Well, thats what we get, a few years ago the industry looked at console and single player gaming and thought "hey, i want a piece of that".
Now we are stuck with products that are not really appealing for either the mmorpg players or console players, for in most cases opposite reasons, surprisingly, far too much social interaction and progression for console players, far too speedy and meaningless gameplay for the mmorpg crowd.
Add in cutting corners and the industry becoming finally truly corporately inept, and we are well set for another 1k+ flame posts.
The only ones happy are those people who desperately wanted to be #1, but were never really prepared and willing to put any kind of effort in (and i dont mean grind, i mean everything starting from "reading item descriptions").
Now we are stuck with products that are not really appealing for either the mmorpg players or console players, for in most cases opposite reasons, surprisingly, far too much social interaction and progression for console players, far too speedy and meaningless gameplay for the mmorpg crowd.
I agree. For MMOs to grow in market size they had to be changed to appeal to people who didn't like the existing MMOs.
It worked somewhat, but in other ways it did not. Purists on both sides don't like the hybrid, which has confused the crap out of developer / publishers because they pump millions into these games expecting a hit, and it isn't happening.
edit: In thinking about it, I see three sides to the issue: Console players, MMORPG players, and SPRPG players.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
Originally posted by Quizzical I don't think you can justify saying that n players per instance is not massively multiplayer and n+1 is for any value of n.
Indeed. That's why I use this metric: ask yourself "how many players can play together in one place in this game?"
If the answer is "n" where n is any whole number, whether it be 4 like Diablo 3, 10 like LoL, 32 (I think?) like WoT - then it's not an MMO.
If the answer is "well, I dunno, but once you have x in one place, it lags something fierce, and if you get more than y, the server will probably crash" - then it's an MMO.
@OP - Stop, please. We've told you the difference between old school MMORPG's vs the broad term MMO, which of course encompasses a much broader category of game definintions.
Don't you have some really fun, actiony MMO to go play, instead of wasting time posting here on the forums?
Me? I play EVE, so I have an excuse to post while playing (plenty of relaxing downtime, you know)
Of course ... i actually didn't post much today .. because i am playing D3 and PS2. I mostlyl post during weekdays in between my analysis.
And that is the point .. "old school MMORPG" is no longer the only definition of MMO. The genre change. In fact, the newzoo site is just more systematic about it. Many MMORPG site covers this expanded list of game.
LOL, WOT are on this site.
WOT is on the feature game list on massively.
GW1 & DDO are covered on all of these sites too.
Are these not facts?
Ive talked to the massively writers about this. Its all about money. They get far more money covering LoL and Diablo 3 and what not than not covering them. That is the same reason the industry refers to non MMOs as MMOs because its another check box on the feature list and it supposedly justifies high sub prices and later certain free to play costs.
Do you understand that the goal of business is to drag in as much cash as possible and they will do everything possible to achieve that goal?
Originally posted by Quizzical I don't think you can justify saying that n players per instance is not massively multiplayer and n+1 is for any value of n.
Indeed. That's why I use this metric: ask yourself "how many players can play together in one place in this game?"
If the answer is "n" where n is any whole number, whether it be 4 like Diablo 3, 10 like LoL, 32 (I think?) like WoT - then it's not an MMO.
If the answer is "well, I dunno, but once you have x in one place, it lags something fierce, and if you get more than y, the server will probably crash" - then it's an MMO.
I could write really bad network code that makes a game crash if you get two people in the same place. Would that make a game that allows 5 players per instance into an MMO if no one can ever reach that cap?
How about the Mechanized Skirmish zone of Infantry, which allowed 100 players per instance, but spread out over a large map? I don't know what would happen if you tried to get all 100 on the screen at once, but I suspect that it wouldn't end well.
In particular, in this industry analytics firm, which publishes MMO market report as early as 2009. Their reports are used in many gaming site articles. They classify MMO into the following types:
RTS
RPG
Resource Management
Battle Arena
Shooter
Action/Fighting/Adventure
Sport,
and with settings like: Fantasy, Sci-fi, Realism, Anime, Horror, and History.
And they count LOL, and WOT (i guess in the battle arena category). This clearly shows the trend in the industry is expanding, and evolve into more variety. The old way of thinking about MMOs as games only like UO and EQ is a thing of the past.
It is nothing wrong with it. The term MMO have not said a lot since a few years. Multiplayer is the way to go, and you can argue about what is massive as long as you want. It will divergence to a lot more subgenres.
But of course historically MMORPGs were meant to be persistent worlds and virtual worlds.. but we didnt have a lot of virtual worlds the last few years. But who the fuck cares about a abbreviation. Although for the sake of discussion it would be nice to have a few more precise abbreviations.. because i personally dont care to talk about lobby games.
Originally posted by Ortwig Why do we care about the definition of an MMO? My guess is so that people can hit others over the head with it in forums.
Or maybe we care about precision of terminology because we want to make sure we are all on the same page.
How many discussions on this site would be totally unnecessary if we had precise language?
Diablo 3 is a multiplayer coop lobby based game. EvE is a single persistant dynamic world based game.
Bam 90% of the threads on this site suddenly become irrelevant. Instead its all carried under the originally quite precise but currently entirely meaningless umbrella term MMO.
Its my suggestion that MMORPG.com added certain games to this site not only because their popularity drives page hits and activity but because lumping them all under the MMO umbrella generates a massive amount of discussion which makes the site seem more popular to advertisers and which increases clickthrough on adds by providing the ability to post vastly more controversial threads which means players are refreshing and rechecking dozens more threads that they posted in due to the intense split between the various mmo camps than would otherwise be the case.
Hell if I were running a website with flagging popularity and were primarily interested in financial gains its certainly one of many strategies I would employ to raise revenue.
If they didn't think of that idea it shows how lacking their business skills are. All the major game companies purposely spark controversy for business purposes as has been covered in threads and articles on this very site.
There's a reason the term Massively Online Multiplayer was coined to describe games that are played online with hundreds or thousands of people simultaneously versus Online Multiplayer games that only allow single or double digit #'s of players to play at one time: The experiences are drastically different.
If League of Legends can be described as an MMO, then MMO means nothing.
I guess we can now safely call sushi Italian food guys.
There's a reason the term Massively Online Multiplayer was coined to describe games that are played online with hundreds or thousands of people simultaneously versus Online Multiplayer games that only allow single or double digit #'s of players to play at one time: The experiences are drastically different.
If League of Legends can be described as an MMO, then MMO means nothing.
I guess we can now safely call sushi Italian food guys.
All food eaten in a public place is now Greek food actually. Get your definitions right!
Originally posted by Cuathon Quizz, the real indicator of mmo status is massively multiplayer. How many people does your activity affect? LoL is not an MMO because the actions in one game do not change the experience of players within the whole game. EvE is an MMO because the actions of any given player permanently alter the experience of many other players.MMO is the new ironically, or the new literally. Does the rampant misuse of ironic in popular culture change the meaning? I would say no. Therefore the same applies to MMO.Unfortunately the people who make sense are vastly outnumbered by the plebs so we can't assume that anything means what it meant 10 minutes ago much less 10 years ago.
The original definition of MMO depended on a persistent, shared world. This allowed for a massive amount of interaction. Player 0 could do something in the world that Player 1,000 could see and that Player 10,000 could see, even though there were limited slots on the server and all the zones were instanced, etc. It wasn't how many players were on and interacting at any given time, it would was how many interactions were happening over a long period of time because the world was persistent.
If you drop the persistent, shared world requirement (which the industry seems to be doing), you can still have a massive amount of interaction. Player 0 can interact with Player 1,000 in LoL. They can also interaction with Player 2 and Player 10,000. It allows for a massive amount of interaction. The only thing that's been dropped as a requirement is the persistent, shared world. It has nothing to do with the number of people and nothing to do with making a permanent, sandbox style change to the world. Players can interact through an Auction House and it's still an interaction. Players can send each other mail and it's an interaction.
Definitions exist for things that are inherently what they are, and then there are definitions of ideas. A rose is what it is. You can change the definition, but then you're no longer describing a rose. "MMO" is an idea. It was made up from scratch and doesn't exist outside of human experience. It makes just as much sense for the definition of "MMO" to be one thing as it does for it to be another thing because they are all just concepts.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Originally posted by Aelious This OP is a copy and paste of a previous post of yours in one of ten threads this week on the subject.
Are you picking fights?
At least getting practiced with one approach :P
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
At a certain point definitions have to make sense though.
There is a difference between League of Legends and World of Warcraft at a very basic level beyond the RTS nature of LoL. One allows huge populations to simultaneously interact and one allows 10 people to interact at any given time. This is the huge difference between MMO's and Multiplayer Online games that caused the term MMO to be conjured up in the first place.
MMO is a description of something that actually exists, so it's not really useful to use it to describe things that it doesn't describe. If you use the term MMO to describe LoL, you're basically saying MMO means Online. But Online already means online. Things have to make sense in order for people to communicate.
Definitions exist for things that are inherently what they are, and then there are definitions of ideas. A rose is what it is. You can change the definition, but then you're no longer describing a rose. "MMO" is an idea. It was made up from scratch and doesn't exist outside of human experience. It makes just as much sense for the definition of "MMO" to be one thing as it does for it to be another thing because they are all just concepts.
Concreta vs. Abstracta, yes.
Didn't we have the same discussion just a week back, regarding the slippery term "success"?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Originally posted by Indol At a certain point definitions have to make sense though. There is a difference between League of Legends and World of Warcraft at a very basic level beyond the RTS nature of LoL. One allows huge populations to simultaneous interact and one allows 10 people to interact at any given time. This is the huge difference between MMO's and Multiplayer Online games that caused the term MMO to be conjured up in the first place. It's a description of something that actually exists, so it's not really useful to use it to describe things that it doesn't describe. That's just poor vocabulary.
Why i feel instancing has no place in the mmorpg domain. Instancing actualy breaks the game down and limits you, the opposite of mmo
Originally posted by Cuathon Quizz, the real indicator of mmo status is massively multiplayer. How many people does your activity affect? LoL is not an MMO because the actions in one game do not change the experience of players within the whole game. EvE is an MMO because the actions of any given player permanently alter the experience of many other players.
MMO is the new ironically, or the new literally. Does the rampant misuse of ironic in popular culture change the meaning? I would say no. Therefore the same applies to MMO.
Unfortunately the people who make sense are vastly outnumbered by the plebs so we can't assume that anything means what it meant 10 minutes ago much less 10 years ago.
The original definition of MMO depended on a persistent, shared world. This allowed for a massive amount of interaction. Player 0 could do something in the world that Player 1,000 could see and that Player 10,000 could see, even though there were limited slots on the server and all the zones were instanced, etc. It wasn't how many players were on and interacting at any given time, it would was how many interactions were happening over a long period of time because the world was persistent.
If you drop the persistent, shared world requirement (which the industry seems to be doing), you can still have a massive amount of interaction. Player 0 can interact with Player 1,000 in LoL. They can also interaction with Player 2 and Player 10,000. It allows for a massive amount of interaction. The only thing that's been dropped as a requirement is the persistent, shared world. It has nothing to do with the number of people and nothing to do with making a permanent, sandbox style change to the world. Players can interact through an Auction House and it's still an interaction. Players can send each other mail and it's an interaction.
Definitions exist for things that are inherently what they are, and then there are definitions of ideas. A rose is what it is. You can change the definition, but then you're no longer describing a rose. "MMO" is an idea. It was made up from scratch and doesn't exist outside of human experience. It makes just as much sense for the definition of "MMO" to be one thing as it does for it to be another thing because they are all just concepts.
You are right. Clearly all lobby based coop multiplayer games are MMOs. That makes total sense. Its not like those games already had a genre name and companies stick MMO on in order to justify all their ridiculous money sinks.
Did you know that Starcraft 2 is an MMO now? I didn't but thanks for telling me. Excuse me while I go play Draw Something, once one of the most popular MMOs of all time.
The MMO brand has been abused by many trying to find a place to market their game. I believe we can easily agree that some games that label themselves as a MMO are not. If a game only allows for you to join a group of 10 people for an arena style fight match like LoL then it is not a MMO. The fact that there are millions playing the game does not make it an MMO if they can only join in with limited number of people through a lobby system.
The first MMOs had a gameplay style more focused on RPing and most people that played those games were old time pen and paper D&D players so the first games had a big role playing community. To say that all MMOs have to have that in their games or they aren't a MMO is silly. There are many generations now that do not even understand what it is to RP (which imo is sad), so to have the mind set that all MMORPGs need to be RP focused is just crazy, but there should be a server or 2 that focuses and allows for this style of gameplay.
I believe it doesn't matter how the industry tries to define the term MMO, after a while it will work itself out and more defined terms will be invented. I just enjoy watching some devs. try to push the limits and create something new. We need more dreamers and doers, less complainers and ankle biters!
You are right. Clearly all lobby based coop multiplayer games are MMOs. That makes total sense. Its not like those games already had a genre name and companies stick MMO on in order to justify all their ridiculous money sinks.
Did you know that Starcraft 2 is an MMO now? I didn't but thanks for telling me. Excuse me while I go play Draw Something, once one of the most popular MMOs of all time.
Oh, stop being so dramatic.
All of those Shooters have been stealing more and more character-development ideas from MMOs for just years now. They've got talent trees, they've got story lines, they've got loot collection, they've got questgivers.. We've reached the point where greater and greater fineness is required from the hair-splitting to make any distinction at all.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
You are right. Clearly all lobby based coop multiplayer games are MMOs. That makes total sense. Its not like those games already had a genre name and companies stick MMO on in order to justify all their ridiculous money sinks.
Did you know that Starcraft 2 is an MMO now? I didn't but thanks for telling me. Excuse me while I go play Draw Something, once one of the most popular MMOs of all time.
Oh, stop being so dramatic.
All of those Shooters have been stealing more and more character-development ideas from MMOs for just years now. They've got talent trees, they've got story lines, they've got loot collection, they've got questgivers.. We've reached the point where greater and greater fineness is required from the hair-splitting to make any distinction at all.
Based on his definition of MMO Draw Something now qualifies as an MMO. This logically follows from his argument that LoL is an MMO because you have lots of players even if there are never more than 10 playing together at a time.
This is not hair splitting. You cannot define MMOs the way he has without including game like Starcraft 2 and Draw Something as MMOs.
Originally posted by Quizzical What if League of Legends had 100 players per match instead of 10? How about 1000 players per match? 10000? Surely affecting 10000 people constitutes massively multiplayer. If you're going to argue that it isn't because it doesn't affect everyone, then WoW isn't an MMO either, because what happens on one server doesn't affect people on other servers.
I would ague that if LoL had 1000 per side it would qualify as an "MMO". It however would not qualify as a mmorpg.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
And sooner or later, the two genres growing together will meet each other in the middle.
Put the fingers in your ears and chant nahnahnah if it helps with denial, but it's happening all around your industry already.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
And sooner or later, the two genres growing together will meet each other in the middle.
Put the fingers in your ears and chant nahnahnah if it helps with denial, but it's happening all around your industry already.
You still havent explained how Starcraft 2 doesn't count as an MMO but League of Legends does.
They are both online games with random matchmaking and massive player bases. Which is what LizardBones used to define the new MMO very explicitly in his post.
Comments
its more wishful posting that anything else. OP posts like this have no basis in actual fact.
Your not going to be able to point at a cat and convince people its a dog.
Well, thats what we get, a few years ago the industry looked at console and single player gaming and thought "hey, i want a piece of that".
Now we are stuck with products that are not really appealing for either the mmorpg players or console players, for in most cases opposite reasons, surprisingly, far too much social interaction and progression for console players, far too speedy and meaningless gameplay for the mmorpg crowd.
Add in cutting corners and the industry becoming finally truly corporately inept, and we are well set for another 1k+ flame posts.
The only ones happy are those people who desperately wanted to be #1, but were never really prepared and willing to put any kind of effort in (and i dont mean grind, i mean everything starting from "reading item descriptions").
A dangerous group to focus on.
Flame on!
I agree. For MMOs to grow in market size they had to be changed to appeal to people who didn't like the existing MMOs.
It worked somewhat, but in other ways it did not. Purists on both sides don't like the hybrid, which has confused the crap out of developer / publishers because they pump millions into these games expecting a hit, and it isn't happening.
edit: In thinking about it, I see three sides to the issue: Console players, MMORPG players, and SPRPG players.
Indeed. That's why I use this metric: ask yourself "how many players can play together in one place in this game?"
If the answer is "n" where n is any whole number, whether it be 4 like Diablo 3, 10 like LoL, 32 (I think?) like WoT - then it's not an MMO.
If the answer is "well, I dunno, but once you have x in one place, it lags something fierce, and if you get more than y, the server will probably crash" - then it's an MMO.
Ive talked to the massively writers about this. Its all about money. They get far more money covering LoL and Diablo 3 and what not than not covering them. That is the same reason the industry refers to non MMOs as MMOs because its another check box on the feature list and it supposedly justifies high sub prices and later certain free to play costs.
Do you understand that the goal of business is to drag in as much cash as possible and they will do everything possible to achieve that goal?
I could write really bad network code that makes a game crash if you get two people in the same place. Would that make a game that allows 5 players per instance into an MMO if no one can ever reach that cap?
How about the Mechanized Skirmish zone of Infantry, which allowed 100 players per instance, but spread out over a large map? I don't know what would happen if you tried to get all 100 on the screen at once, but I suspect that it wouldn't end well.
It is nothing wrong with it. The term MMO have not said a lot since a few years. Multiplayer is the way to go, and you can argue about what is massive as long as you want. It will divergence to a lot more subgenres.
But of course historically MMORPGs were meant to be persistent worlds and virtual worlds.. but we didnt have a lot of virtual worlds the last few years. But who the fuck cares about a abbreviation. Although for the sake of discussion it would be nice to have a few more precise abbreviations.. because i personally dont care to talk about lobby games.
Or maybe we care about precision of terminology because we want to make sure we are all on the same page.
How many discussions on this site would be totally unnecessary if we had precise language?
Diablo 3 is a multiplayer coop lobby based game. EvE is a single persistant dynamic world based game.
Bam 90% of the threads on this site suddenly become irrelevant. Instead its all carried under the originally quite precise but currently entirely meaningless umbrella term MMO.
Its my suggestion that MMORPG.com added certain games to this site not only because their popularity drives page hits and activity but because lumping them all under the MMO umbrella generates a massive amount of discussion which makes the site seem more popular to advertisers and which increases clickthrough on adds by providing the ability to post vastly more controversial threads which means players are refreshing and rechecking dozens more threads that they posted in due to the intense split between the various mmo camps than would otherwise be the case.
Hell if I were running a website with flagging popularity and were primarily interested in financial gains its certainly one of many strategies I would employ to raise revenue.
If they didn't think of that idea it shows how lacking their business skills are. All the major game companies purposely spark controversy for business purposes as has been covered in threads and articles on this very site.
There's a reason the term Massively Online Multiplayer was coined to describe games that are played online with hundreds or thousands of people simultaneously versus Online Multiplayer games that only allow single or double digit #'s of players to play at one time: The experiences are drastically different.
If League of Legends can be described as an MMO, then MMO means nothing.
I guess we can now safely call sushi Italian food guys.
All food eaten in a public place is now Greek food actually. Get your definitions right!
The original definition of MMO depended on a persistent, shared world. This allowed for a massive amount of interaction. Player 0 could do something in the world that Player 1,000 could see and that Player 10,000 could see, even though there were limited slots on the server and all the zones were instanced, etc. It wasn't how many players were on and interacting at any given time, it would was how many interactions were happening over a long period of time because the world was persistent.
If you drop the persistent, shared world requirement (which the industry seems to be doing), you can still have a massive amount of interaction. Player 0 can interact with Player 1,000 in LoL. They can also interaction with Player 2 and Player 10,000. It allows for a massive amount of interaction. The only thing that's been dropped as a requirement is the persistent, shared world. It has nothing to do with the number of people and nothing to do with making a permanent, sandbox style change to the world. Players can interact through an Auction House and it's still an interaction. Players can send each other mail and it's an interaction.
Definitions exist for things that are inherently what they are, and then there are definitions of ideas. A rose is what it is. You can change the definition, but then you're no longer describing a rose. "MMO" is an idea. It was made up from scratch and doesn't exist outside of human experience. It makes just as much sense for the definition of "MMO" to be one thing as it does for it to be another thing because they are all just concepts.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
At least getting practiced with one approach :P
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
At a certain point definitions have to make sense though.
There is a difference between League of Legends and World of Warcraft at a very basic level beyond the RTS nature of LoL. One allows huge populations to simultaneously interact and one allows 10 people to interact at any given time. This is the huge difference between MMO's and Multiplayer Online games that caused the term MMO to be conjured up in the first place.
MMO is a description of something that actually exists, so it's not really useful to use it to describe things that it doesn't describe. If you use the term MMO to describe LoL, you're basically saying MMO means Online. But Online already means online. Things have to make sense in order for people to communicate.
I'm not sure that some people are denying that the definition of MMO is expanding.
They are just upset, in this expanding market, there seems to be no room for a game conceived from the original definition.
Concreta vs. Abstracta, yes.
Didn't we have the same discussion just a week back, regarding the slippery term "success"?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Why i feel instancing has no place in the mmorpg domain. Instancing actualy breaks the game down and limits you, the opposite of mmo
You are right. Clearly all lobby based coop multiplayer games are MMOs. That makes total sense. Its not like those games already had a genre name and companies stick MMO on in order to justify all their ridiculous money sinks.
Did you know that Starcraft 2 is an MMO now? I didn't but thanks for telling me. Excuse me while I go play Draw Something, once one of the most popular MMOs of all time.
The MMO brand has been abused by many trying to find a place to market their game. I believe we can easily agree that some games that label themselves as a MMO are not. If a game only allows for you to join a group of 10 people for an arena style fight match like LoL then it is not a MMO. The fact that there are millions playing the game does not make it an MMO if they can only join in with limited number of people through a lobby system.
The first MMOs had a gameplay style more focused on RPing and most people that played those games were old time pen and paper D&D players so the first games had a big role playing community. To say that all MMOs have to have that in their games or they aren't a MMO is silly. There are many generations now that do not even understand what it is to RP (which imo is sad), so to have the mind set that all MMORPGs need to be RP focused is just crazy, but there should be a server or 2 that focuses and allows for this style of gameplay.
I believe it doesn't matter how the industry tries to define the term MMO, after a while it will work itself out and more defined terms will be invented. I just enjoy watching some devs. try to push the limits and create something new. We need more dreamers and doers, less complainers and ankle biters!
Keep on keeping on!
Oh, stop being so dramatic.
All of those Shooters have been stealing more and more character-development ideas from MMOs for just years now. They've got talent trees, they've got story lines, they've got loot collection, they've got questgivers.. We've reached the point where greater and greater fineness is required from the hair-splitting to make any distinction at all.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Based on his definition of MMO Draw Something now qualifies as an MMO. This logically follows from his argument that LoL is an MMO because you have lots of players even if there are never more than 10 playing together at a time.
This is not hair splitting. You cannot define MMOs the way he has without including game like Starcraft 2 and Draw Something as MMOs.
I would ague that if LoL had 1000 per side it would qualify as an "MMO". It however would not qualify as a mmorpg.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
And sooner or later, the two genres growing together will meet each other in the middle.
Put the fingers in your ears and chant nahnahnah if it helps with denial, but it's happening all around your industry already.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I think OP is confusing mmo and mmorpg.
A sqaure is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square type of thing. Mmorpgs are mmos, but mmos are not mmorpgs.
You still havent explained how Starcraft 2 doesn't count as an MMO but League of Legends does.
They are both online games with random matchmaking and massive player bases. Which is what LizardBones used to define the new MMO very explicitly in his post.