"MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player RPGs by the number of players, and by the game's persistent world, usually hosted by the game's publisher, which continues to exist and evolve while the player is away from the game"
Games like Diablo don't have a persistent world, nor do they have a large amount of players interacting with each other.
hmm, that last part kinda disqualifies pretty much all current MMORPGs since most of them are not persistant in that sense. I mean if you leave for a month or two and then come back, the world IS as it was 2 months ago ( minus patching stuff ). To say even in simpler terms, if I take a quest to destroy a camp of orcs, 2 months later, that camp is still there and people take that same old quest and keep "destroying" that same camp over and over.
While some aspects may be dynamic enough to actually change the physical world (player housing, guild housing, vendors, cities/castles that can be captured) most of the content is static and cannot be changed. Its that minor difference that actually distinguish (in my view) a single player RPG with multi-player support and a MMORPG. For others, however, this little difference may not be enough to make a distinc difference between those 2 types. Nothing wrong with that, opinions are opinions.
Comments
While some aspects may be dynamic enough to actually change the physical world (player housing, guild housing, vendors, cities/castles that can be captured) most of the content is static and cannot be changed. Its that minor difference that actually distinguish (in my view) a single player RPG with multi-player support and a MMORPG. For others, however, this little difference may not be enough to make a distinc difference between those 2 types. Nothing wrong with that, opinions are opinions.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.