Where the MMO Market Went: GTA Online, Wildly Enough

What happened to WoW? Well, wow:

According to its publisher, Grand Theft Auto Online now has 8 million weekly active users -- huge numbers for an online game and, though it's not a persistent online game, many more than world-beating MMO World of Warcraft currently boasts.

GTA:O is not an MMO virtual world in the traditional sense, but it's definitely an online world of some kind, and those numbers are staggering. (Also generates the kind of community activity we saw in this group search to uncover a strange but ultimately moving Easter egg, pictured above.)

There's been attempts to turn a GTA-type world into a true persistent MMO. With those usage numbers, it's a missed opportunity not to do so.

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Comments

[Arcadia Codesmith]

GTA is a world-building accomplishment, no question, but it's got little or no appeal to the core fantasy RPG demo. Apart from the host of other MMOs, players from WoW are also in MOBAs like League of Legends, casual games like Hearthstone, and single-player RPGs like Dragon Age, games with very different mechanics and playstyles, but the common fantasy/science-fiction motifs.

Contemporary urban grit is depressing. There's obviously a market for it, but I strongly suspect the degree of overlap with WoW's market is miniscule. WoW is the freshman year of MMOs; people who can handle it move on to something more challenging, while those who can't lose interest and drop out.