Any gamer will say that yes, while there are shooter games, platform games, sports games, horror games, and even puzzle games, there is nothing quite like playing a game in a huge, open virtual world where hundreds of thousands of people can play together.

MMO (massively multiplayer online) games are online games that are made to support many people at one time, allowing people from all over the world to play and cooperate together.

In the past there have been many great MMOs, such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, and Runescape. However, as time passes these MMOs, though they still remain somewhat popular, have long passed their prime and now they are just being dragged on expansion by expansion.

World of Warcraft was released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment, and has since had five expansions that bring new content to the game. In 2010 World of Warcraft was at its most popular point and had 12 million subscribers. In the third quarter of 2015 it only had 5 million subscribers.

As a result, these games are no longer as popular as they were, and have settled for stepping aside for other online games such as multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBA). These include games like League of Legends and Smite.

While these other online games still offer online capabilities and hours of Doritos and Mountain Dew binging, they don’t have the same open-world servers that can support many players at once, allowing parties of sometimes 30 people to band together and run raids.

MMO’s also very often contain their own player-versus-player system, if players are looking for battle and competition.

Despite the unique and enthralling nature of MMOs, there hasn’t been a new MMO that rivals World of Warcraft in years, and as time goes on it feels like there is little hope for a creation of a brand new MMO or a rejuvenating revival of an old MMO, such as World of Warcraft, that will return it to its heyday.

However, some MMOs coming this year that show promise include Maple Story 2, Bless Online, Worlds Adrift, Lineage Eternal, and Shroud of the Avatar. The best gamers can do for now is hope that one of these will live up to the standards of the classic games.