MMO and it's meaning.

[JaguarX]

Now traveling around the net like the online vegabond that I am, I noticed alot of definitions of MMOs. Well actually more like "*insert game* is not a real mmo".

While responses like that is usually in response to someone else or just to get at the goat of a specific game community, I wonder what would people say their definition of an MMO would be if ask directly. Aaaaaaaand...so what is your definition of an MMO?


To me, it's relatively simple and basic.

Massively Multiplayer Online- Large game usually consisting of different zones or single large area (although I think that word is more of a marketing gimic as what is massive to one is tiny to another),  more than a few players able to be on the same server and be seen and interacted with if the players chose to, and online.

Bonus round- WHat about RP (role playing)? And what separates RPing from just...playing?

People just generally role play online in the first place. Decent folk act liek idiots, idiots act like Mensa members, ugly girls all of a sudden become super models, broke as a joke college students still living at home become a guy with four Porsches a Ferarri and a house in Malibu (although no one from there ever heard of em.), and guys who get skull dragged everyday all of a sudden become big mouth toughest dudes on the planet that is 300lb of solid muscle and have black belts in 9 different martial arts but cant name any beyond karate (go figure). But not taking about that type of role playing. In a game role playing (not the adult erotic kind. That is it's own animal for another thread. No pun intended.)


To me, I think role playing starts with the character. I think it's comes in a range from mild to deep but whether mild or deep it's still role playing and that line between roleplaying and just playing is very very thin and blurred. To me by default just playing a hero by definition s role playing at the start of costume creator with the capes or fire auras or building a demon. That is the avatar.  Unless we have some real life power throwing cape and tights wearing or netherworld demons or powered armored wearing people in here, then I think it's aa type of role play already even if they never interact with anyone which I dont think RPing even requires even for hardcore RPing. They might be RPing a mute or someone that is a loner and be as much as in the role as someone that constant chatter in the role of a fairy.

In the couple of hero games, I rarely see actual life like characters which leads me to believe that role playing is more common in games than many people realize, by my definition of course. And thus the title of MMORPG.


Even if everyone solo everything and never talk to each other I still think it can still be a Massively-expanse of zones or maps or one large map, MUltiplayer-Many players, Online-Online, Role Playing-The avatar Game-It's game, unless ya one of the relatively few that do Call of Duty stuff for a living. And that stuff is definately aint a game and no respawns and not much teabagging. 


What are other takes on it?

[Golden Girl]

And what separates RPing from just...playing?

Lesbian catgirls.

[PartyKake]

I tried breaking it down by part before:

(each explanation is of course just my view)

1. Massive - the game doesn't attempt to limit the number of players. WoW has hard caps and queues on its servers, but it has as many servers as necessary and adds more when needed, and still has extra room to grow on nearly every server, for example. (and back in the day, no queues or limits, causing its servers to flame up and explode under the strain) Neverwinter Nights, however, had a hard cap of 500, with people struggling to log in up until the last moment that it was online. not an mmo, in my opinion, simply because it placed a limit to the playerbase.

2. multiplayer - different people, interacting with each other (and the game, and its rules, and various npc's, and maybe a story), at the same time, and their interactions are meaningful.

3. massively multiplayer - at least 1000 people playing, overall, with the potential for nearly all of them to play at the same time. (even some of the least active mmo's have hundreds of thousands of players and accounts, and all of them can lay claim to this status)

4. online - takes advantage of social networks, both physical (the wires and computers and machines) and the ephemeral (real life guilds, social interaction, communication, and the ability to make new friends and foster relationships in game or out of game).

5. role-playing - you create a character that is not you, and you roleplay that character's interactions with other people's characters (characters created by the developers [NPC's] count), and have stories between those characters.

6. game - there is a "lose" state and a "win" state and your actions either advance your state towards the "win" state or the "lose" state, or help to redefine what those states represent. (example: I declare that "winning" means being in a raid guild and getting cool gear, then I accomplish this goal and declare that "winning" is now beating the best boss faster than before, then I get bored and declare that "winning" means quitting the game and finding something meaningful to do with my life). The "lose" state can be defined as "not winning" and the win state can be defined as "not losing."

And the most important rule is as follows:

7. Any "MMORPG" that doesn't meet these standards can lay claim to the title and defend itself by written, spoken, or artistic example. Any MMORPG that claims NOT to be an MMORPG, can do the same, by helping to set and refine the standards for future use.

[TimtheEnchanter]

I can sum it up with how I felt as a kid when I was interested in game development, vs. how I felt when I first played an MMO.

I used to want to make games where lots of people died. Now I want to make games where lots of people live.

[Mistress Urd]

Now traveling around the net like the online vegabond that I am, I noticed alot of definitions of MMOs. Well actually more like "*insert game* is not a real mmo".

While responses like that is usually in response to someone else or just to get at the goat of a specific game community, I wonder what would people say their definition of an MMO would be if ask directly. Aaaaaaaand...so what is your definition of an MMO?


To me, it's relatively simple and basic.

Massively Multiplayer Online- Large game usually consisting of different zones or single large area (although I think that word is more of a marketing gimic as what is massive to one is tiny to another),  more than a few players able to be on the same server and be seen and interacted with if the players chose to, and online.

Bonus round- WHat about RP (role playing)? And what separates RPing from just...playing?

People just generally role play online in the first place. Decent folk act liek idiots, idiots act like Mensa members, ugly girls all of a sudden become super models, broke as a joke college students still living at home become a guy with four Porsches a Ferarri and a house in Malibu (although no one from there ever heard of em.), and guys who get skull dragged everyday all of a sudden become big mouth toughest dudes on the planet that is 300lb of solid muscle and have black belts in 9 different martial arts but cant name any beyond karate (go figure). But not taking about that type of role playing. In a game role playing (not the adult erotic kind. That is it's own animal for another thread. No pun intended.)


To me, I think role playing starts with the character. I think it's comes in a range from mild to deep but whether mild or deep it's still role playing and that line between roleplaying and just playing is very very thin and blurred. To me by default just playing a hero by definition s role playing at the start of costume creator with the capes or fire auras or building a demon. That is the avatar.  Unless we have some real life power throwing cape and tights wearing or netherworld demons or powered armored wearing people in here, then I think it's aa type of role play already even if they never interact with anyone which I dont think RPing even requires even for hardcore RPing. They might be RPing a mute or someone that is a loner and be as much as in the role as someone that constant chatter in the role of a fairy.

In the couple of hero games, I rarely see actual life like characters which leads me to believe that role playing is more common in games than many people realize, by my definition of course. And thus the title of MMORPG.


Even if everyone solo everything and never talk to each other I still think it can still be a Massively-expanse of zones or maps or one large map, MUltiplayer-Many players, Online-Online, Role Playing-The avatar Game-It's game, unless ya one of the relatively few that do Call of Duty stuff for a living. And that stuff is definately aint a game and no respawns and not much teabagging. 


What are other takes on it?

The main thing would be whether the world is persistant or not.

Diablo 2 was massive and multiplayer but the game world was not persistant.

[General Idiot]

Consider this: In my opinion WoW, The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, Secret World... (etc, etc) are all not MMOs.

Personally I believe a massively multiplayer game is not (or should not be, at least) just a persistent world. Just because you're in the same world as other people doesn't make a game massive, or multiplayer. Most supposed MMOs play more like singleplayer games for the vast majority of their content. Sure, the option to play with others is there but often it's just there, with no reason to ever actually do it and sometimes every reason to not do it. Which leads to a heap of people in the same world, but none of them interact in any way beyond occasionally passing each other on the road.

Someone please explain this to me, because I must be missing something. What about that makes the game in any way massive or multiplayer? Until it comes time to run a dungeon or access the auction house for whatever reason in a game like WoW, what would change about the average user's experience if all those other players were computer controlled bots (Actually, some of them are. :p) or simply not there at all? Does the mere knowledge that these are other real people somehow add to the experience even if you never interact with any of them?

In an ideal world, or my ideal world at least, every MMO would have teaming mechanics like CoH. Where characters become exponentially more powerful with each additional one you add to the team, and all content expands and scales to remain challenging to anything between one player and however many you choose to limit teams to. Where 'team content' isn't solely dungeons and raids but rather every piece of content in the game due to the aforementioned scaling. Where travel time is almost nonexistent through travel abilities being made available early and properly fast, as in CoH. Seriously, in WoW it's 60 levels and hundreds of gold to get a mount that gives +100% speed. In CoH, every character had that by default at level 1. Thus if I join a team and they're in a different zone, it's five minutes tops for me to get there. Not half an hour like in most MMOs. And you could get three or four times that a mere three levels later if you wanted. If I spend more than ten minutes just running somewhere, you're doing it wrong.

Screw character customisation, superpowers, all of that. I just want a game that encourages teaming to the extent CoH did. A game that's truly multiplayer, not a singleplayer game with occasional multiplayer pieces. I want a game where the only reason to ever solo is because you want to for whatever reason. Is that so much to ask?

[dwturducken]

I like the notion of the MOBA. I don't say I prefer or necessarily like the style, but it has the benefit of being more honest a description. MMOFPS works well as a descriptor, too. Where one ends and another begins will likely always be a source of friction, but at least there is some attempt to differentiate one multiplayer online experience from another.

[Little David]

Heh, I used to have long (and sometimes passionate) debates on this subject in communities for other games, like Phantasy Star Universe. To the point that the people with very strict definitions of MMOs would, after being linked Wikipedia articles with information countering their points of view, remove said information while labeling it as "vandalism."

Anyhow! The way I see it, MMO is just a prefix like multiplayer and single-player. It's not its own genre, but a subset of many genres. I'm very inclusive in what I think qualifies as an MMO because of that; MMORPGs, MMO Action RPGs, MMOFPSes, MMORTSes, etc. Because I view "MMO" as a mode of play rather than its own genre, that also means there are games I see as MMOs which also have single-player or traditional multiplayer options (see: almost every Phantasy Star MMO).

Someone else mentioned it earlier, but one of the major characteristics of an MMO game is a world that has persistence in some  way. It doesn't have to be a massive overworld; most MMOs now have some level of instanced content (and some games have instanced play as the meat of said content). If there's even so much as a common lobby where a large group of players can meet up, interact, and form groups to go do stuff, I consider that an MMO.

There are some games I consider MMOs that don't have an obvious form of persistence, though.

[Taceus Jiwede]

My definition is basically the same as yours Jaguarx.  Although I like this thread idea.  It's interesting to see peoples stance on MMO's.

And what separates RPing from just...playing?

Lesbian cat girls.

[johnrobey]

My definition is basically the same as yours Jaguarx.  Although I like this thread idea.  It's interesting to see peoples stance on MMO's.Lesbian cat girls.

LMAO to both you and @Golden Girl for "Lesbian Catgirls" as the answer to "What separates RPing from just...playing?"  (I guess it's understood that 90+% of the lesbian catgirls seen in-game were in fact roleplayed by teenage boys of all ages - e.g. some dude who's 55 going on 14.)   ;D

[houtex]

No, I'm only 45...

..uh, wait.  I didn't say that.  Nosir.  Not me.

[johnrobey]

No, I'm only 45...

..uh, wait.  I didn't say that.  Nosir.  Not me.

LOL, Houtex!!!    ;D

[Taceus Jiwede]

LMAO to both you and @Golden Girl for "Lesbian Catgirls" as the answer to "What separates RPing from just...playing?"  (I guess it's understood that 90+% of the lesbian catgirls seen in-game were in fact roleplayed by teenage boys of all ages - e.g. some dude who's 55 going on 14.)   ;D

Credit goes all to Golden Girl.  I just thought it was awesome that she said that so I had to say it again.