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What differentiates MMORPGs from multiplayer RPGs?
Creslin321
Member Posts: 5,359
The genre defining term "MMORPG" was originally coined by Richard Garriot in reference to Ultima Online. Since then, several games have been released in the genre such as Everquest, WoW, etc. and most people would agree that these are also MMORPGs. All of these games have persistent worlds that a large number of players participate in simultaneously.
However, there is a problem with the pure persistent world model. Inconvenience and Chaos. In a purely persistent (non-instanceD) world, you need to travel everywhere using game means (inconvenience) and it is difficult for the game developers to deliver tailored experiences to any one group of players because other players may already have consumed the content that the initial group was trying to find (Chaos).
To deal with this, game developers started to create "Personalized content" like instancing and phasing. Combine this with features like dungeon finder and battleground queueing that instantly transport you to instanced content and you have a game that is extremely similar to a regular multiplayer RPG like Diablo. After all, in Diablo, you simply join a game and are immediately served the content.
So my question is this. Where do you draw the line? At what point does our desire for convenience and tailored content defeat the purpose of an MMORPG? At what point are we just playing Diablo with a very elaborate lobby?
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Comments
Did we not have this exact same thread just recently ?
MMOs differ from persistent multiplayer environments with the the MASSIVELY:
They are MASSIVELY multiplayer online games, not just multiplayer online games.
Meaning at least hundreds, but up to about 10,000 players operate in the same environment (this is a technical barrier, cant manage more MMO connects on a single server).
Also, it has to be realtime ... website games dont count.
Note also the persistent - if its not persistent, its not a MMO.
Recently, very little.
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Seems like you missed what he's saying. If the majority of the game is instanced, how are all those 10,000 players operating "in the same environment"? If the only people you're capable of interacting with at any given time are the handful of people you've brought with you into the instance, the game doesn't feel very massively multiplayer.
Doomsayers predicted this back when Anarchy Online started up and featured private instanced areas. The prediction's only partly come true. While it has toned down the massiveness of the multiplayer (as you tend to interact with fewer and fewer players), it has also attracted a much larger crowd of gamers to online RPGs because the barriers to entry have been lowered since players with less time and not much experience are no longer competing directly with experienced players for resources.
Truth be told, yeah, it would be more accurate and more informative to draw a line in the sand and say "Any online RPG that crosses over this line is just a Multiplayer Online RPG and not a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG." If too little of a game's content involves "face-to-face" exposure to and interaction with dozens of other player characters, then you can't justify the label "Massively Multiplayer". It's too bad that the term is much too firmly established to insist upon a more nuanced distinction between MORPG and MMORPG. The difference between the two is too small (and too subjective) to expect people to adopt a new term.
I think it should be obvious, regardless what current-MMO haters and oldschool/sandbox lovers claim to be the truth.
ANet made a nice distinction as example, by calling GW a 'CORPG' and GW2 an MMORPG.
Personally I'd call it still an MMORPG, just like Vindictus, DDO and Hellgate, just a different kind of MMORPG - after all, they're all listed on this site's MMORPG list as well and Diablo 2 or Battlefield 2 or MW2 isn't, but let's go with ANet's definition for the moment.
The difference why they called GW a CORPG and GW2 an MMORPG is because the majority of the ingame world was instanced. So, I'd say that if the world is overall a persistent game world where people can play in with hundreds to thousands, then it's an MMORPG.
If the overall world isn't persistent, but most of the areas instanced zones where you can't be in with more than a few, then it's an MORPG or CORPG or LORPG (lobby-based online roleplaying game) or whatever.
Really, it's only the MMO homeless and MMO drifters, sandbox players and oldschool players who find they've grown completely out of touch with the current MMO genre that keep making this argument over and over again. But just because they can't enjoy the MMORPG genre anymore, doesn't mean that it suddenly isn't the MMORPG genre anymore. It just progressed into a direction that those oldschoolers and sandbox fans don't like.
According to their feverish (and almost obsessive) wish to redefine what an MMORPG is would lead to over 90% of games in the MMORPG genre to not be MMORPG's anymore, including all the popular and AAA ones, and only the oldest games in the MMORPG genre to be called 'MMORPG'. Now, if such a line of reasoning isn't insanity then I don't know what is
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
That 'insanity' is as old as the hills. "You call that hunting? Back in my day, hunting was fire-hardening a tree branch, stalking a deer for hours until it was in the right terrain and undergrowth, then charging it and killing it, trying to make sure it doesn't escape while also trying not to get hooked by antlers or kicked by rear legs. That was hunting. Bows and arrows? That's not hunting; that's harvesting."
There's also the 'insanity' of those who believe they always know better.
The difference (imho) USED to be persistent worlds....now...not much...
For me it is more the player base than anything. I don't care if you can have 1k people in an area or just ten, if the player base has melted in that larger game world and the place is baren, well, the game isn't very massive then >__<
If a game has a million+ players, and they play online in some way together, it just might be an MMO.
I don't think instanced content is persistent at all, in a massively multiplayer sense. Nor is content that scales.
The only difference between MMORPGs and Multiplayer Games is the content that they all share in a persistent way, where what one does is resolved to all the others. And this content is getting to be less and less in MMORPGs. To the point that we players are recognizing the MMORPG world as nothing more than a 3D lobby.
Once upon a time....
the basic between massive multiplayer and multiplayer is obvious:wow is massive multiplayer but league of legend isnt!(yes i know wow barelly make the cut as a mmo these days but when it was out of the factory (wow 1)it was a mmo.
Back in the day we hunted boars twice as big as they are now. We used sticks and stones and we had to share that one stick with our guild! You youngsters have it easy: quick ways to find content and groups, no camping, no grinding... instant gratification. ...Back in the day, we had to WORK for our fun!
<shakes his walker>
But yeah... Mav is right. Redefining MMORPG is pointless.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Diablo 3 with a nice lobby is prob a better game than most MMORPG. When it comes out, it will be my main game. There is no need to play MMOs.
now what you said is the truth:it used to be that mmo were the bomb ,but ever since maker converted their game to simple multiplayer and made believe they were mmo it made mad so many player that the snippet you said is absolutly right.there is no need to play mmo cause on average mo are often plain better!
The term "MMORPG" has little to no meaning at all these days when we have games like World of Tanks and League of Legends considered and to be called MMORPGs.
Why doesent mmorpg.com add also games like Battlefield Bad Company 2 to the mmorpg list? It has a lot of players, you gain levels in it etc, there's not much difference technically to a game like World of Tanks where you play in scenarios/instances with a set number of people.
I bet the OP definition of MMORPGs will one day be in a game. But not until we find a system of unlimited player created content (And not in the cheap "Create your own Quest" form and post it in the NPC bulletin board).
An MMO like that has to be built around a "world where players are thousands". Dynamic events is a step in this direction, but it is still missing an ingredient in the recipe of "lasting content".
Current MMORPGs are built around 1player, 6 players or up to 40 players at a time (Mechanically, you can RP with as many as you want while doin' nothing I guess). You can't have a persistent world with a system built around solo play (No hard player dependency to unite the playerbase).
For now there are "WoW style MMORPGs" , not a MMORPG like described in the OP any time soon.
could also ad dungeon siege 3
I was being sarcastic.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
There is a difference between adventuring and logistics.
Adventurers seeking action should be able to find action quickly. If a group can only play once a week, they need to be able to meet up fast and get to the point. If your content is not dense and your players not sticky to the same areas as their friends, you need some form of teleportation.
Logistics, the transportation of bulk goods, huge amounts of wealth or world-shaking artifacts, should to be slow. For this gameplay to be meaningful, you need to have a sense of time and space, that where materials and items are in the world matters and to face the risk of interuption when trying to shift them around.
By this definition, Starcraft, Diablo, Call of Duty, and any other game where you can play with other players over some internet interface are MMO's
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I'm not sure "it used to be" that way.
Apart from a vague sense of being part of a large economy (which you also can get in standard multiplayer) there really isn't a clear benefit to being massively multiplayer, to most players.
Conversely, the more players online at once the more problems need to be dealt with (both technical and gameplay.) The majority of massive multiplayer games which truly involve lots of players tend to have really cruddy gameplay (the exception that I've seen being Planetside, which smartly put population caps on zones.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
axe if a small outfit can host a 1000 vs 1000 fight in aika i dont see why blizzard with their monthly sub cannot?
Nah it definitely used to be that way before massive instancing. In EQ when you went to a dungeon, there were people there. They were doing things. You could interact with them positively and negatively. It may have been inconvenient and it caused problems, but it definitely made you feel like you were a part of the world.
Just to clarify, I don't think that the EQ way is "better." In fact, I think that instanced dungeons aren't a bad thing, but they aren't really consistent with a persistent world. I think part of the issue is that the gameplay that occurs in the persistent world (questing) is essentially a solo affair. So you only play with other players in either dungeons or battle ground PvP, both instanced. This really makes the game just feel less like an MMORPG. Hopefully GW2's dynamic events will work to fix this.
Anyway, I guess the point of my OP was that I feel like the only unique edge an MMORPG has over other games is that its a persistent world where tons of players participate at once. However, it seems like many developers utterly ignore this asset and try to push their games closer to multiplayer RPGs with heavily instanced content. So if you're going to do that, what's the point in making an MMORPG? Why not just make a multiplayer lobby game or a CORPG like GW1?
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It's because one thing you can track across MMO's is how games that do not promote content denial have bigger user-bases than ones that do.
UO started FFA-PvP, but when EQ came along, offering full PvE servers, a lot more people started playing, because someone couldn't deny them their gameplay because they got ganked and their stuff taken.
With player housing, more people will pay to take the "If I can't have it, no one can" approach, rather than really wanting the baren ghettos of UO and SWG. EVE is probably the only game with the more flexible housing, because in space, no one can place their castle right next to the PvE-dragon's nest...
WoW gutted EQ and a lot of other games when it decided to instance all of the "big-budget" dungeons and raids. People didn't have to fight for spawns, or schedule which week which guilds are making their attempts. If you can get the people needed, you get to attempt the content, and only technical issues can stop that.
But then also, WoW has one of the more consistent worlds in MMO's. It's made up of 4 big continents, each subdivided into good sized regions, each subdivided into their location/function/etc. Granted, most of that surface content is solo-able, and some of the classic group-specific stuff was a bit more interesting for the pacing/flow, when you look at the world raid bosses, it always became content denial.
Boss X has explosion, damaging raid anytime someone dies. Result: lowbies zerg boss to wipe other guild while their mains get in position.
PvP server, Faction A lets Faction B do most of the work, but then wipes their raid and steals the kill from them at 5% HP on the boss. Faction A is then the "bigger man" but ignoring all the insults from Faction B and refraining from spamming them with all the loot Faction B had just earned for Faction A.
While more persistent worlds still exist, their playerbases are representative of how many people really want those styles of experiences. As much as I love Fallen Earth, where about 70% is the surface, and the 30% instances have logical transition-hallways and there are no hard load-screens, I'd wager the game is lucky to have 2500-5k subscriptions.
As cool as the big, persistent connected world is, their methodologies and "ebb and flow"s used in each game aren't always fun, and people will more often pay/play what they feel is fun.
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I think you give an accurate synopsis of what has happened and I agree with your historical interpretation, I'm just not so sure it's time to give up on persistent worlds.
I think that the problem isn't that persistent worlds are less appealing than instanced/personalized worlds, I think it's that they haven't been implemented in the right way yet. In my mind the core problem is that persistent worlds create an economy of content. There is a limited amount of content to consume at any one time, and since MMORPGs reward players individually for completing content, it creates competition and content denial as you say.
But instead of just throwing in the towel and saying let's just personalize all content, why not try to make content more cooperative in nature so that players actually benefit from the presence of other players and aren't penalized by it? I think this is the approach GW2 is taking, let's hope it works
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oh blizzard and all would argue that persistant world is still there to be used ,and they would be right in a sense!but if it is indead a persistent world game why are they only putting end game reward in instanced map and not in those persistant part of the world.because frankly the persistant part is there only to satisfy any who would think of suing blizzard saying there is no persistance.in the end the persistant part of the world is so irelevent most game like blizzard could boot it ( a la league of legend)
but then wow and all cant do that because they were a mmo at first and could be sued for not being a mmo so they need to keep a persistant world just in case lawyer get bored and look blizzard way.