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Definition of "MMORPG"
Kain_Dale
Member UncommonPosts: 378
What is your defenition for MMORPG?
Is it depend on quest in order to advance? Turn in quest to level up? Adventure on your own to level up? What? What do u put those 2 word into one to make it a true MMO-RPG?
Kain_Dale
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Too many people ask this exact same question. I think we need to stop defining it in so many different ways. None of the threads come to a conclusion, they just add more confusion.
Check out the MUD I'm making!
I dont wanna search around for it. Add more confusion or rather get your head straight what this Genre is about?
Kain_Dale
Massive- generally considered more than standard FPS multiplayer games, over 128 players in the same world at the same time.
Multi player - self explanatory.
Online- self explanatory.
RPG - this means it is a Computer Role PLaying GAme, NOT a Paper and PEncil role playing games. Computer RPGs are distinguised from Real Time Strategy or First Person shooter games.
RPG in a computer game means primarily progression of character. It can be by class, skills, or gear. This progression will be more than 51% of the determination of the outcome of combat.
in other words, player "skill" at twitch controls can not be more than 49% of the equation, otherwise it falls into the realm of a First Person Shooter.
Massive -- relative word. Massive to one is small to another. Someone living in a city might find a 5 acre lot "massive" yet someone living in cattle/farm country...
Multi-user -- more than 1 person = multi-user.
Online -- ok, so it's plugged into the net.
There's the MMO side.
Role-Playing -- most every last person does this. From the ardent "thee & thou" types around to the "it's just a game" PvP fanatics. Ask a PvP type person if they enjoy griefing and brining pain to others as their "fun" in the real world. No? Then they're role-playing in the game.
Game -- what you do for fun.
There's your RPG portion of it.
So if there's a chat channel and a few folks are "roleplaying" in it, there's an MMORPG. Beyond that, anything goes. Text on through to the top graphics out there... Skill or level based... That's all the polish and shine aspects of the genre and different folks will find different things to like and dislike about what is done in a game.
Despite a spectrum of features and game styles, there are some elements common to the CRPG genre. Perhaps the most salient is that of the avatar, with its quantized characteristics that typically evolve over the course of the game, and take the place of the gamer's own skill in determining game outcomes. Another common element in CRPGs is a well-developed fictional setting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_role-playing_game
Co-op games usually go 8, 16, 32, 64, and generally not over 128 players in the game world at the same time.
Massive denotes breaking out of this co-op category, and having more than 128 players in the same world at once. Under 128 and it's multiplayer, but not necessarily "massive".
See, when did 'Role Playing Game' become 'Progression of Virtual Skills'?
The only reason this concept has caught on is because it provides a motivation to keep playing apart from 'just enjoying the game and lore'. A MMORPG doesn't need skill grind to qualify as an MMORPG,but since most people come from games like WOW, they consider it a defining feature. I for one think that is sad and maybe one of the reasons why MMORPGs have yet to fulfil their potential as virtual worlds.
/signed
I still think it would be cool if crafting consisted of all necessary steps. It'd be redundant, but it'd make everyone equal. Hell, I'd take whitling a stick in real-time over pressing x-key over and over to chop wood. =P
Check out the MUD I'm making!
I agree, that's 1 of major part concept for MMORPG. People just wanna log in and level up to max and get best gear and all and see whos "quicker or better" at pvp or pve. Ignores the storyline and adventures.
Kain_Dale
Computer Role Playing Games, or RPGs, came out before computers were online, before there was an internet.
THAT is when the RPG become progression of character in computer games.
For paper and pencil games it's always been about playing a character, and the systems usually did include rules for character progression.
However, there is freeform roleplaying, where no stats are used at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeform_role-playing_game
Players may also play a role in a computer roleplaying game that is online, similar to playing a role in a paper and pencil game. However, this is not programmed into the game.
The other difference is the playing of a role in computer games is one sided and static, where as in a paper and pencil game it is two sided and interactive.
The NPCs (MObs) in a paper and pencil game are all played by a person, so they react to the players.
In an computer game the NPCs and Mobs are all computer scripts that cannot react to the players except for what is in the script.
When it crossed over from pen and paper to video games.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
When? 1975 with Dungeon. 35 years ago man. Get with the times, videogame RPGs have always been defined primarily through character progression, dungeon crawling, party mechanics, and/or storyline.
Ihmotepp basically nailed the definition (as precisely as a genre definition can be, anyways; genre definitions are vague by definition, so any more detailed than how he described it is missing the point.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Thanks to the dilution of the "mmorpg" genre by casual players who think 200 people is "massive" and that "online" automatically means "mmo" ( many Counterstrike and Battlefield players, for example ), propagated by this very site over the recent years as well with inclusions of games like Hellgate: London and Crimecraft ( to name just two non-mmos this site grants the mmo moniker to ), there is no longer any real clear definition of an "mmorpg" in general consensus any longer.
There's just what we old fogies remember as mmos, and what todays players call mmos.
As others have said...
Massive= "More than you can remember in your head", ie>1000 players
multiplayer="playing on the same server as others"
RPG= "success of the individual action is more dependent on the character than the player"
This doesn't necessarily imply "levelling (or skilling) up". However, this did happen in PnP games. But it was a side effect of the game. Not the purpose of the game. No one cared if you had a level 100 character. That wasn't what was important.
The definition of MMORPG is discussed in half a dozen different new threads each and every day here. Some people say it's one thing. Some people say its that thing but with some differences. Other people say it's another thing. Other people say it's another thing but with some differences. Each group bands together and get in their different corners of the fight arena. They then argue about the how the semantics and definitions of the different words that make up the acronym MMORPG as used by the other groups are all wrong.
In the end no one agrees with anyone outside of their group and refuses to be converted to another group.
Maybe the discussion of the definition of the acronym MMORPG should be limited to the Religion and Politics forum on this site. Their discussions are similar although the MMORPG discussion is a bit more civil.
It just came to me; the only difference between an MMO and an online game.
The Perpetual World.
Doesn't matter how many fit in it, nor what kind of combat it has, or character progression... it's all about whether you log out from it and it keeps going or not. I really don't think much more even needs to be said, but it had to be said.
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Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Massively Multiplayer Online Game
A GAME which is ONLINE with a MASSIVE number of PEOPLE playing at the same time interacting with each other.
Everything else is just added features ;p.
I agree. 100%.
A perpetual(persistent) world has never been a requirement of an MMO. That has more to do with theRPG side of things than anything else. It coincides more often than not simply because it is a format that favors the retention and propagation of data.
You know what MMO means? Exactly what it did in the early 1990s, and even before that as a concept. It's a method of networking more users than normal into a single environment.
Back then it meant something around 30-50 users was massive. As technology progressed and network speed went up, more and more people were able to connect and that bar raised according to the standards.
The only thing MMO means, is the system is designed to allow as many concurrent users as the hardware and network can reasonably support, and that number being notably larger than the comparative standard of the time.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
You are going to have to give me an example of an MMO that doesn't have one. Even if the whole world is instanced, the hubs are not.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Well, just about any MMO themed around sports for a starter, if you were to consider them such.
Granted I personally don't because they take the same approach as most with the whole lobby into an instance thing, and that's really not an MMO...
Well I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to explain this, so I'll just use a phrase from biology with some replacement words.
All MMORPGs are persistent worlds, but not all persistent worlds are MMORPGs.
And even this point is untrue depending on one's classification of MMORPG. If you step outside the boundaries of what an MMO strictly implies, then there's a few that pretty blatantly break the persistent point.
Another point to be made is it's even more arguable of if most games that are claimed to be persistent are even as such, namely doe to the otherwise stagnant nature of the game world, quest/plot lines, and method of character progression.
You could even say that WoW, EQ, DAoC, LotRO, etc are all not persistent worlds, specifically because the next time you log in, you can trust that jack diddly about the world has changed, especially in any way that has a lick of meaning.
In fact, the only persistent worlds I might say exist is EVE, SWG, and UO at the moment. They're the only three games I'm aware of that the things that happens in the game, actually can be perceived to make a lasting impact or significant change to anything as far as communal player experience goes, without it inevitably being reset and lost.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
RPG = For me this doesnt have to include actual roleplaying using chat. Its your avatar that plays a role in the world. So there is no requirement for features that support roleplaying between players.
It also includes that your avatar can develop skills/abilities while the story develops.
Thats it. All other stuff like persistant worlds or not, the amount of instancing, missionsystem, the including of crafting or not, have nothing to do with the meaning of the abbreviation of MMORPG. These are nothing but everyone's preferences.
EDIT: It seems I cant format my text anymore. Any whiteline gets simply deleted
It mean: Massive Multiplayer, Online, Role Playing, Game. Most today MMORPGs lack some of that and often almost of them. In fact today MMORPG games are just online games and barely multiplayer, massive gameplay is well forgotten. Here is detailed description of all MMORPG elemets:
1. Massive Multiplayer - Interaction between massive amount of players on one persistent world. Most today MMOs have both Massive and Multiplayer elements but barely Massive Multiplayer together (Interaction between massive amount of players).
2. Online - Played on internet. One of the two element that all today so named MMOs have.
3. Role Playing. Element which give you oportunity to play a role as something you typically are not. Most today games fail terribly on this as it do not give any tools or reason for Role playing. The main reason for that is lack of mechanics that force social iterractions between players.
4. Game.... Virtual rules that players use to achieve some goals.
Where themepark games try to hide that they are copying WOW, games like Mortal Online and Darkfall make no attempt to hide their inspiration
______\m/_____
LordOfDarkDesire
In computer games the Roleplaying part has always been the way your avatar plays the role in the game's story. Not some story you make up with other players. It never had the same meaning as with pen & paper roleplaying. Only roleplayers seem to think this. But thats just about what you would wish to see in a MMORPG and has nothing to do with the defination of MMORPG. (Sry for text format, my browser doesnt seem to like this website anymore)
I've written something about that in mmotomb.com talking about the "massive" in MMORPG. Justifying the word massive in a product shipped as an MMORPG. You can read it here.
With that "definition", Neverwinter Nights and Diablo would be MMOs. A persistant world does not automatically make an MMO.