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College professor looking for "international" MMORPGs /moved
Hi,
I'm a college instructor who uses virtual worlds as a vehicle for exploring on-line ethnography and other communication research methods. In the past, I've taught courses on these topics using titles such as World of Warcraft (http://www.trinity.edu/adelwich/mmo/students.html), Everquest II (http://www.trinity.edu/adelwich/worlds/students.html), and Second Life.
It has been more than two years since I really dug into the MMORPG space, and I'm wondering if anyone can recommend decent titles that have a globally distributed player base. I'm familiar with titles such as Lineage, WoW, and Final Fantasy XI, but was wondering if anyone could recommend more recent game-worlds that include extensive interaction between players from different parts of the world. I'm also very interested in any titles that have truly international, cross-cultural guilds.
Thanks in advance for any help and suggestions.
Aaron / Carbonel
Comments
City of Heroes/Villains has servers in Europe and in Asia, but that's really not what you're looking for, is it?
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The less you expect, the more you'll be surprised. Hopefully, pleasantly so.
America's Army special forces
MAGA
The only other games I know that does have international groups of players is Perfect World (yeh, there are Simplified Chinese version (China and International), Traditional Chinese (Taiwan), Japanese, Malaysian English version, and now it's heading to US.
Not really sure if this is the type of things you are looking for...
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)
Eve Online i'd say.
One Server for the whole game, so all players are in the same gameworld, and interact with each other. Timezone management and coordination is a biggie in the pvp part of the game, with player alliances consisting of players from all over the world.
In my alliance we have people from all european countries, a lot us and aussie players, and a few people from all the other regions of the world, all speaking english.
For studying multinational communities, this one is probably a gold mine.
EVE Online has a population of extremely diverse players from all over the world. The developers themselves are from Iceland, which should tell you something right there. You should check into it.
http://www.eveonline.com
Thanks for the suggestions so far! This is exactly the sort of thing that I'm looking for. Games with localized servers wouldn't really work as well as games that bring together international players on a single server.
Forcan, do you know if Perfect World allows players from all those regions to interact with each other?
Aaron
THIS.
The community has people from many parts of the world.
Ive had the pleasure to chat with Aussies/Brits/Scotts/Bulgarians/Russians/Romanians/French/Spanish/Portuguese/German/Dutch/Polish/Venezuelans/Brazilians/Argentinians......
The list goes on. The game is certainly not for everyone but for the purposes youve listed it may very well be the best option out there.
I'd agree with previous responses that EVE would be a good game to look at for your purposes.
You could also look into Entropia Universe. Persistant game world with one server like EvE. It's a free download, too.
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"Chemistry: 'We do stuff in lab that would be a felony in your garage.'"
The most awesomest after school special T-shirt:
Front: UNO Chemistry Club
Back: /\OH --> Bad Decisions
If you are looking for an internationally played game with a smaller playerbase, I invite you to visit PlaneShift. The game does not have as 'massive' a playerbase as WoW and other commercial games, but the community is a unique environment where players and Devs alike come together from all over the world. The game cross-platform, supporting Win/Mac/Lin, and has open source code. The content is under another license and is owned by the not-for-profit company Atomic Blue. Since the game cost nothing to play (ever), all Devs and GMs are unpaid volunteers, and most often come from the playerbase. There is an open dialogue between Devs and players, which causes an interesting situation at times (read that as conflicts).
The creator and Project Director of the game is from Italy, with the other various team leaders coming from several other countries. The official language of the game is English, which is enforced in open chat and on the forum. Most guilds include folks from all over the world, though there are a few that are dedicated to one country. There have been several people I have talked to who claimed to have learned most of the English they know from PlaneShift (and were very proficient).
Personally, I am from the USA, and have friends from PlaneShift that are from South Africa, England, Germany, China, Poland, Romania, Sweden (or was that Finland?), New Zealand, Canada, and other countries I can not recall off hand.
Here is a poll we ran a while back. http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=28860.0
If you ask the Devs or forum mods to start any polls or do any studies or interviews in or out of game, I am sure certain they would be more than happy to oblige. PM me if you want further details, or visit us on IRC at irc.freenode.net on channel #planeshift.
I changed my mind. PlaneShift is not worth the time.
Perfect World uses regional servers.
i would suggest a F2P game with a huge and active player base.
games like runescape or maplestory.
since your a proffesor why dont you try WYD global or Granado Espada? both of them can level your character while you are teaching your precious students lol.
if you are into uber super detailed and mouth watering graphics choose Granado Espada while if you just need a game with a complex game play the choose WYD GLOBAL,