As a side thought, it was mentioned that Guid Wars is considered an MMO. As a formerly-rabid Guild Wars player, I can tell you that no one that plays Guild Wars can agree whether it is or isn't an MMO. There are many arguments online about what it is. I'd say its more Diablo than Everquest.

You're idea of what Guild Wars is like is 100% accurate, towns are hardly more than a glorified chat room with merchants. Nothing wrong with that, though.

I agree with above statements that there is no single definition of an MMO. Persistence and a large number of players are requirements. Also, an MMO keeps character data on their own servers, not on your machine.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster I always thought that "Massively Multiplayer Online" just meant "a lot of players, playing on-line". Things like persistent worlds and whether the server or the client stores the character info are just common features in today's MMO games, but not what makes them MMO in itself. It's a bit like the "fantasy setting" requirement implicit with most people's view of RPGs; in my view that's just also just a common setting and not what defines the genre.

Oops, that's me.

The obvious answer is 42.

But then, what was the question again?

Seriously though... Add up all the ascii values of "Massively Multiplayer" and you get:

77+97+115+115+105+118+101+121+32+77+117+108+116+105+112+108+97+121+101+114

which is

117050

Quite clearly any game that supports exactly 117050 simultaneous users could be deemed Massively Multiplayer (or even "vii yuMMyparallelsets", but let's not start confusing the issue). Anything larger and you need to add new characters to the definition, anything less and you have to start capitalizing the letters you have. ;)

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Original post by Kazgoroth Quote: Original post by T1Oracle If you minimize either of the key factors of "persistance", and "large group of online players" than your MMO would be less of an MMO. I say again, if I hypothetically created a game containing 10,000 concurrent players (hell, let's be ridiculous and say 1,000,000,000 even), but the game didn't present a persistent world, would it still not be a rather Massive Multiplayer Online game? Don't forget that you can tack a bunch of letters other than "RPG" onto the end of "MMO". An MMOFPS, MMORTS or even MMOTBS might not be very well suited to persistence. What if I created MMOPong (where n players play in an arbitrarily shaped arena with n sides and had a few hundred players online constantly? Persistence becomes a completely meaningless and potentially detrimental requirement for some types of games, but theres no real reason these games couldn't be called MMOGs.

No matter how many concurrent players you have, once you lose persistance you limit the amount of people who have the chance to experience the same game. If you have the technology to have 1 million online at once in the same FPS (just an example of a non-persistant world) at the same time. Then having 1 billion (you can have infinite if you can sell to that many) people online at different times in the same persistent world would also be possible. Of course the number of concurrent players would have to be enforced for system stability, however many true MMO's do just that. Regardless that would change the relative meaning of the term massive. The limits of technology determines what is "massive."

Persistence allows for a greater degree of massive online play as it allows for the experience of players to be shared outside the restraints of concurrent interaction. A persistent world will always allow for a greater amount of players to share the same experience than a non-persistant world could.

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Original post by T1Oracle If you minimize either of the key factors of "persistance", and "large group of online players" than your MMO would be less of an MMO.

Persistance enhances the "large group of online players" factor.

Personally, when I think of an MMO I think of a persistant world. A non-persistant FPS for example with 10,000 people is still just a FPS.

Perhaps it's Massive, Multiplayer, and Online, but does it play like Everquest or something like Magestorm [an ancient persistant FPS]? No... It plays like Quake.

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Original post by Telastyn Personally, when I think of an MMO I think of a persistant world. A non-persistant FPS for example with 10,000 people is still just a FPS. Perhaps it's Massive, Multiplayer, and Online, but does it play like Everquest or something like Magestorm [an ancient persistant FPS]? No... It plays like Quake.

Which is why I'd call it an MMOFPS instead of an MMORPG (like Everquest).

It's possible (I'm not convinced) that persistence is necessary to implement a game on the scale that would be called an MMO, but I still don't like defining MMO in terms of persistence. MMO may imply persistence, but that's not what I think makes an MMO an MMO. Then again, I also prefer to define natural log in terms of exponents than as the integral of 1/t from 1 to x.

To me, saying "It's not an MMO because it's not persistent" sounds a lot like "It's not an RPG because it's not in a fantasy setting".

In the end, there are two kinds of discussions: discussions about definitions and discussions about the things defined. Both have their place. In the latter, it doesn't matter much which definition is used so long as people stick to it (Even though mine is the correct one [razz][wink]).

Really, this reminds me of a discussion I once had with my roommate about whether anime could be made outside of Japan. As I found out later in the discussion (it would've been nice if he'd informed me earlier) his definition of anime, and the one he was working from, was "Animation of a certain style (typified by large eyes, etc. etc.) from Japan".

For the record: yes, I am a Spade.

It seems that this thread is preoccupied with the concept of attempting to fit Terminology A (e.g. MMORPG) into Slot B (e.g. description of a multiplayer roleplaying game).

Given that many players consider MMORPGs to be "power-pursuit, wealth-pursuit strategy combat games in a fantasy environment), calling your game a MMORPG, when you have something else in mind for it, is suicidal when you have a problem with the way your players treat your game.

To me, a RPG is a game in which a story and society is presented in such a method that outside negative forces which impact the suspension of disbelief (whether it be when a player runs by you asking for free armor in a multiplayer game, or someone walking into the room and flicking the lights on in a single-player game), are unwanted. In a multi-player sense, I would expect that players of a similar mind (and they do exist; I've been a member of online gaming communities which follow this tenet in the past) would do their utmost to encourage Diamonds and Clubs (see article) to maintain a fictional/fantasy atmosphere.

What I intend to do for the game I am working on is to provide a descriptive "What is <Project Name>?" style of website FAQ and in-game introduction, and allow players the opportunity to disassociate old habits from what I'm attempting to establish.

Hopefully I don't crash and burn too badly... :)

hmm, I'm making an MMO right now for fun... and they are surprisingly easy... but I'd have to say in order for a game to be an MMO it really isn't the amount of players, it's the idea that there is a fixed amount of servers running the server app, and players can only play on those servers. That's how mine works at least. :) Then when you get on to a server you know that this is your server that you go to to play the game and it's not just some random server with people you don't see everyday or know. Also an easy way to tell if a game is an MMO there will be a clan or in the case of PlanetSide (only MMOFPS that is fun) an outfit system. I hope that helps.