Massively multiplayer online role-playing game
A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is an online computer role-playing game in which a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world. As in all RPGs, players assume the role of a character (traditionally in a fantasy setting) and take control over most of that character's actions. MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player RPGs 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.
MMORPGs are immensely popular, with several commercial games reporting millions of subscribers. South Korea boasts the highest subscription numbers, with millions of users registered with the more popular games; see list of MMORPGs for a list of the most prominent MMORPGs.
Common Features
Though MMORPGs have evolved considerably, many of them share various characteristics.
- Traditional Dungeons & Dragons style gameplay, including quests, monsters, and loot.
- A system for character development, usually involving levels and experience points.
- An economy, based on trading of items (such as weapons and armor) and a regular currency.
- Guilds or clans, which are organizations of players, whether or not the game supports them.
- Game Moderators (or Game Masters), sometimes-paid individuals in charge of supervising the world.
As most MMORPGs are commercial, like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, players must either purchase the client software for a one-time fee or pay a monthly subscription fee to play. Most major MMORPGs require players do both these things. Some free-of-charge MMORPG-type games do exist, though their production quality is generally lower compared to commercial MMORPGs. By nature, "massively multiplayer" games are online, and require monthly subscriptions due to the needs of the design and development process. With this in mind, the alternate term MMGS, standing for Massively Multiplayer Gaming Service, is now becoming recognized as an improved, more concise name for this genre of games.
History
MMORPGs, as we define them today, have existed since the early 1990s. However, they have a history that extends back into the late 1970s.
The First Gameworlds
The beginning of the MMORPG genre can be traced back to text-based (entirely non-graphical) Multi-User Domains, or MUDs, the first of which was developed by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw in 1978. These were games which ran on private servers (usually at a university, sometimes without the knowledge of the system's administrators) which players would connect to using a TELNET client. Gameplay was usually similar to tabletop RPGs such as Dungeons & Dragons; by typing commands into a parser, players would enter a dungeon, fight monsters, gain experience, and acquire loot.
Similar games quickly developed around the same time for the PLATO System. MUDs (and later descendants such as MUSHes and MOOs) were sometimes wildly different from one another, but shared many basic interface elements - for example, a player would usually navigate his or her character around the gameworld by typing in compass directions ("n", "se", etc.)
Many MUDs are still active to this day, and a number of influential MMORPG designers such as Raph Koster, Brad McQuaid, Mark Jacobs and Damion Schubert began as MUD developers and/or players.
Early Commercial Development
The first commercial MMORPG (although what constitutes "massive" requires some context when discussing mid-1980s mainframes) was Islands of Kesmai designed by Kelton Flinn and John Taylor. Still text-based, this game became available to consumers in 1984 at the cost of $12.00 per hour via the CompuServe online service.
The first graphical character-based interactive environment, though not actually an RPG, was Club Caribe (first released as Habitat), which was introduced in 1988 by LucasArts for Q-Link customers on their Commodore 64 computers. Users could interact with one another, chat and exchange items. Although very simple, its use of online avatars (already well established off-line by Ultima and other games) and combining chat with graphics was revolutionary for the time. The term avatar for an on-screen player character may have originated at LucasArts as part of the Habitat project.
The first graphical MMORPG was Neverwinter Nights by designer Don Daglow and programmer Cathryn Mataga, which went live on AOL for PC owners in 1991 and ran through 1997. The project was personally championed and green-lighted by AOL President Steve Case. Both Club Caribe and Neverwinter Nights cost $6.00 per hour to play.
During the early-1990s, commercial use of the internet was limited by NSFNET acceptable use policies. Consequently, early online games like Neverwinter Nights, GemStone III, Dragon's Gate and Federation II relied upon proprietary services for distribution such as CompuServe, America Online, and GEnie.
Following Neverwinter Nights was The Shadow of Yserbius, a MMORPG within The Sierra Network (TSN) which ran from 1992 through 1996. The game was produced by Joe Ybarra. The Shadow of Yserbius was an hourly service, although it also offered unlimited service for $119.99 per month, until AT&T acquired TSN and rendered it strictly an hourly service. The name was then changed from TSN to the ImagiNation Network.
As the NSFNET restrictions were relaxed, traditional game companies and online services began to deploy games on the internet. The first commercial text-based MMORPG to make this transition from a proprietary network provider (CompuServe, in this case) to the Internet was Legends of Future Past. It was also notable in that it had professional Game Masters who conducted online events, now a common feature. The game was offered through the Internet for $3.60 per hour in 1992 and ran until 2000.
World-wide MMORPGs
Access to one unified internet allowed game companies to accumulate truly "massive" playerbases, profit, and popularity. In addition, they became open to paying customers all around the world. As a result, some players of these games found themselves interacting with strangers from different countries and cultures for the first time.
Meridian 59 (launched by 3DO in late 1996) was one of the first modern MMORPGs. Its 3D engine, a first for online RPGs, allowed players to experience the game world through their characters' eyes. Even at the time, it was significant for several other reasons; it was the first Internet game from a major publisher, and was the first MMORPG to be covered in the major game magazines. Finally, it introduced the flat monthly subscription fee. It quickly grew a cult following, which still exists today.
The Realm Online was a successful early internet MMORPG launched by Sierra Online just after Meridian 59. It had fully animated 2D graphics, both in and out of combat situations, which made it far more accessible to a wide variety of audiences compared to the uglier graphical MUDs on which it was based. Its play and interface made it comfortable for those used to graphical adventure games such as those Sierra had previously popularised. Still, just like its predecessors, it had simple turn-based combat and a basic user interface. It, too, is still running.
Ultima Online was released the following year, and is now credited with popularizing the genre. It had 3D isometric/third-person graphics, and was set in the already popular Ultima universe. It was also a more complex game than many of its predecessors.
Meanwhile, commercial online games were becoming extraordinarily popular in South Korea. Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds, designed by Jake Song, began commercial service in 1996 and eventually gained over one million subscribers. Song's next game, Lineage (1998), was an even bigger success. Lineage reached millions of subscribers in Korea and Taiwan, and gave developer NCsoft the strength to gain a foothold in the global MMORPG market for the next few years.
Launched in March 1999 by Verant Interactive and later acquired by Sony Online Entertainment, EverQuest drove fantasy MMORPGs into the Western mainstream. It was the most commercially successful MMORPG in the United States for five years and was the basis for eleven expansions (as of March, 2006) and several derivative games. TIME magazine and other non-gaming press featured stories on EverQuest, often focusing on the controversies and social questions inspired by its popularity. Asheron's Call launched later in the year and was another hit, rounding out what is sometimes called the original "big three" of the late 1990s (Ultima Online, EverQuest and Asheron's Call).
MMORPGs in the new millennium
By the turn of the century the concept of massively multiplayer online games expanded into new video game genres. Many of these games, such as the massively multiplayer online first-person shooter World War II Online (2001) brought some of the RPG heritage with them.
For fans of the genre, 2000 was a relatively quiet year, but developers and investors were buzzing to jump into the continually expanding market. Dark Age of Camelot was launched in early 2001 and can be seen as the first successful fantasy MMORPG of the 21st century. It launched smoothly, required less time to gain levels and had an integrated player versus player combat system. Critics dismissed the sci-fi MMORPG Anarchy Online while it suffered through its rough first month in June 2001. Growth of the 'big three' nearly plateaued during 2001 and Ultima Online 2 was cancelled while still in development, indicating that the market had possibly been saturated.
Released in 2002, Final Fantasy XI, an online "sequel" to the long running single-player console RPG series, became the first major console MMORPG, as well as the first online game capable of supporting games and servers shared by both console and PC users. Its practice of randomly selecting servers for new player-characters all over the world was controversial and criticized, but resulted (intentionally in fact) in game worlds in which the players regularly spoke different languages. Also released in 2002, the sprite-based Ragnarok Online, produced by Korean company Gravity Corporation, took Asia by storm, as Lineage had done. Gravity once claimed that there were 17 million subscribers of the game, though this number may not be entirely reliable.
May 2003 saw the release of Eve Online, the first MMORPG released by Iceland-based developer Crowd Control Productions (CCP). Eve Online distinguished itself by placing all players in a single world without 'sharding' the servers to distribute player load. Based in a fictional galaxy 24,000 years in the future, Eve Online drew a small but loyal fan base that has grown over time. According to the game's website, the user base for Eve Online has broken the 100k mark, and the game continues to break its own Peak Concurrent User (PCU) record, which stands at 25,665 as of 13 March 2006 [1].
In October 1, 2003, NCsoft launched the sequel to its immensely popular title, Lineage. Featuring an highly improved, vast 3d gameworld that made use of Epic's Unreal Engine, Lineage II received the Presidential Award at the 2003 Korean Game awards, and went on to become the second most popular MMORPG in the world. As of the first half of 2005 Lineage II counted over 2.25 million subscribers worldwide. NCsoft opened its servers in Japan, China, North America, and lastly, Europe, once the popularity of the game had surged in the West (as evidenced by the opening of a Euro-only English server, Teon). With four "chronicles" or game installments already under its belt, Lineage II continues to be one of the more competitive older MMORPGs in the market today.
In November 2004, Sony Online Entertainment expected to dominate the market when they released the sequel to their phenomenally successful EverQuest, EverQuest II. To keep from competing with themselves, Sony began to offer a flat monthly rate to play all Sony MMORPGs such as EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, and the new EverQuest II. However, much of Sony's potential customer base was drawn to Blizzard Entertainment's World of WarCraft (WoW), released in that same month. At present, WoW is one of the most played games in North America, and one of the most played American MMORPGs, with a total of over 6 million customers worldwide. With the release of these newer games, subscriptions began to decline for old games, such as Lineage II and EverQuest 1.
The release of Guild Wars in April 2005 represented NCsoft's investment in the possible profitability of an online RPG with a one-time fee. Guild Wars did not share many of the distinguishing features of typical MMORPGs such as an undivided gameworld (outside of cities, the game was played on a private copy of the gameworld), the lack of instant world travel, the subscription fee, the large time investment required to enjoy end-game content, and the largely server-dependent software architecture. As such, it was termed a Competitive/Cooperative Online Role-Playing Game (CORPG) by its developers. It is most often referred to as an OCG, or "Online Computer Game".
Another Korean MMORPG, MapleStory, a side-scroller developed by Wizet, likewise contains free gameplay. However, it covers its costs through purchasable game "enhancements". Due to its free nature, the game is said to have more than 30 million players in all of its many versions, with the majority of them from East Asia.
Academic attention
MMORPGs have begun to attract significant academic attention, notably in the fields of economics and psychology. Edward Castronova specializes in the study of virtual worlds (MUDs, MMOGs, and similar concepts). Most of his writings, including "Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier" (2001), have examined relationships between real world economies and synthetic economies.
With the growing popularity of the genre, a growing number of psychologists and sociologists study the actions and interactions of the players in such games. One of the most famous of these researchers is Sherry Turkle. Another researcher is Nick Yee who has surveyed more than 35,000 MMORPG players over the past few years, focusing on psychological and sociological aspects of these games. His research can be found at The Daedalus Project.
Independent development
Many small teams of programmers and artists have tried to create their own MMORPGs. The average MMORPG project takes three to four years and large investments of money to create. Independent development, or game development not run by any company, usually takes longer due to lack of developer's time, manpower or money. Additionally, the long-term lack of funding required for running MMORPG servers may lead to the abandonment of the project.
Sometimes these independent games are free-to-play, but will confer in-game privileges to paying customers.
Some of the best-established independent projects are AWplanet, Daimonin, Endless Online, Star Wars Combine and Planeshift. Both Daimonin and Planeshift are entirely open source. The developers of Endless Online have also released development information with details about their coding.
The WorldForge project has been active since 1998 and formed a community of independent developers who are working on creating framework for a number of open-source MMORPGs.
Browser-based MMORPGs
With the success of the MMORPG genre in recent years, several multiplayer games played in web browsers have also begun using the MMORPG moniker. This largely text-based sub-genre developed from old BBS games and pre-dates the modern idea of an MMORPG. Browser-based MMORPGs are usually simpler games than their stand-alone counterparts, typically involving turn-based play and simple strategies (e.g. "build a large army, then attack other players for gold"), though there are many interesting variations on the popular themes to be found. Many of these games are more like turn-based strategy games or wargames than role-playing games. In Planetarion players control planets and fleets of ships; in Kings of Chaos the player commands an army rather than a single player character. In Pardus, the player controls a character who owns a spaceship and gains experience points through trading or fighting, in a way similar to the classic game Elite. In BattleMaster, the game world never "resets", so that some player realms have existed for more than 5 real years while other realms be formed and destroyed by players, virtually giving the game its own developing history as lived and written all by the players.
One of the earliest examples of a browser-based MMORPG is Archmage, which dates back to early 1999. Currently, a popular browser-based MMORPG, Kings of Chaos, boasts a player population numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Its popularity is primarily fuelled by a reciprocal link clicking system where users give each other more soldiers by clicking on their friends' unique links, taking advantage of the small world phenomenon to spread word of the game across the world. Some examples of click based MMORPG's are Legend of the Green Dragon and World of Phaos, whose code is open source, allowing anyone to create their own game server. Another browser-based MMORPG, Kingdom of Loathing, is entirely satirical. Some of the more popular of these have become profitable through user subscriptions.
Not all browser-based MMORPGs are turn-based text games. More recently, faster computers and the Java programming language have allowed the introduction of graphical browser-based MMORPGs such as RuneScape, produced by Jagex, which are more similar to standalone MMORPGs.
Genre challenges
Most MMORPGs require significant development resources to overcome the logistical hurdles associated with such large production efforts. Online games require virtual worlds, significant hardware requirements (e.g., servers and bandwidth), and dedicated support staff. Despite the efforts of developers cognizant of these issues, reviewers often cite non-optimal populations (such as overcrowding or under-populated worlds), lag, and poor support as problems of games in this genre. These problems tend to be worse for free MMORPGs. Peer-to-peer MMORPGs could theoretically scale better because peers share the resource load, but practical issues such as asymmetrical network bandwidth and CPU-hungry rendering engines make peer to peer MMORPGs a difficult proposition. Additionally, they become vulnerable to other problems such as cheating.
Several MMORPGs have suffered through technical difficulties through the first few days (or weeks) after launch. Early successes such as Ultima Online and EverQuest managed to pass through this stage with little permanent damage. Few games may have significant failures, leading ultimately to their demise, if they launch too early and contain frequent bug fixes, downtime, or structural game changes that may discourage players from continuing to play the game. Due to these problems, games such as Anarchy Online and World War II Online struggled to regain good press after their first month, and gained good press after stabilizing their servers. Dark Age of Camelot and City of Heroes showed hardly any signs of such difficulties.
Cheating in online games
Cheating is a major challenge for game developers and legitimate players. Exploiting is a form of cheating involving the use of a flaw in the game mechanics to gain unfair advantage. Depending on the nature of the exploit, developers can address the exploits within a short time through patches and updates. Even when fixed, exploiting can still be an issue, as exploiters may still have the advantage or items they gained before the patch was released. Depending on the nature of the exploit, a rollback may be needed just to counter the effects. Twinking may also be seen as another form of cheating.
Third-party programs may be used to automate in-game actions, often with such efficiency that it gives users a huge advantage. Botting is a term for a player using a script that could automate progress through the game without them actually playing the game. Farmers, if they are unable to use exploits, will use such methods to harvest materials or gold from the game world around the clock. They often sell the gold and items they earn via Ebay or commerce sites, thus further unbalancing the game's economy. This gives lazy players a chance to cheat their way into the upper tiers of the system.
Some third party programs are released with code in them to capture and relay account details back to the author, enabling them to steal virtual possesions from the account or impersonate the rightful owner to perpetrate confidence tricks and other scams. These are often packaged with seemingly-innocuous software tools (trojans) for easier distribution amongst unsuspecting users.
Even more subtle methods are known to be used to cheat; depending on the way the game handles certain aspects of gameplay the client or components thereof can be modified, either on disk, directly in memory or on the wire as data passes between the client and server. All the while the server does not verify the veracity of client data or, ideally, take care of important calculations server-side, this can be used to modify values such as character health or armour, speed up movement or change other aspects of the game to the cheater's advantage. There are programs that have been designed to prevent external programs from running during a game, such as GameGuard. The integrity of client files can also be checked each time the game is loaded, although of course some gamers have found ways to bypass or disable these protection programs.
Private servers
Single-client based graphic MMORPGs may have private servers or server emulators. Private servers are mostly run by volunteers, therefore most of them are free. However, some private servers may wish for people to donate money, sometimes in exchange for a bonus in the game. Private servers remain markedly less popular than the official servers, with player numbers in the hundreds, not thousands. EQEmu is a server emulator for EverQuest, others exist for World of Warcraft, Lineage II, Ultima Online, and many other MMORPGs.
In China as well as many other Asian countries the use of private servers is more prevalent. Most Chinese MMORPG players are aware of the existence of private servers, and according to statistics[citation needed] more people prefer private servers than official servers. The reasons for this are the relatively high fees for official servers and the availability of 100MB/s fiber optic internet connections, which can be as cheap as US$30 a month. As a result, the costs of running a server in China are remarkably low. In one instance, a private server had more than 50 000 players registered. Some even have 1000 accounts in 1 day (the opening day). Among such cases are Mu Online which is one of the most popular private server games in the world, with thousands of private servers. Private servers have significantly damaged the commercial MMORPG development. Many gamers in China feel the companies that developed MMORPGs purposefully made the leveling progress advance slowly so more money could be made off the gamers. Most of the private servers have placed a faster experience rate, allowing players to progress through the game faster than on retail servers.
Current Trends in MMORPGs
As the MMORPG market becomes more competitive, innovation in new releases is becoming a necessity; it would be financial suicide to release another simple hack and slash MMORPG, no matter how pretty it looked. So, MMORPGs, as long as they are being produced, will be continuously evolving.
One (arguable) MMORPG trend is "tie-ins" with successful movie licenses. The most recent example of this is The Matrix Online, based on the Matrix trilogy of films; the earliest possibly was Star Wars Galaxies. Though neither of these titles was a great financial success, mainly due to their divergence from the original property and poor gameplay, further tie-in games will very likely still be produced. This process is also apparently being applied in reverse, with James Cameron designing a MMORPG that will be precede the movie (Project 880) it is tied to. [2]
A controversial trend which merits much greater discussion is the trading of real currency for game currency, sometimes supported by the game providers.
One near-future trend could be the introduction of player-created content into the games. Some MMOGs already rely heavily on player created content, from animations to complete buildings with player-created textures and architecture - examples include Second Life and the noncombat RPG A Tale in the Desert. However, these games are very different from the far more popular "standard" MMORPGs revolving around combat and limited character tradeskills. Player-created content in these games would be in the form of areas to explore, missions to carry out and specific weapons and armor to use (see one planned expansion here: [3]). Whether or not this becomes mainstream is anyone's guess.
Also possible in the near future is the widespread introduction of MMOG software engines, which are generic tools that make it much easier for individuals (or small teams) to produce their own MMOGs (including MMORPGs) for profit. Some examples of this kind of engine are Multiverse, Kaneva, and Realm Crafter.
Some predict that a new rush of independent MMOG development, spurred on by these new software engines, will result in successful "mods" for MMORPGs, similar to what has happened with the FPS genre (see Counter-Strike).
See also
- Computer role-playing game
- List of MMORPGs
- MMORPG terms and acronyms
- MMORLG
- MMOFPS
- XORG (MMORPG/FPS)
- MUD
- Online wedding
- Virtual crime
- Virtual economy
- Avatar
- Browser game
- List of Text-Based MMORPGs
- Player versus player
References
- Ferrell, Keith. (November 1987) "The Future Of Computer Games: Ten Industry Leaders Speak Out". COMPUTE!
- Kent, Steven (September 23, 2003). "Alternate Reality: The history of massively multiplayer online games". GameSpy.
- Bartle, Richard A. (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds. Indianapolis: New Riders. ISBN 0-1310-1816-7.
- "Massively Money-Eating Online Games" (October, 2005) PC Gamer 12 (10), p.28
- James Cameron's Game Theory, Business Week, Feb. 13, 2006.
External links
- MMOGChart.com - Bruce Woodcock's analysis of MMOG subscription counts based on figures reported by the games' developers. Last updated in November of 2005.
- Wage Slaves - 1UP.COM article on farming.
- The Daedalus Project - Nick Yee's ongoing survey study of MMORPG players. Demographics, narratives and essays.
- Massively Multiplayer Online Games - A set of articles posted at Gamespy.com, concerning the past, present, and future of the genre.
- MMORPG Maker - A site for gathering people that want to develop their own MMORPGs using software engines that require little or no programming.
- MOPGL.com - Internets Largest List of Free and Pay MMORPG and MMO's
- MMORPG List
- OnRPG.com - A massive listing of free and Pay to Play MMORPGs
- The Best Free MMORPG and MMO List