The MMO Genre’s Rough Ride
Massively multiplayer online games have had a brutal time lately. Several ambitious MMOs have been cancelled or put on life support, while studios pull back from the genre altogether. Yet through all the chaos, two giants stand firm on PC: World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14.
Both games have survived industry layoffs, shuttered projects, and shifting player expectations. But survival is not the same as stability. As 2026 approaches, WoW and FF14 are heading into a crucial period where the decisions their developers make could define the next decade of PC MMO gaming.
World of Warcraft has already completed a massive course correction after one of its worst received expansions. Final Fantasy 14, on the other hand, is still trying to pull itself out of a slump. Each is dealing with long standing design problems, and both are about to make big changes that could either secure their future or trigger a new wave of player frustration.
Final Fantasy 14: Climbing Out of a Ditch
Final Fantasy 14 has been the reliable moneymaker for Square Enix for years, but it has not been in a great place creatively. Since the Endwalker expansion, the game has felt like it is lagging behind its peers in both design and content delivery.
Players have noticed that patch cycles feel thin compared to what World of Warcraft offers. While WoW has been piling on new activities and reasons to log in, FF14 often feels constrained, like its development resources are stretched or diverted elsewhere. For a subscription MMO, that is a dangerous perception to let settle in.
The bigger problem though is design philosophy. FF14 has clung to an old school split between casual and hardcore content. Encounters are often built for one audience or the other, instead of scaling flexibly to suit everyone.
Modern MMO design tends to “use the whole cow.” If you spend time building a raid, you want multiple difficulty levels so most of the player base can experience it. Players are more skilled than they used to be, but they also have less time. The best approach is content that can be tuned up or down instead of being walled off behind extreme difficulty.
FF14 has not always followed that logic. A recent example was the Forked Tower raid, which launched in a punishing single difficulty that very few players could realistically clear. It demanded tight organisation and high skill but had no easier version, meaning a huge chunk of work was only seen by a tiny fraction of the community. That is not ideal in a game funded by subscriptions.
The good news is that Creative Studio 3 finally seems ready to shift direction. Content like Pilgrim’s Traverse introduced variable difficulty, letting casual players see most of the instance while still giving hardcore groups a brutally challenging version at the end. That structure went down far better with the wider player base.
On top of that, long requested job reworks are on the horizon. FF14’s combat jobs have been criticised for stagnating or feeling overly streamlined. Director Naoki Yoshida has promised a job redesign in the next expansion, likely arriving around late 2026 or early 2027. Details are still fuzzy, but even acknowledging the issue is a major change in tone.
There have also been surprising quality of life shifts, like lifting long standing restrictions on glamour, FF14’s fashion system. That might sound small, but glamour is a huge part of MMO culture. Letting go of decade old assumptions about who can wear what shows that Yoshi P is willing to question sacred cows.
For FF14, 2026 is about turning around a drifting ship. If its new design direction lands, the game could regain its momentum as a top tier PC MMO. If not, it risks feeling increasingly outdated next to more aggressive competitors.
World of Warcraft: Risking it All While on a Hot Streak
World of Warcraft’s situation is very different. After the disaster that was Shadowlands, Blizzard did the hard work of rebuilding trust. Dragonflight kicked off a new era of more player friendly design, and The War Within continued that upswing. The game feels healthier than it has in years.
WoW has also done a good job of stacking value for subscribers. A single sub gets you access to modern WoW, various flavors of WoW Classic, experimental modes like Season of Discovery and Remix events, and regular updates across the board. For PC players, it is one of the most content rich ecosystems you can buy into.
However, Blizzard is now lining up some of the boldest changes it has attempted in a long time, and they are messing with very sensitive systems.
The biggest move is a crackdown on combat AddOns. For years, tools like WeakAuras have been central to high end gameplay. They track buffs, debuffs, cooldowns and mechanics in ways the default UI never fully supported. Blizzard has increasingly designed top tier raids and dungeons around the assumption that players rely on these mods.
That is a problem, because it makes the base game harder to approach for newcomers and more complex than it needs to be. By limiting combat AddOns, Blizzard is trying to regain control of encounter design and make the game more self contained.
But there is a catch. These AddOns are not just hardcore tools. They are also accessibility aids and quality of life crutches. Many players rely on them to smooth out rotations, highlight important information or make certain specs playable with limited time or attention. Taking them away without proper replacements risks alienating a big part of the community.
At the same time Blizzard is tackling combat mods, it is also rolling out major new systems like player housing and tweaking its own glamour or transmog setups. Again, fashion and housing are not fluff in MMOs. They are core to how players express themselves and invest in the game. Early tests of housing are promising, but even minor missteps with transmog plans have already sparked backlash among WoW’s fashion focused players.
Stack all of this together and WoW is in a precarious but exciting spot. The game is strong right now, which is the best time to experiment. But the community has a long memory. Shadowlands proved how fast goodwill can evaporate if systems land badly.
Two Titans, One Pivotal Year
Both World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 are heading into 2026 with big ambitions and serious risks. FF14 is trying to modernise after years of conservative design choices that left parts of its player base bored or frustrated. WoW is trying to keep its winning streak going while ripping out long established crutches and rebuilding key systems.
Neither game is likely to simply collapse, but nothing in the MMO space can be taken for granted anymore. New MMOs are harder to fund, long term support is never guaranteed, and the industry as a whole has been hit by layoffs and cancellations.
For PC gamers, that makes 2026 a fascinating year to watch. The choices Blizzard and Square Enix make about difficulty, accessibility, content cadence, fashion, housing and player tools will shape not only their own communities but also the expectations for future online worlds.
If both games manage to pull it off, we could be heading into a new golden era where two very different MMOs coexist at the top of the PC landscape, each pushing the other to improve. If they stumble, it will be another reminder that even the biggest names in gaming are never completely safe.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/mmo/they-survived-the-mmo-massacre-of-2025-but-2026-is-going-to-be-a-tense-year-for-wow-and-ff14-and-for-completely-different-reasons/
