The MMORPG genre is in a difficult position in an era of ubiquitous online games and live services. But in 2026, the main existential threat to World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV and other popular projects is not trends but design difficulty. PC Gamer Portal speakwhy MMORPGs can't satisfy all types of players – but they still try.
Perhaps no other genre has as difficult a design problem as MMOs. Because no other genre has to worry as much about complexity. MMORPGs are almost unique because they implicitly promise users that they will spend a lot of time in the game and have something to do.
MMOs are designed as digital third spaces; places where communities thrive. For this reason, they should please anyone who, at least in theory, might find one of those mechanics interesting enough to make the game a habit.
For example, take World of Warcraft. A large percentage of players still sign up for the game just to spend their days playing as Stormwind characters. Some play just to collect stylish outfits in the transmission editor, others play through story missions, stay for a patch or two and leave. Still others play exclusively alone, others prefer PvP modes, etc
Even if you cut out the listed audience segments and deal harshly with raiders, there will still be factions within this class. There are groups made up entirely of real-life friends, speedrunners, regular raiders, mid-rangers, and hardcore raiders. And at the top of the pyramid are the teams that participate in raid races, for which World of Warcraft is their career. And they should be satisfied with this game too.
Considering such nuances, it can be assumed that designing high complexity in a soulful game is not as difficult as creating an MMORPG that can fully satisfy the needs of the audience. Everyone needs something different and if they don't get it they won't be satisfied.
Moreover, the problem here lies not only in demographics, but also in certain expectations from the game. Most of the major MMOs that survived the 2025 MMO apocalypse are quite old, which further polarizes the audience. A casual player who has been playing for 10 years will probably play better than a newcomer. It's hard not to get better at something after spending a few thousand hours at it.
In this context, many online projects are aiming to allow players to choose their own difficulty. While World of Warcraft will have the option of challenging open-world combat, Final Fantasy XIV builds all of its content around scalable difficulty. And now The Elder Scrolls Online is adding more open-world and quest difficulty options.
In other words, difficulty in recent MMOs is determined not by what the player does but by how well it is done. Raids are now available for casual players, and the open world may also be of interest to hardcore users. But at the same time, complexity simultaneously becomes something more game-like – open customization.
MMOs try to hide this fact in other systems. Optional challenges with their own rewards often also offer items that allow you to increase the difficulty level further. But in fact, they play the role of the good old parameters: easy, medium, difficult. Smoke and mirrors do not take away from the clarity of this feature.
Is this approach effective? Yes, but only partly. He solves some problems, creating others in return. On the one hand, if each player can do what he wants, at the difficulty level that suits him, then the user will get more content for the same amount of money. On the other hand, MMOs are complex, expensive projects that must retain users for many years. Developing a steady stream of new content can sometimes be difficult to do.
Another problem that game designers struggle with is training. Just achieving the perfect balance of difficulty isn't enough: you also need to explain to players how to interact with the mechanics. This is often called the “entry threshold” – the minimum competency the user must have to understand what he or she is doing.
This problem becomes especially acute if the game suddenly opens up content previously reserved for hardcore users to a more casual audience. Mythic raids in World of Warcraft a priori imply that players understand what they are getting into. He must know all the dungeon bosses and the best paths, not to mention owning his own class.
Not everyone can memorize this amount of information, so it's no wonder Blizzard is experimenting with different ways to ease the burden on players. For example, in the Midnight beta, you can optionally enable the equivalent of “gold paint” in dungeons – specifically to let new players master the content a little faster.
It's likely that many other MMORPGs will follow a similar path in the future. But overall, complex design in this genre is an incredibly complex task that cannot be envied. Especially in an environment where there are so many live services and every MMO is doing its best to gain the public's attention.
