in one). Or transport supplies from far backline stockpiles to Frontline/closer via truck, train, or boat. Or drive supplies to the Frontline, just make sure you have a gas mask and radio! Or make bullets, medical supplies, or anything else in the game at factories. Or trucks, cars, boats, tanks, trains, etc.

Want to plan? Either start building up production centers at the start of the war, rebuild them as we take land, or build defenses in the backline or on the front.

Want to fight? Get on a ship crew in an artillery gun and listen to your captain to tell you when and where to fire. Get in a tank with a crew and go balls to the wall on the front line. Grab a gun and some supplies and charge into trench warfare. Mortars? Yep. RPG's? Yep. Want to be a doctor? Move with friendlies and fix them up when they get messed up, or carry them back to your hospital to get new supplies for people to spawn from.

Want to be sneaky? Sneak past the Frontline and sabotage their logistics people or buildings.

Want to be a gigachad? Join the wardens now.

Dead? WoW, FFXIV, RuneScape, ESO, have millions of players. What world do you live in that these games are dead?

Guild wars 2 just released a new expac and I've been really enjoying it. Lots of people online, so I'd say not dead at all.

Man, some of my buddies picked it back up and I just can't understand. How much fuckin money have they given that piece of shit company over the years? And now it's Microsoft? Sigh

I still play guild wars 2. It's the only MMO that doesn't piss me off. No subscription fee. Never raised the level cap. Only added a new tier of gear once close to launch and said that's it. Plays like a real video game.

Because the level cap and gear cap doesn't change, you can take a break and come back just fine. My characters I made years ago are just as mechanically viable as anyone else. (Knowing how to play them is a separate question. I'm pretty bad at thief, but some people are little immortal jerks with it)

It also feels more like a real video game than some MMOs. You can dodge attacks. Like there's a dodge button that moves you and gives you iframes. There's a lot less of the old timey "your character moved away on the screen so the monster did its attack animation way over there, but you still get hit".

They also solved a lot of the anti social problems of old MMOs. You don't need to form a formal group for most content. There's no kill stealing. You just go into the world and do stuff.

There's no mandatory quest chains. There's the main story you can follow, but there's very little MMO filler. There are "hearts" you can do that are kind of MMO busywork, but you can also just not do them.

I know the game is old but it's still very good. I haven't been able to get a lot of friends to play it. I think they think it's like a shitty MMO where you just grind for gear to grind for more gear, and level up so you can level up and grind for more gear. It's not.

WoW is still massive btw and the latest xpac seems to be a success so far.

I still play Old School RuneScape and Guild Wars 2, and they are both very active.

However, I've not tried a new MMORPG in ages. I don't even really know if any relatively new ones could be interesting to try out.

My understanding is that at least some WoW players switched to ffxiv, which does seem to be popular and well updated. If you're looking for a new game, might be worth a look?

I am playing turtle wow—a private server game.

It’s mostly like the vanilla wow, but has some optimized updates.

I just don't have time. RPGs are still my favorite genre, and I used to even work in the MMORPG space. I have a fulltime job, a house I just bought and have to upkeep (I was renting until now), and farming. On top of that, spending time with the wife and all of the regular shopping and chores still exist. Further still, I try to always be learning something for fun, but I haven't even really had time to do that. The most entertainment I have these days is listening to podcasts and youtube vids whilst working outside.

I don't think they're dead. They were wildly popular in the earlier days of the internet when it was still a relatively small place. Now there's more people playing games than ever before. And a much lower proportion playing MMOs

I’m attempting to host a private Ragnarok Online server for my small group of friends. Its a shame that game is all but forgotten, the music has not been topped… except by ffxiv maybe.

I stopped playing MMORPGs around the Blitzchung incident. FF14 didn't hook me the same way WoW did, and Warframe isn't really an RPG, but it did end up filling the space.

Star wars the old republic is pretty great, not perfect but super solid story, essentially just Kotor 3. I played it reguarly for last few months and truly enjoyed it like how I used to enjoy WoW back in the day. I know certain fans are going come at me with knives for saying this, but imp, it has much better story content than FF14.

Old School RuneScape is alive and well, we got a new boss yesterday, and we've been getting drip-fed content all year this year.

MMORPGs may not be the butt of South Park jokes anymore, but that doesn't mean that they're dead. They're more diversified... Like others mentioned, other games are quietly stealing the thunder. Also, if you think about it, battle royale games are kinda MMOs with how many people are in the lobby, and games like Roblox and Minecraft can have players interact with large numbers of others

I generally just don't play a lot of online games anymore. I have a job where I have to deal with people all day, so the last thing I want to do is go home and deal with angry people while I'm trying to relax!

I do play some Elder Scrolls Online and Star Trek Online, but I primarily do single player content. The normal extent of my interaction with human players is to help them if they need help, or to thank them if they help me.

I haven't seen a lot of chatter around live-service games in Patient Gamers communities in general over the years, but from what I can tell, very little of the Warcraft community made it over to Lemmy. I can think of a couple possible explanations for that.

First, because everyone uses Discord for voice chat over WoW anyway, with the Reddit exodus last year, Discord was always a more natural fit for discussion. Second, /r/wow has increasingly become a place for discussion around the game among former players, especially after Shadowlands. Seeking out a new space on Lemmy and actually participating in the necessary, proactive contributions to grow a community requires more enthusiasm than I think the jaded players have.

It certainly feels like there are fewer MMO players, but I'm not sure. I think we can be certain that younger players are being captured by different forms of live-service games though (shooters, various gacha) rather than traditional MMOs.

I don't think most folks have cared about WoW for quite a while now. Those that do are mostly playing on private servers.

FFXIV has picked up all the old wow-heads and is highly active and fun to play.