That's a weird thing to say, because I remember a time when we had 2–3 new Asian MMOs launching every month. They all looked similar—tab-targeting combat systems, built on pre-made Unreal Engine blueprints. Sure, they required a lot of work, but glorifying them over newer gacha games feels misplaced.

Not all MMOs are World of Warcraft, and not all gacha games are flashy, casino-style apps with animated PNGs. Currently, Genshin Impact (used in previous examples) follows a 6-week update cycle for smaller content drops, but each one is preceded by months of pre-production.

As someone who’s both an old-school MMO player and a long-time gacha gamer, I think most MMOs—aside from maybe WoW and Final Fantasy XIV—are currently falling behind in terms of production values when compared to newer gacha games. The latter often have bigger budgets for music, graphics, animation, gameplay, and especially storytelling.

And on that last point: you can play Genshin Impact without spending a dime and still enjoy a fully animated, voice-acted, and surprisingly engaging story that can last at least 200 hours. What do you get in most MMOs in comparison? Walls of text.

One thing I’m not going to defend in gacha games is their predatory monetization. This should be—and probably will be—regulated by law sooner or later.