"MMO": How many players does it take?

francis_baud

In your opinion, how many players per zone* (cities excluded) does it take for a game to be considered a MMO?

*An area of a map where players can interact with each others without loading screen

Rungar

at least 2

cameltosis

francis_baud said:

In your opinion, how many players per zone* (cities excluded) does it take for a game to be considered a MMO?

*An area of a map where players can interact with each others without loading screen

250

My preference is for 500+, but I'll call anything over 250 massively multiplayer

Kyleran

Back in the early days when MMORPGS were single "worlds" the answers was more straight forward for me.

Minimum of 500 per persistent world was all I considered, without regard to player population in a specific zone, region or battle.

Since then I've seen 2000 plus players in a single solar system in EVE as a normal thing, with carefully staged battles being much higher.

I've also played FO76, with roughly 35 players per world, but one can quickly flip between a near endless number of copies.

ESO has mega servers, no telling how many are in each zone, (or how many copies each zone has active) seems like I can't swing a stick without running into other players just about everywhere, so much so that it's actually an annoyance more often than not. 

So I'm really not sure what the correct answer is anymore.

Iselin

Enough so that it looks busy in places that should be busy and sparse in places that should be sparse.

Also enough for me to get a group using the group-finder instantly even if I'm playing DPS.

I'm also flexible and will count NPCs if I must.

Nilden

Zero.

There is more nuance to it than that. I could be in Lower Guk by myself that doesn't mean Everquest suddenly stops being an MMO.

Also is it about current player population in a zone or total player capacity on a server?

I would go with total player capacity of a server and even then once again nuance... Minecraft can have 800 people on the same server. Is it an MMO?

Iselin

Torval said:

cameltosis said:

francis_baud said:

In your opinion, how many players per zone* (cities excluded) does it take for a game to be considered a MMO?

*An area of a map where players can interact with each others without loading screen

250

My preference is for 500+, but I'll call anything over 250 massively multiplayer

These are the numbers I go by too.

I also have some limits to instancing as well. That is why in the most strict sense personally very few games are 'real' MMOs to me and mostly it's just the first gen games: Lineage 1, EQ, UO, AC, and a few others.

Games with a ton of instanced dungeons, layers, phases, excessive culling, and other concurrency limiters are the beginning of when it all started unraveling. I'll call WoW, LotRO, EQ2, ESO, FF14, and others MMOs for arguments sake, but to me they're not quite the real deal. Most multiplayer titles from those games forward I think of as MMO-alikes. That's why I don't flip my shit anymore when people call FO76, Destiny 2, Albion, or ARK an MMO. I just don't care to split hairs when none of them have really qualified, to me, for the last 15 years or so.

For PvE I'd agree but ESO RvR would like a word with you. That 250 is exceeded routinely there and better yet, the campaigns there work just like servers with the same players, friends and foes, day in and day out. The megaserver isn't a thing in Cyrodiil.

PvPing there when I did it on a regular basis is the most old-school MMOing I've done in years.

Iselin

Torval said:

Iselin said:

Torval said:

cameltosis said:

francis_baud said:

In your opinion, how many players per zone* (cities excluded) does it take for a game to be considered a MMO?

*An area of a map where players can interact with each others without loading screen

250

My preference is for 500+, but I'll call anything over 250 massively multiplayer

These are the numbers I go by too.

I also have some limits to instancing as well. That is why in the most strict sense personally very few games are 'real' MMOs to me and mostly it's just the first gen games: Lineage 1, EQ, UO, AC, and a few others.

Games with a ton of instanced dungeons, layers, phases, excessive culling, and other concurrency limiters are the beginning of when it all started unraveling. I'll call WoW, LotRO, EQ2, ESO, FF14, and others MMOs for arguments sake, but to me they're not quite the real deal. Most multiplayer titles from those games forward I think of as MMO-alikes. That's why I don't flip my shit anymore when people call FO76, Destiny 2, Albion, or ARK an MMO. I just don't care to split hairs when none of them have really qualified, to me, for the last 15 years or so.

For PvE I'd agree but ESO RvR would like a word with you. That 250 is exceeded routinely there and better yet, the campaigns there work just like servers with the same players, friends and foes, day in and day out. The megaserver isn't a thing in Cyrodiil.

PvPing there when I did it on a regular basis is the most old-school MMOing I've done in years.

It's in a constrained instance. I can't really think of heavily instanced games as MMOs. If Cyrodiil was its own game in an open world with no player limits then sure, but it is one zone among many. Players want to escape or even adventure in other factions then just hit the wayshrine back out.

If that works as an MMO for you then great. I'm good with that and I'm not going to argue it isn't or get pedantic about how you view it. It just isn't one to me.

An MMO to me is a self-contained world supporting at least 250 - 500 concurrent players on that single server at the same time. Players aren't ever culled, phased, or layered. Dungeons are public. Private instances of any kind are nearly non-existent. Players can always find each other by visiting the same map location.

Even first gen games started falling apart at some point by adding more zone divisions, private instance exception, and such for load balancing.

The land mass in Cyrodiil is huge and the population is no more instanced than a game with multiple servers/shards is also instanced into servers/shards.

And no, wayshrines don't work in Cyrodiil except for one at each of the no-PvP entrances to the zone and just using the map to wayshrine anywhere outside Cyrodiil does not work there. You need to go to the one and only wayshrine and do it only from there. It also has its own different zone transportation system that can be disrupted depending on which side controls what. Those are disrupted regularly so running or riding your mount very long distances is quite common there.

When I think of an "instance" I think of something much, much smaller than Cyrodiil with far fewer than 600 (at its peak in the good ole lag-free days -  no idea what the cap is down to these days) players.

Phasing, zone culling, etc. don't bother me either and are not even part of my thinking about whether a game is MMO enough. If done right they're transparent and seamless and out of mind.

I played Asheron's Call and they didn't have the tech to do that obviously. What they had instead was "portal storms" which was a system they used when a location, a key town usually, got too busy.

When an area got too crowded they took a random number of players above whatever their tech cap was, and teleported them to random locations on the outskirts of the town. If the area was busy enough and you persisted in wanting to be there you could get teleported away several times in a row. It could be annoying AF.

I'll take on the fly spawning of clones of an area as needed over that portal storm nonsense any day of the week

Morgenes83

Meridian only had 250 online per server and the game felt great. Names meant something same goes for reputation.
Still enough to do politics.

AlBQuirky

Torval said:

cameltosis said:

francis_baud said:

In your opinion, how many players per zone* (cities excluded) does it take for a game to be considered a MMO?

*An area of a map where players can interact with each others without loading screen

250

My preference is for 500+, but I'll call anything over 250 massively multiplayer

These are the numbers I go by too.

I also have some limits to instancing as well. That is why in the most strict sense personally very few games are 'real' MMOs to me and mostly it's just the first gen games: Lineage 1, EQ, UO, AC, and a few others.

Games with a ton of instanced dungeons, layers, phases, excessive culling, and other concurrency limiters are the beginning of when it all started unraveling. I'll call WoW, LotRO, EQ2, ESO, FF14, and others MMOs for arguments sake, but to me they're not quite the real deal. Most multiplayer titles from those games forward I think of as MMO-alikes. That's why I don't flip my shit anymore when people call FO76, Destiny 2, Albion, or ARK an MMO. I just don't care to split hairs when none of them have really qualified, to me, for the last 15 years or so.

At first, I agreed with Camel. Then I read Kyleran's and found my head nodding in agreement. Basing on my EQ 1 experience, I agree with you and Camel. MMOs are not made that way anymore.

Now, I'm not sure where I think a "hard number" works anymore. I'm kind of with Iselin, too, thinking that it needs to "look busy" for me

Po_gg

tzervo said:

37 obviously.

Nope, it's 42. Saw it in a book somewhere.

 

On broad general I agree with camel's 250, but it also depends on the engine, layering, world/zone sizes, activity, etc.

AlBQuirky said:

Now, I'm not sure where I think a "hard number" works anymore. I'm kind of with Iselin, too, thinking that it needs to "look busy" for me

Pretty much for me as well.

If there's enough players around, and there's the option for more (like in LotRO the default cap of 100 at one place can be lifted for events), I'm fine.

francis_baud

Interesting! Personally I'd go with 150 minimum per zone, 50% more than Battle Royale games (100-player map) which aren't considered MMO. I prefer when it's more crowded.

Mendel

francis_baud said:

Interesting! Personally I'd go with 150 minimum per zone, 50% more than Battle Royale games (100-player map) which aren't considered MMO. I prefer when it's more crowded.

What happens when you have 150 in a zone, but 120 are /afk for various reasons?  And are you counting *people* playing or *characters* in the game world?  How do you count 1 person operating 3 characters (i.e., boxing)?  In my experience, *people* have fun, *characters* don't.

I'd qualify an MMO as unique individuals (people) actively playing (not-afk) in the same game-world (server) at the same time.  With that definition, I'd think that a minimum of 500 people would constitute an MMO game.  I don't know that we've seen many true MMORPGs in some while.  The various ways of being non-active tends to cause us to overestimate the actual population of the games we play.

Theocritus

Rungar said:

at least 2

It takes two to MMO tango.......

francis_baud

Mendel said:

francis_baud said:

Interesting! Personally I'd go with 150 minimum per zone, 50% more than Battle Royale games (100-player map) which aren't considered MMO. I prefer when it's more crowded.

What happens when you have 150 in a zone, but 120 are /afk for various reasons?  And are you counting *people* playing or *characters* in the game world?  How do you count 1 person operating 3 characters (i.e., boxing)?  In my experience, *people* have fun, *characters* don't.

I'd qualify an MMO as unique individuals (people) actively playing (not-afk) in the same game-world (server) at the same time.  With that definition, I'd think that a minimum of 500 people would constitute an MMO game.  I don't know that we've seen many true MMORPGs in some while.  The various ways of being non-active tends to cause us to overestimate the actual population of the games we play.

If they're AFK then I guess they don't count as "players" anymore. So for me 150 active players per zone, depending on its size, could be considered "MMO". If there's only one player controlling 3 characters, I guess I would still count the number of players rather than the number of characters.

Another thing is that servers/worlds can be heavily instanced and do not play like MMOs, even if they support 500+ players: we can barely interact or see dozens of other players at a time. For some truly massively multiplayer gameplay to happen, many players have to be at the same place at the same time (PvE raids, non-instanced dungeons or large PvP battles).

Scorchien

Its not Zone ..

 Its how many active players in a Persistent World .. that number IMO is 5000

  So meaning it can support up to 5000 players in the same Persistent World .. ( That does not mean they all have to be online at same time )

   Maybe only 800 are on an any given time but the persistent world part is what escapses most people ..

  Im certain there will be window licking pushback and lack of understanding with this

cameltosis

I feel that there are a few different things being  squashed together in a lot of players minds.

1) Massively Multiplayer

This is purely about the number of players per virtual environment. That is how you quantify the size of multiplayer in a game. Things like instances, persistence, or any other features or mechanics have absolutely no bearing on whether it's massively multiplayer or not.

2) Server Capacity

This is still a relevant number to pay attention to, even if the meaning of "server" is somewhat murky these days. But, this number is unrelated to whether the game is an MMO or not.

3) Capacity vs Reality

You judge a game based on its capabilities, not how it's being used by real players. By this, I mean if a game only has 10 players, but has the capability to support 500 players, it would still be an MMO, even though it never reaches its potential.

4) Searching for that Virtual World

Many of us here are searching for that virtual world feeling, and so we judge an MMO based on our desires to live in a virtual world. Things like instancing, or over-gamification, detract from the virtual world ideal, and so we judge them as not "real" MMOs. Whilst I understand and share your desires, being an MMO, or an RPG, has nothing to do with being a virtual world.

This is why games like FO76 can give us that virtual world feeling: they are providing those worldy feels, even though they aren't massively multiplayer. So, games can definitely still be an MMO, or an MMORPG, even if they aren't virtual worlds. They just might not be the sort of game you (or me) are searching for.

cameltosis

francis_baud said:

Interesting! Personally I'd go with 150 minimum per zone, 50% more than Battle Royale games (100-player map) which aren't considered MMO. I prefer when it's more crowded.

It's good to see your thinking here, and in my opinion is exactly the right line of thinking, even if your numbers are lower than mine.

"Massively" is comparative, something can not be big by itself, you have to compare it to something else. In the case of massively multiplayer online games, you're comparing the scale of multiplayer to all other multiplayer online games.

In my very amateur research - looking at steams top 200 multiplayer games - the average multiplayer cap was ~23, with a typical spread of 2-128. So, anything over 128 players is definitely bigger than "normal" multiplayer. Whether you consider it massively bigger is personal. For me, I wouldn't consider 150 massively bigger than 128, so your number is a little low for me. But, given the subjectivity of the word "massively", I can still accept and appreciate your answer.

cameltosis

Torval said:

cameltosis said:

This is purely about the number of players per virtual environment. That is how you quantify the size of multiplayer in a game. Things like instances, persistence, or any other features or mechanics have absolutely no bearing on whether it's massively multiplayer or not.

What does "virtual environment" mean to you? Because to me, things like instancing, layers, phases, channels, and culling has a dramatic effect on concurrency.

To me it doesn't even matter if a game can have 250 players in a zone if I can only see 50 at a time no matter what; or if I go to a location to meet someone and they're not there because their character exists in another layer or phase.

Then again I don't really care if some people call or feel their game an MMO or not. It just doesn't matter to me because I know it isn't going to be like first gen MMO concurrency and setting. There aren't enough well defined types of MMOs to characterize them all. Thus I lump them into the mmo-alikes.

Is a game like FO76 with thousands of players across many servers any less massively multiplayer than games that have 500 people in a zone except I never see more than 50? I can server hop in FO76 all I want and see tons of different people just like changing phases or channels in another game. In fact I can more easily join my friends in FO76 than I can in some other games more traditionally labeled MMO.

My point being that MMO doesn't mean any one thing and hasn't since they started introducing many zones and instances. How it works depends on the game and they all do it differently. MMO is different for every game, even those most would consider legit.

Virtual environment means any virtual space which the player can traverse right now, without loading screens, and interact with the other players in that environment. If you cannot interact, i.e. play, with another player without going through a loading screen of some sort, they you cannot both be counted towards the multiplayer cap.

So, in the case of instancing and layers, if you are in a different instance or layer, then you are not in the same virtual environment because there is no possibility of you being able to interact with those other players and that point in time. You'd have to leave your layer and join theirs. 

In your example, FO76 is not Massively Multiplayer, as it has a low player cap. However, a game that supports 500 players per zone, but that zone is layered with each layer having a player cap of 50, is also not massively multiplayer. A player cap of 50 is definitely, 100%, an average multiplayer number, and is not massively multiplayer. This is why I said that server capacity has no bearing on whether a game is an MMO or not, because if you have 10,000 players per server, but a maximum of 75 players can actually play together at any given time (swtor....), then its still not massively mulitplayer.

Vermillion_Raventhal

I think it comes down to sever tech and design. I think a MMORPG with 50 player limit to zones could feel more like a MMORPG with 5000 doing solo quest and phased to different content. 

cameltosis

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

I think it comes down to sever tech and design. I think a MMORPG with 50 player limit to zones could feel more like a MMORPG with 5000 doing solo quest and phased to different content. 

Is that the difference between normal multiplayer and massively multiplayer, or is that the difference between virtual world and generic online game?

Mendel

cameltosis said:

Torval said:

cameltosis said:

This is purely about the number of players per virtual environment. That is how you quantify the size of multiplayer in a game. Things like instances, persistence, or any other features or mechanics have absolutely no bearing on whether it's massively multiplayer or not.

What does "virtual environment" mean to you? Because to me, things like instancing, layers, phases, channels, and culling has a dramatic effect on concurrency.

To me it doesn't even matter if a game can have 250 players in a zone if I can only see 50 at a time no matter what; or if I go to a location to meet someone and they're not there because their character exists in another layer or phase.

Then again I don't really care if some people call or feel their game an MMO or not. It just doesn't matter to me because I know it isn't going to be like first gen MMO concurrency and setting. There aren't enough well defined types of MMOs to characterize them all. Thus I lump them into the mmo-alikes.

Is a game like FO76 with thousands of players across many servers any less massively multiplayer than games that have 500 people in a zone except I never see more than 50? I can server hop in FO76 all I want and see tons of different people just like changing phases or channels in another game. In fact I can more easily join my friends in FO76 than I can in some other games more traditionally labeled MMO.

My point being that MMO doesn't mean any one thing and hasn't since they started introducing many zones and instances. How it works depends on the game and they all do it differently. MMO is different for every game, even those most would consider legit.

Virtual environment means any virtual space which the player can traverse right now, without loading screens, and interact with the other players in that environment. If you cannot interact, i.e. play, with another player without going through a loading screen of some sort, they you cannot both be counted towards the multiplayer cap.

So, in the case of instancing and layers, if you are in a different instance or layer, then you are not in the same virtual environment because there is no possibility of you being able to interact with those other players and that point in time. You'd have to leave your layer and join theirs. 

In your example, FO76 is not Massively Multiplayer, as it has a low player cap. However, a game that supports 500 players per zone, but that zone is layered with each layer having a player cap of 50, is also not massively multiplayer. A player cap of 50 is definitely, 100%, an average multiplayer number, and is not massively multiplayer. This is why I said that server capacity has no bearing on whether a game is an MMO or not, because if you have 10,000 players per server, but a maximum of 75 players can actually play together at any given time (swtor....), then its still not massively mulitplayer.

EQ1 and EQ2 both had quite a few loading screens.  I think both were the standard definition of Massively Multiplayer.  You may want to rethink your definition of MMO a bit, it doesn't include all first generation games.  Unless you want to make the statement that EQ1 and EQ2 weren't MMOs?  But I don't think that's what you intended.

Also CoH used layered instancing to allow more than 50 people in an area.  CoH isn't quite 1st gen, but it would still be not counted as an MMO under your scheme.

olepi

I think the first M in MMO is the Roman numeral for 1,000.

The server should be able to handle up to at least 1,000 at a time, and should be able to support all 1,000 in a single zone.

If you only allow 50 or 100 in the same zone simultaneously, that's just a co-op game.

cameltosis

Mendel said:

cameltosis said:

Torval said:

cameltosis said:

This is purely about the number of players per virtual environment. That is how you quantify the size of multiplayer in a game. Things like instances, persistence, or any other features or mechanics have absolutely no bearing on whether it's massively multiplayer or not.

What does "virtual environment" mean to you? Because to me, things like instancing, layers, phases, channels, and culling has a dramatic effect on concurrency.

To me it doesn't even matter if a game can have 250 players in a zone if I can only see 50 at a time no matter what; or if I go to a location to meet someone and they're not there because their character exists in another layer or phase.

Then again I don't really care if some people call or feel their game an MMO or not. It just doesn't matter to me because I know it isn't going to be like first gen MMO concurrency and setting. There aren't enough well defined types of MMOs to characterize them all. Thus I lump them into the mmo-alikes.

Is a game like FO76 with thousands of players across many servers any less massively multiplayer than games that have 500 people in a zone except I never see more than 50? I can server hop in FO76 all I want and see tons of different people just like changing phases or channels in another game. In fact I can more easily join my friends in FO76 than I can in some other games more traditionally labeled MMO.

My point being that MMO doesn't mean any one thing and hasn't since they started introducing many zones and instances. How it works depends on the game and they all do it differently. MMO is different for every game, even those most would consider legit.

Virtual environment means any virtual space which the player can traverse right now, without loading screens, and interact with the other players in that environment. If you cannot interact, i.e. play, with another player without going through a loading screen of some sort, they you cannot both be counted towards the multiplayer cap.

So, in the case of instancing and layers, if you are in a different instance or layer, then you are not in the same virtual environment because there is no possibility of you being able to interact with those other players and that point in time. You'd have to leave your layer and join theirs. 

In your example, FO76 is not Massively Multiplayer, as it has a low player cap. However, a game that supports 500 players per zone, but that zone is layered with each layer having a player cap of 50, is also not massively multiplayer. A player cap of 50 is definitely, 100%, an average multiplayer number, and is not massively multiplayer. This is why I said that server capacity has no bearing on whether a game is an MMO or not, because if you have 10,000 players per server, but a maximum of 75 players can actually play together at any given time (swtor....), then its still not massively mulitplayer.

EQ1 and EQ2 both had quite a few loading screens.  I think both were the standard definition of Massively Multiplayer.  You may want to rethink your definition of MMO a bit, it doesn't include all first generation games.  Unless you want to make the statement that EQ1 and EQ2 weren't MMOs?  But I don't think that's what you intended.

Also CoH used layered instancing to allow more than 50 people in an area.  CoH isn't quite 1st gen, but it would still be not counted as an MMO under your scheme.

I didn't play EQ1 or EQ2 so can't comment on what they did or didn't allow. Neither did I play CoX, so no idea what their caps are like. Loading screens by themselves aren't an issue, they simply define the boundaries of a virtual environment. Every game has loading screens.

But, if those 3 games supported less than 250 players in the same virtual environment, then sure, I wouldn't call them MMOs because they wouldn't be massively multiplayer.

Not sure if that answers your question or not.

Google has also let me down, can't seem to find out the player cap for any of those three games. Thats always been a weird aspect of the large multiplayer genre. Other games are legally required to publish their player caps, those numbers go onto official boxes and stuff. But, for some reason, a lot of online multiplayer games, especially MMORPGs, seem to get away without publishing those numbers.

Mendel

cameltosis said:

Mendel said:

cameltosis said:

Torval said:

cameltosis said:

This is purely about the number of players per virtual environment. That is how you quantify the size of multiplayer in a game. Things like instances, persistence, or any other features or mechanics have absolutely no bearing on whether it's massively multiplayer or not.

What does "virtual environment" mean to you? Because to me, things like instancing, layers, phases, channels, and culling has a dramatic effect on concurrency.

To me it doesn't even matter if a game can have 250 players in a zone if I can only see 50 at a time no matter what; or if I go to a location to meet someone and they're not there because their character exists in another layer or phase.

Then again I don't really care if some people call or feel their game an MMO or not. It just doesn't matter to me because I know it isn't going to be like first gen MMO concurrency and setting. There aren't enough well defined types of MMOs to characterize them all. Thus I lump them into the mmo-alikes.

Is a game like FO76 with thousands of players across many servers any less massively multiplayer than games that have 500 people in a zone except I never see more than 50? I can server hop in FO76 all I want and see tons of different people just like changing phases or channels in another game. In fact I can more easily join my friends in FO76 than I can in some other games more traditionally labeled MMO.

My point being that MMO doesn't mean any one thing and hasn't since they started introducing many zones and instances. How it works depends on the game and they all do it differently. MMO is different for every game, even those most would consider legit.

Virtual environment means any virtual space which the player can traverse right now, without loading screens, and interact with the other players in that environment. If you cannot interact, i.e. play, with another player without going through a loading screen of some sort, they you cannot both be counted towards the multiplayer cap.

So, in the case of instancing and layers, if you are in a different instance or layer, then you are not in the same virtual environment because there is no possibility of you being able to interact with those other players and that point in time. You'd have to leave your layer and join theirs. 

In your example, FO76 is not Massively Multiplayer, as it has a low player cap. However, a game that supports 500 players per zone, but that zone is layered with each layer having a player cap of 50, is also not massively multiplayer. A player cap of 50 is definitely, 100%, an average multiplayer number, and is not massively multiplayer. This is why I said that server capacity has no bearing on whether a game is an MMO or not, because if you have 10,000 players per server, but a maximum of 75 players can actually play together at any given time (swtor....), then its still not massively mulitplayer.

EQ1 and EQ2 both had quite a few loading screens.  I think both were the standard definition of Massively Multiplayer.  You may want to rethink your definition of MMO a bit, it doesn't include all first generation games.  Unless you want to make the statement that EQ1 and EQ2 weren't MMOs?  But I don't think that's what you intended.

Also CoH used layered instancing to allow more than 50 people in an area.  CoH isn't quite 1st gen, but it would still be not counted as an MMO under your scheme.

I didn't play EQ1 or EQ2 so can't comment on what they did or didn't allow. Neither did I play CoX, so no idea what their caps are like. Loading screens by themselves aren't an issue, they simply define the boundaries of a virtual environment. Every game has loading screens.

But, if those 3 games supported less than 250 players in the same virtual environment, then sure, I wouldn't call them MMOs because they wouldn't be massively multiplayer.

Not sure if that answers your question or not.

Google has also let me down, can't seem to find out the player cap for any of those three games. Thats always been a weird aspect of the large multiplayer genre. Other games are legally required to publish their player caps, those numbers go onto official boxes and stuff. But, for some reason, a lot of online multiplayer games, especially MMORPGs, seem to get away without publishing those numbers.

EQ1 allowed around 2,500 active on any given server.  Most zones were supposedly capable of 250 characters at time, but in practice (in the early days) 100-125 was pushing your luck -- lots of network issues and many (if not most) graphics cards were going to choke if there were that many in visual range.  It wasn't uncommon to have to look at the ground to avoid stressing your graphics card.  These days, after many networking improvements, graphics optimization, and superior graphics cards, it isn't uncommon to have 180-200 in popular zones (PoK, Lobby, Bazzar), most of whom are /afk in one form or another.

I don't really know if there were upper limits on how many accounts could create characters on a single server; it wouldn't surprise me if there were in excess on 15,000 characters per server.  (All of which are still there, with minor exceptions).

But every zone was 'surrounded' by loading screens from day 1.  So, your definition would definitely exclude EQ1 and EQ2 from the MMORPG category.

As far as the maximum numbers go, most games tend to publish character counts, then allow multiple characters per account, multiple accounts per person, and even multiple instances of the game per computer.  It makes multi-boxing insanely simple, and further obfuscates the number of customers from interested observers.  Talking to a boxed character is immensely frustrating.

TwistedSister77

The definitive answer: