The Rapid Growth of Mobile MMORPGs

Free to play MMORPGs have been a huge success on the PC with games like Dungeon Fighter Online and Tera having millions of registered users worldwide. The MMORPG genre is still fairly new on mobile devices, with Smartphone MMORPGs only recently becoming an attractive platform for MMOs. Mobile games for the most part have been limited to match 3 puzzle games like Cany Crush Soda Saga and Farm Heroes Saga, but with devices getting faster processors and better GPUs, mobile MMORPGs are growing on the platform. In fact, games likeTaichi Panda and League of Angels Fire Raiders already have millions or registered users world-wide. Blizzard Entertainment’s super successful collectible gard game, Hearthstone, also launched on Android and iOS devices in April, 2015, which only further supports my argument that mobile MMOs are rapidly growing in popularity.

Hearthstone is available on Android and iOS

Mobile MMOs are also taking on traditional web based strategy games. Browser based strategy games like Wartuneand Stormfall: Age of War for example are being replaced by mobile strategy games like Game of War. The reason for this is fairly obvious, as there’s little advantage to playing one of these strategy games on the PC when a mobile device offers the same experience, but is portable. These aren’t graphicaly intensive games and rarely require active attention. Game of War’s success on the mobile platform has been astounding. The game recorded over $600M in revenue in 2014, making it one of the most profitable mobile games of all time.

Typical Mobile Game – Candy Crush Soda Saga

Full fledged MMORPGs like Conquer Online have also enjoyed quite a bit of success on mobile platforms. Conquer Online is also available for free on the desktop, but the mobile version has been remarkably successful too. I expect more and more mobile MMORPGs to launch over the next few years with the genre further growing in popularity.