At the end of the day, I've given up on caring what people refer to these games as. Much as I've given up fighting against the term "toon" rather than "char" or whatever else. I just really hate the term "toon" and always have.
I'm just gonna chill and ride it out. Let all the cool, new kids handle the terminology while I'm playing the games.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Ok, I need to rant a little bit here guys because I'm a little bit sick of every multiplayer game being called an mmorpg. Over the last couple of days I've been playing Kritika Online which is currently in closed beta. I initially looked at it because it claimed to be an mmorpg, when it clearly is NOT. It's an online multiplayer brawler. What's the difference you may ask? Let's look at a few definitions that I have found and compare them to Kritika Online:
According to techopedia, an mmorpg is "a video game that takes place in a persistent state world (PSW) with thousands, or even millions, of players developing their characters in a role-playing environment. The virtual world in which the game takes place is never static. Even when a player is logged off, events are occurring across the world that may impact the player when he or she logs in again."
According to the oxford dictionary, it is "An online role-playing video game in which a very large number of people participate simultaneously."
According to webopedia, they are "online role-playing multiplayer games which allow thousands of gamers to play in the game's evolving virtual world at the same time via the Internet."
So you see a theme here, and really it boils down to 2 core elements:
1. A persistent game world
2. The ability to interact with thousands of different players.
Now let's look at Kritika Online. There is no persistent game world because the entire game is instanced, separated into playable missions (limited to groups of 4 people max) and the hub towns. The hub towns are the only source of interaction between players, and again these are limited to 50 people per instance. Now, last time I checked, 50 people does NOT equal thousands, or even hundreds. These hub towns are nothing more than a glorified chat room/lobby where instead of just seeing people's names and the text they write, you can see their characters as well. That is not "massively multiplayer" in any way, so why the hell are we calling this game an mmorpg?
Why does this matter? Because a lot of people (myself included) don't like fully instanced games such as this, because we like to explore and randomly meet other people along the way. You cannot do that in a game like kritika Online and if I had known about it from the outset, I wouldn't have wasted time downloading it. There are other games that claim to be mmorpgs but aren't, games like Dragon's Nest, Skyforge, Vindictus. These are not mmorpgs.
TLDR: If your game is fully instanced with no ability to explore the world at all, it is NOT an mmorpg. Stop calling it that!
/end rant
Maddening, isn't it? It's as though terms mean nothing to people, and words can just mean whatever you want them to! It's right in line with the whole "feelings over facts" mentality.
Put it this way, for years and years, Diablo and Diablo 2, as well as other similar games, were referred to as Action RPGs, with optional and very limited multiplayer. No one questioned it. No one argued about it. That's what they were. Blizzard themselves have, and still do to this day, call them Action RPGs. Even as 1st - 3rd gen MMORPGs (EQ, DAoC, etc) existed at the same time, no one confused the two. It was a clear and obvious distinction.
MMORPGs blew up and suddenly, people are calling Diablo, Diablo 2, 3 and similar games MMORPGs. Why? "Because a lot of people play them and you can play over the internet with other people". They ignore the entire "sharing the same persistent world with thousands of other players" part - which is one of the absolute core things that makes a MMO what it is.
I have linked people directly to Blizzard's official page for the Diablo games, where they specifically define it as an Action RPG and have been told "Blizzard doesn't define what is or isn't a MMORPG" - but somehow, these people do...?
Why? I think it's intellectual laziness. It's indicative of the increasingly simplistic thinking taking place over time. People want to "dumb things down" into simpler, easier to remember labels and definitions and never look beyond face value. They refuse to acknowledge how "sharing a persistent world with thousands of others" and "sharing a temporary map with a few other players" is at all different, and in many different ways.
Of course, developers and publishers haven't helped in this. Because MMORPGs blew up and everyone was clamoring for a piece of the action, they tried to tie *everything* into being a MMORPG.
I fought that fight for a while, but ultimately gave up. People are going to believe what they want, facts and clear, long-established definitions be damned. Feelings over facts.
Maddening, isn't it? It's as though terms mean nothing to people, and words can just mean whatever you want them to! It's right in line with the whole "feelings over facts" mentality.
Well, that's kind of what you are doing right? Your feeling is that words should stay the same, they have meaning, they should be concrete. The "facts" are that all through human language they have changed to reflect society, values, changes in ideology, etc.
That's my whole point and I've listed numerous examples.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Languages, even its first itterations, have always been dynamic, not static. Take any Uni language/culture class and you would know. The discussion has already been had and that was the universal outcome. It changes from generation to generation, I remember when I was young my parents used to tell me all the time that I was using a word 'wrong,' because back in their day it had a different meaning.
These days almost every game has an online component, and single vs multi and online vs offline aren't that black and white anymore. Where one term ends and the other begins is decided by the majority of its users by how they use it. It is the ultimate form of democracy, too bad the majority of the people are quite dumb. I could name a president or two who's election outcomes are perfect examples of that
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Languages, even its first itterations, have always been dynamic, not static. Take any Uni language/culture class and you would know. The discussion has already been had and that was the universal outcome. It changes from generation to generation, I remember when I was young my parents used to tell me all the time that I was using a word 'wrong,' because back in their day it had a different meaning.
These days almost every game has an online component, and single vs multi and online vs offline aren't that black and white anymore. Where one term ends and the other begins is decided by the majority of its users by how they use it. It is the ultimate form of democracy, too bad the majority of the people are quite dumb. I could name a president or two who's election outcomes are perfect examples of that
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Thank you Lahnmir, you get it.
As I've said earlier, an mmorpg "to me" would be lineage 2, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot and not Destiny.
But I'm not going to pull up my pants to my waist and argue the point when clearly, as you pointed out, language is dynamic.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Here's the problem with trying to label anything anymore. The terms have changed from being objective to subjective. For example: To one person Massive could mean 20 people but to someone else it could mean 1000 ect... It boils down to perspective of each individual anymore.
Great, too many threads about game x or y is not MMORPG, this starts to be boring. Well, i guess it's great opportunity for old MMORPG geezers to shine in discussion like this
At the end of the day MMORPGs are what "I" believe them to be.
Even if no one else agrees with me.
I'd follow you to hell!
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
MMORPG - Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game
That is the definition... how people interpret it is a different story.
We don't need a tight definition to have fun... hell Marathon was a blast back in the day. Did I care whether it was a LAN game or whatnot? No. It was fun as hell.
To limit your idea of fun to a succinct definition is to limit your fun. Why limit the definition of an MMORPG? I doubt people back in the day ran around saying they played an MMORPG... pretty sure they played EQ or WoW or the like... it just so happened to be an MMORPG.
If someone asked you what car you drive... I'm pretty sure you say something like a 2017 Honda Accord... not a 6-cylinder fossil fuel transportation device.
Apples and Oranges argument.
If someone asks me what I drive I say a "pick up truck.
No one tries to convince me it is a car, a bus, SUV or a limo.
Almost everyone I know would easily recognize it and agree with my definition and outside of some weird hybrids there would be little confusion over what the term means.
This standard definition has been around for a very long time and isn't likely to change.
So why not the same for MMORPGs?
Oh yes, your Honda Accord, usually referred to as a Sedan. But never a pick up truck.
But you see... a pickup truck is not a succinct definition... some may picture a city truck... some may picture a toy truck... some may even say it's not a real truck.
BTW, an SUV uses the same base frame as a pickup truck... so it's really a truck with a different shell.
And a truck is a type of car... just as an SUV is.
We don't need a precise definition. We know what we like and dislike and ultimately accept our own definition despite what anyone else thinks. You buy things based on what you think it will be based on what you can see or what you have read. Sometimes it's not what you thought it would be... because someone else used a label for it that didn't quite match your own.
Not everything is an MMORPG... not everyone defines an MMORPG the same... you will never convince them that your definition is their definition. No two brains are alike. You may accept someone else' definition but that's not same thing as having the same definition. They may be similar, but never alike.
The issue with the "new" definition of the term is that it renders it's meaning inconsistent with itself. That would be okay if the entire point of the group of words it belongs to wasn't to separate and classify items in a consistent manner.
An inconsistently applied descriptive term is useless.
Soon game designers will shift toward retro games becoming "MMOs".. Can't wait for the thrilling excitement as intense multiplayer struggles lead to heated rivalries in the immersive and viciously competitive world of... Pong..
The issue with the "new" definition of the term is that it renders it's meaning inconsistent with itself. That would be okay if the entire point of the group of words it belongs to wasn't to separate and classify items in a consistent manner.
An inconsistently applied descriptive term is useless.
That's not really true.
Let's look at the words:
Massive/Massively - that doesn't necessarily mean a lot of people in the same space at once by the definition of the word. It does mean that "something is Massive/Massively. What would/could that be? Well, that would be the people ...
Multiplayer - You can have more than one person playing at once. And while historically that meant in the same space, you find that these new games are using "massive" for the amount of people who have access to the game and can play with other people.
Online - it has to be online
Role Playing Game - that's its own can of worms as people have different definitions for what that entails. Usually progression.
So one could look at, say, Destiny and think "well a massive amount of people can access the game, we can play multiplayer with any subset of those people and we do it online.
AS far as the RPG - more games are including some sort of progression so that very well might be why some people look at these games as role playing games.
As far as the joke that was made above about Pong, I could imagine (though I doubt it would happen) an online version of pong where millions (again wouldn't happen and it's a shame I have to put the qualifier) access Pong, you can be matched with any one of those millions, there are leaderboards, etc. Make it so there is some sort of progression (which would mean a redesign of the game but this is for argument's sake) and there you have it, a future mmorpg.
It's not how "we" (the people who started with early mmorpg's would ever classify it, but keep broadening what massively means and just adopt the idea that multiplayer is any number from 2 to millions and you have the evolution of a term.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
MMORPG - Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game
That is the definition... how people interpret it is a different story.
We don't need a tight definition to have fun... hell Marathon was a blast back in the day. Did I care whether it was a LAN game or whatnot? No. It was fun as hell.
To limit your idea of fun to a succinct definition is to limit your fun. Why limit the definition of an MMORPG? I doubt people back in the day ran around saying they played an MMORPG... pretty sure they played EQ or WoW or the like... it just so happened to be an MMORPG.
If someone asked you what car you drive... I'm pretty sure you say something like a 2017 Honda Accord... not a 6-cylinder fossil fuel transportation device.
Apples and Oranges argument.
If someone asks me what I drive I say a "pick up truck.
No one tries to convince me it is a car, a bus, SUV or a limo.
Almost everyone I know would easily recognize it and agree with my definition and outside of some weird hybrids there would be little confusion over what the term means.
This standard definition has been around for a very long time and isn't likely to change.
So why not the same for MMORPGs?
Oh yes, your Honda Accord, usually referred to as a Sedan. But never a pick up truck.
But you see... a pickup truck is not a succinct definition... some may picture a city truck... some may picture a toy truck... some may even say it's not a real truck.
BTW, an SUV uses the same base frame as a pickup truck... so it's really a truck with a different shell.
And a truck is a type of car... just as an SUV is.
We don't need a precise definition. We know what we like and dislike and ultimately accept our own definition despite what anyone else thinks. You buy things based on what you think it will be based on what you can see or what you have read. Sometimes it's not what you thought it would be... because someone else used a label for it that didn't quite match your own.
Not everything is an MMORPG... not everyone defines an MMORPG the same... you will never convince them that your definition is their definition. No two brains are alike. You may accept someone else' definition but that's not same thing as having the same definition. They may be similar, but never alike.
Well in all fairness when I tell Ford, Chevy and Dodge fans I drive a Nissan Frontier they often respond with "that's not a REAL pick-up truck."
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Languages, even its first itterations, have always been dynamic, not static. Take any Uni language/culture class and you would know. The discussion has already been had and that was the universal outcome. It changes from generation to generation, I remember when I was young my parents used to tell me all the time that I was using a word 'wrong,' because back in their day it had a different meaning.
These days almost every game has an online component, and single vs multi and online vs offline aren't that black and white anymore. Where one term ends and the other begins is decided by the majority of its users by how they use it. It is the ultimate form of democracy, too bad the majority of the people are quite dumb. I could name a president or two who's election outcomes are perfect examples of that
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Thank you Lahnmir, you get it.
As I've said earlier, an mmorpg "to me" would be lineage 2, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot and not Destiny.
But I'm not going to pull up my pants to my waist and argue the point when clearly, as you pointed out, language is dynamic.
I was going to say, they haven't made a proper MMORPG as I believe them to be in a very long time.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Soon game designers will shift toward retro games becoming "MMOs".. Can't wait for the thrilling excitement as intense multiplayer struggles lead to heated rivalries in the immersive and viciously competitive world of... Pong..
Hell ad a chat box to solitaire and these retards would call that a MMORPG.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Great, too many threads about game x or y is not MMORPG, this starts to be boring. Well, i guess it's great opportunity for old MMORPG geezers to shine in discussion like this
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Soon game designers will shift toward retro games becoming "MMOs".. Can't wait for the thrilling excitement as intense multiplayer struggles lead to heated rivalries in the immersive and viciously competitive world of... Pong..
Hell ad a chat box to solitaire and these retards would call that a MMORPG.
No, but you could call it an MMO then. Pong has no progress so its no rpg. When you add a lobby where people can chat, form guilds, watch and rate Pong matches and create avatars etc. all of a sudden calling Pong an MMO isn't that weird. You are right in tgat it is not an MMORPG though.
Then again, this is probably falling on deaf ears since you using the word 'retards' clearly shows your feelings trump facts. The term MMO is an incredibly grey area these days, it doesn't matter if you like that or not.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Midnight-ShadowWorld of Warcraft CorrespondentMemberUncommonPosts: 88
Languages, even its first itterations, have always been dynamic, not static. Take any Uni language/culture class and you would know. The discussion has already been had and that was the universal outcome. It changes from generation to generation, I remember when I was young my parents used to tell me all the time that I was using a word 'wrong,' because back in their day it had a different meaning.
These days almost every game has an online component, and single vs multi and online vs offline aren't that black and white anymore. Where one term ends and the other begins is decided by the majority of its users by how they use it. It is the ultimate form of democracy, too bad the majority of the people are quite dumb. I could name a president or two who's election outcomes are perfect examples of that
/Cheers, Lahnmir
I fully understand and accept that language is ever evolving and changing with each generation. That is not the issue here. The issue is that far too often you have games from completely different genres being given the same label. A fully instanced game like Kritika Online and a fully open world game like BDO are (to me) totally different genres, and yet they are both given the label of "mmorpg".
Let me try and explain my frustration to you and maybe you'll understand. I have been looking for a new mmorpg to get into for a long time. I went through all the major subscription and p2p mmorpgs I could before moving onto the f2p ones. Now as I've said previously I hate fully instanced games like Kritika and I'm only interested in playing open world games that I can explore and meet other people while I do it.
So during my search I see a game called "Skyforge" that claims to be an mmorpg. I look at the website and it says nothing about it being a fully instanced game. In fact, it says the following on their website: "Only a true God can defend Aelion against invaders, raging immortals and countless other dangers. Select the activity; PvP, PvE, group or solo, open world play, short instance or large raid to your liking and immediately set off to protect your people!"
Where is this open world they speak of? It doesn't exist because it's all instanced. And of course, I don't know this until I've spent hours downloading, installing and patching the game to play it. How am I supposed to make an informed decision on what game to pick with so much misrepresentation? I don't even care what label you give it. Call one genre the "cows" and the other the "pigs" for all I care, just give me some way of distinguishing them before I actually play them! As consumers we have a right to know before-hand what kind of game we are playing. How about one more example for you. Some people prefer first person shooters, others prefer third person shooters. Imagine how hard it would be to find a game you liked if they were all grouped and labelled as just "shooter".
Midnight-ShadowWorld of Warcraft CorrespondentMemberUncommonPosts: 88
The issue with the "new" definition of the term is that it renders it's meaning inconsistent with itself. That would be okay if the entire point of the group of words it belongs to wasn't to separate and classify items in a consistent manner.
An inconsistently applied descriptive term is useless.
That's not really true.
Let's look at the words:
Massive/Massively - that doesn't necessarily mean a lot of people in the same space at once by the definition of the word. It does mean that "something is Massive/Massively. What would/could that be? Well, that would be the people ...
Multiplayer - You can have more than one person playing at once. And while historically that meant in the same space, you find that these new games are using "massive" for the amount of people who have access to the game and can play with other people.
Online - it has to be online
Role Playing Game - that's its own can of worms as people have different definitions for what that entails. Usually progression.
So one could look at, say, Destiny and think "well a massive amount of people can access the game, we can play multiplayer with any subset of those people and we do it online.
AS far as the RPG - more games are including some sort of progression so that very well might be why some people look at these games as role playing games.
As far as the joke that was made above about Pong, I could imagine (though I doubt it would happen) an online version of pong where millions (again wouldn't happen and it's a shame I have to put the qualifier) access Pong, you can be matched with any one of those millions, there are leaderboards, etc. Make it so there is some sort of progression (which would mean a redesign of the game but this is for argument's sake) and there you have it, a future mmorpg.
It's not how "we" (the people who started with early mmorpg's would ever classify it, but keep broadening what massively means and just adopt the idea that multiplayer is any number from 2 to millions and you have the evolution of a term.
Have you tried this amazing new mmorpg called "Call of Duty: Black Ops 3"? It's supposed to be awesome!
May I remind all of you as to why we have genres for games in the first place? It's to help us identify them and quickly find out which games suit us and which games don't. If you start grouping games of different genres under the same label you might as well take away the label completely, as it becomes meaningless. Imagine if you went onto Steam tomorrow and all the genre labels had been taken off. All you had to go on would be the name of each game. Imagine how long and frustrating it would be if you had to scroll through a list of every single game on steam and look at each one to see if it was one you wanted to play.
This has nothing to do with language. I couldn't give 2 shits about what you label your games as, as long as I can differentiate between 2 completely different games without having to do hours of research into them.
So I think that the general problem isn't, necessarily, with the definition, but that some of those major elements are now becoming staples in games.
Based on the OP the common elements in all the definitions he came across were: 1. A persistent game world
2. The ability to interact with thousands of different players.
First of all, what's a persistent game world? This characterizes most games. Even a game like Destiny could be classified as having a persistent world, since events are actually happening while players are offline. So Destiny would meet that requirement.
Secondly, I would challenge you to find a game that allows you to interact with thousands of people. Maybe we might say gives you the possibility of interacting with thousands of players. I actually prefer the idea of "hundreds" of players playing simultaneously, since that's much more realistic. HOWEVER, if we say hundreds then we re-open the question of what does that mean? hundreds in a single map? If we're talking hundreds of people in a persistent world at once, then Destiny would also qualify in that case since I think they allow 16 people per map. Destiny has some 6 or 7 planets, right? How many maps per planet? Does it just count as one? If not then we're easily getting into hundreds of people. We can never converge in a single location though, so I think that kinda excludes it.
HOWEVER! There are plenty of completely legitimate MMORPGs which probably have fewer people than Destiny congregating in any given area. So I think that's a pretty big differentiatoin, it really does need to be the ability to support hundreds of people in a single location.
Anyway, we've also seen that it seems every game has RPG elements now, so don't even get me started on that.
The point is that you want something that's very clean cut, but there are so many games focused on creating open world RPGs with multiplayer support that you simply need to do a better job researching and looking for elements you want in an MMORPG. Otherwise, you're almost guaranteed to be disappointed.
Everyone knows what an FPS game is. Everyone knows what a MOBA is. Everyone knows what an RPG is. Everyone knows what an RTS is. Even genre combination abbreviations are largely known.
People are confused as fuck as to what an MMORPG is. This is mostly due to the term MMO taking over by stripping the RPG from itself to capitalize on the genre. It has been stolen from us.
Yes ... we need to take the genre name back or call true massively open world games something entirely new. There is a real issue here and why some of the new indie and even mainstream mmorpg developers (eg. Amazon's marketing of their new mmorpg ... if it really is one) are stressing the use of "mmoRPG" instead of mmo.
MMORPG's used to be created in order to place as many players as possible into a massively open world as possible (only limited by current tech of the time) in order to combine maximum players with maximum content.
MMO's today try to place as many players into heavily instanced games in order to maximize monetization with minimal content and player interaction.
Current tech now allows maximum players in maximum content but is it done by large developers? Fuck no, because the f2p model doesn't support smaller genre gaming (it is 100% driven by analytics). It needs massive player numbers in order to work or, more specifically, increasing any metric within the model vs increasing player base and retention nearly compounds earnings. Money drives the massively smaller, instanced MMO trend ... NOT game concept.
This is why indie mmorpg genre targeting development is occuring. The market is there. It never left. They just aren't greedy fucks willing to obliterate game concept for marketing and maximized profits. Some may still combine F2P analytics but at least attempt to preserve game concept. Some flat out reject it knowing how destructive it is.
I fully understand and accept that language is ever evolving and changing with each generation. That is not the issue here. The issue is that far too often you have games from completely different genres being given the same label.
That is the issue here.
And "yeah" it's possible that some day"shooter" might just mean "any type of game where shooting is the focus".
So, is a Car an automobile? Well apparently it used to just mean train car. I think we can agree a train car is different than an automobile.
So if you were "way back when" (1800's some place) would you be one of those people pointing out that the use of the word Car as "an automobile" is misleading?
When people say "words change" they really mean it. So if the differentiation between genres is no longer needed then language is going to change to reflect that.
I would even offer this, and see if you agree, with fewer companies making full blown "old fashioned" mmorpg's and with more and more games being made that allow for a "massive" amount of people to connect, the use of the term "MMO" just naturally went to include those. BUT if the typical MMORPG was still being avidly made maybe the two different genres would never have been called "MMO"
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Comments
I'm just gonna chill and ride it out. Let all the cool, new kids handle the terminology while I'm playing the games.
If you don't call it a mmorpg what do you call it. It don't fit in any category.
In the case of games like Kritika, I define them as online multiplayer brawlers. Simple as that.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Put it this way, for years and years, Diablo and Diablo 2, as well as other similar games, were referred to as Action RPGs, with optional and very limited multiplayer. No one questioned it. No one argued about it. That's what they were. Blizzard themselves have, and still do to this day, call them Action RPGs. Even as 1st - 3rd gen MMORPGs (EQ, DAoC, etc) existed at the same time, no one confused the two. It was a clear and obvious distinction.
MMORPGs blew up and suddenly, people are calling Diablo, Diablo 2, 3 and similar games MMORPGs. Why? "Because a lot of people play them and you can play over the internet with other people". They ignore the entire "sharing the same persistent world with thousands of other players" part - which is one of the absolute core things that makes a MMO what it is.
I have linked people directly to Blizzard's official page for the Diablo games, where they specifically define it as an Action RPG and have been told "Blizzard doesn't define what is or isn't a MMORPG" - but somehow, these people do...?
Why? I think it's intellectual laziness. It's indicative of the increasingly simplistic thinking taking place over time. People want to "dumb things down" into simpler, easier to remember labels and definitions and never look beyond face value. They refuse to acknowledge how "sharing a persistent world with thousands of others" and "sharing a temporary map with a few other players" is at all different, and in many different ways.
Of course, developers and publishers haven't helped in this. Because MMORPGs blew up and everyone was clamoring for a piece of the action, they tried to tie *everything* into being a MMORPG.
I fought that fight for a while, but ultimately gave up. People are going to believe what they want, facts and clear, long-established definitions be damned. Feelings over facts.
That's my whole point and I've listed numerous examples.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
These days almost every game has an online component, and single vs multi and online vs offline aren't that black and white anymore. Where one term ends and the other begins is decided by the majority of its users by how they use it. It is the ultimate form of democracy, too bad the majority of the people are quite dumb. I could name a president or two who's election outcomes are perfect examples of that
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
As I've said earlier, an mmorpg "to me" would be lineage 2, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot and not Destiny.
But I'm not going to pull up my pants to my waist and argue the point when clearly, as you pointed out, language is dynamic.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
BTW, an SUV uses the same base frame as a pickup truck... so it's really a truck with a different shell.
And a truck is a type of car... just as an SUV is.
We don't need a precise definition. We know what we like and dislike and ultimately accept our own definition despite what anyone else thinks. You buy things based on what you think it will be based on what you can see or what you have read. Sometimes it's not what you thought it would be... because someone else used a label for it that didn't quite match your own.
Not everything is an MMORPG... not everyone defines an MMORPG the same... you will never convince them that your definition is their definition. No two brains are alike. You may accept someone else' definition but that's not same thing as having the same definition. They may be similar, but never alike.
An inconsistently applied descriptive term is useless.
..because we're gamers, damn it!! - William Massachusetts (Log Horizon)
Let's look at the words:
Massive/Massively - that doesn't necessarily mean a lot of people in the same space at once by the definition of the word. It does mean that "something is Massive/Massively. What would/could that be? Well, that would be the people ...
Multiplayer - You can have more than one person playing at once. And while historically that meant in the same space, you find that these new games are using "massive" for the amount of people who have access to the game and can play with other people.
Online - it has to be online
Role Playing Game - that's its own can of worms as people have different definitions for what that entails. Usually progression.
So one could look at, say, Destiny and think "well a massive amount of people can access the game, we can play multiplayer with any subset of those people and we do it online.
AS far as the RPG - more games are including some sort of progression so that very well might be why some people look at these games as role playing games.
As far as the joke that was made above about Pong, I could imagine (though I doubt it would happen) an online version of pong where millions (again wouldn't happen and it's a shame I have to put the qualifier) access Pong, you can be matched with any one of those millions, there are leaderboards, etc. Make it so there is some sort of progression (which would mean a redesign of the game but this is for argument's sake) and there you have it, a future mmorpg.
It's not how "we" (the people who started with early mmorpg's would ever classify it, but keep broadening what massively means and just adopt the idea that multiplayer is any number from 2 to millions and you have the evolution of a term.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
But other folks are happy.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Then again, this is probably falling on deaf ears since you using the word 'retards' clearly shows your feelings trump facts. The term MMO is an incredibly grey area these days, it doesn't matter if you like that or not.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Let me try and explain my frustration to you and maybe you'll understand. I have been looking for a new mmorpg to get into for a long time. I went through all the major subscription and p2p mmorpgs I could before moving onto the f2p ones. Now as I've said previously I hate fully instanced games like Kritika and I'm only interested in playing open world games that I can explore and meet other people while I do it.
So during my search I see a game called "Skyforge" that claims to be an mmorpg. I look at the website and it says nothing about it being a fully instanced game. In fact, it says the following on their website: "Only a true God can defend Aelion against invaders, raging immortals and countless other dangers. Select the activity; PvP, PvE, group or solo, open world play, short instance or large raid to your liking and immediately set off to protect your people!"
Where is this open world they speak of? It doesn't exist because it's all instanced. And of course, I don't know this until I've spent hours downloading, installing and patching the game to play it. How am I supposed to make an informed decision on what game to pick with so much misrepresentation? I don't even care what label you give it. Call one genre the "cows" and the other the "pigs" for all I care, just give me some way of distinguishing them before I actually play them! As consumers we have a right to know before-hand what kind of game we are playing.
How about one more example for you. Some people prefer first person shooters, others prefer third person shooters. Imagine how hard it would be to find a game you liked if they were all grouped and labelled as just "shooter".
Have you tried this amazing new mmorpg called "Call of Duty: Black Ops 3"? It's supposed to be awesome!
May I remind all of you as to why we have genres for games in the first place? It's to help us identify them and quickly find out which games suit us and which games don't. If you start grouping games of different genres under the same label you might as well take away the label completely, as it becomes meaningless. Imagine if you went onto Steam tomorrow and all the genre labels had been taken off. All you had to go on would be the name of each game. Imagine how long and frustrating it would be if you had to scroll through a list of every single game on steam and look at each one to see if it was one you wanted to play.
This has nothing to do with language. I couldn't give 2 shits about what you label your games as, as long as I can differentiate between 2 completely different games without having to do hours of research into them.
Based on the OP the common elements in all the definitions he came across were:
1. A persistent game world
2. The ability to interact with thousands of different players.
First of all, what's a persistent game world? This characterizes most games. Even a game like Destiny could be classified as having a persistent world, since events are actually happening while players are offline. So Destiny would meet that requirement.
Secondly, I would challenge you to find a game that allows you to interact with thousands of people. Maybe we might say gives you the possibility of interacting with thousands of players. I actually prefer the idea of "hundreds" of players playing simultaneously, since that's much more realistic. HOWEVER, if we say hundreds then we re-open the question of what does that mean? hundreds in a single map? If we're talking hundreds of people in a persistent world at once, then Destiny would also qualify in that case since I think they allow 16 people per map. Destiny has some 6 or 7 planets, right? How many maps per planet? Does it just count as one? If not then we're easily getting into hundreds of people. We can never converge in a single location though, so I think that kinda excludes it.
HOWEVER! There are plenty of completely legitimate MMORPGs which probably have fewer people than Destiny congregating in any given area. So I think that's a pretty big differentiatoin, it really does need to be the ability to support hundreds of people in a single location.
Anyway, we've also seen that it seems every game has RPG elements now, so don't even get me started on that.
The point is that you want something that's very clean cut, but there are so many games focused on creating open world RPGs with multiplayer support that you simply need to do a better job researching and looking for elements you want in an MMORPG. Otherwise, you're almost guaranteed to be disappointed.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Everyone knows what a MOBA is.
Everyone knows what an RPG is.
Everyone knows what an RTS is.
Even genre combination abbreviations are largely known.
People are confused as fuck as to what an MMORPG is. This is mostly due to the term MMO taking over by stripping the RPG from itself to capitalize on the genre. It has been stolen from us.
Yes ... we need to take the genre name back or call true massively open world games something entirely new. There is a real issue here and why some of the new indie and even mainstream mmorpg developers (eg. Amazon's marketing of their new mmorpg ... if it really is one) are stressing the use of "mmoRPG" instead of mmo.
MMORPG's used to be created in order to place as many players as possible into a massively open world as possible (only limited by current tech of the time) in order to combine maximum players with maximum content.
MMO's today try to place as many players into heavily instanced games in order to maximize monetization with minimal content and player interaction.
Current tech now allows maximum players in maximum content but is it done by large developers? Fuck no, because the f2p model doesn't support smaller genre gaming (it is 100% driven by analytics). It needs massive player numbers in order to work or, more specifically, increasing any metric within the model vs increasing player base and retention nearly compounds earnings. Money drives the massively smaller, instanced MMO trend ... NOT game concept.
This is why indie mmorpg genre targeting development is occuring. The market is there. It never left. They just aren't greedy fucks willing to obliterate game concept for marketing and maximized profits. Some may still combine F2P analytics but at least attempt to preserve game concept. Some flat out reject it knowing how destructive it is.
You stay sassy!
And "yeah" it's possible that some day"shooter" might just mean "any type of game where shooting is the focus".
So, is a Car an automobile? Well apparently it used to just mean train car. I think we can agree a train car is different than an automobile.
So if you were "way back when" (1800's some place) would you be one of those people pointing out that the use of the word Car as "an automobile" is misleading?
When people say "words change" they really mean it. So if the differentiation between genres is no longer needed then language is going to change to reflect that.
I would even offer this, and see if you agree, with fewer companies making full blown "old fashioned" mmorpg's and with more and more games being made that allow for a "massive" amount of people to connect, the use of the term "MMO" just naturally went to include those. BUT if the typical MMORPG was still being avidly made maybe the two different genres would never have been called "MMO"
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo