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Final Fantasy almost knocks down Warcraft
It looks like World of Warcraft finally has a worthy adversary, or even a worthy successor. Final Fantasy: Heavensward is closing in on the MMO king, reaching above 5 million registered accounts in the entire world.
The recent events have brought Blizzard’s World of Warcraft down to its knees, down to 5.6 million users, having already lost almost half of the number over the last six months. Right now, Blizzard is practically struggling to keep their players glued to the game and it has its ups and downs, the downs being more persistent than ups.
But Final Fantasy seems to be on the rise. Its subscriber base has increased by an impressive one million starting with February this year and at this rate, it might overtake World of Warcraft by the end of the year. Still, the true test will commence after Blizzard launch the next expansion: Legion. This might be a game changer for Warcraft, but we have to see how much of a game changer it can be.
Final Fantasy’s age does not even come close to Warcraft’s when it comes to market presence, but it showed promise back in 2012 when it was relaunched as Final Fantasy: A Realm Reborn. Heavensward came into being in June and it seems that it did nothing more than boost the game’s image in the players’ eyes.
For the time being, Warcraft might still hold the upper hand with the release of Legion, but without having a release date declared, players were rather left in the shadows with ambiguous expectations. Still, the amount of content that Legion contains looks more than just appealing for the regular World of Warcraft fans, so it might also bring back some old faces.
The actual problem with World of Warcraft is saturation. Players are not only saturated because of the game, but because of the market as well. MMORPGS are generally known for providing the same experience and the same promises over and over again: be a hero, be the best, play to get better and they add the fun factor around there just to make sure they have it.
The major issue with the games is that they simply take too much of one’s time if you want to accomplish something great.
You have to be on from 8 to 12 hours every day, farm until you drop, occasionally fight other players if they obstruct you from getting what you want or need. It is tiring and while Warcraft does offer good stories that keep people entertained, the core of the game remains the same: be a hero, play a lot to get better, be the best!
The idea from which the game began seems to be lost: enjoy your time, play with your friends and have some fun. In their current form, a more accurate description for MMORPGS would be “waste your life for things that you might or might not get”.
Photo Credits wikimedia.org
