Thursday, April 15, 2010

Official Criteria for an MMO?

Untitled Document



I recently found myself in a huge nerd debate at work as to where the line should be drawn between 'online' games and 'massively multiplayer online' games (MMOs). Talk of 'pseudo-MMOs' was viewed by both parties as a copout and thus avoided.
Due to a shortage of specific and/or credible definitions on the internet, my opponent and I resorted to observations, statistical generalizations and Wikipedia for just about everything in an effort to define 'MMO'. At the end of the day, there was no consensus and we were advised by coworkers that it was an issue best left to good old fashioned internet polling.
I'm not disclosing who held which position, but here they are. Obviously, there are exceptions to everything you're about to read so finding 1 counterexample is not difficult. Basically, how do YOU (or well-explained websites) define an MMO and why?

Position #1:  
The label 'MMO' should only be applied when a game possesses most of the common characteristics found in the genre's dominant titles. Examples of such characteristics include immense world ****, a lengthy leveling process, in-game economy, player clases %26 professions, endgame objectives, industrial server hosting by the developer, monthly fee, %26 paid admins. Regular online FPS or RTS games that track player statistics and achievements are simply borrowing elements from RPGs, not MMOs.
''The 'Massive' in MMO comes not only from their incredible population on each server, but also from the near limitless socialization, objectives, and useful rewards they offer players – which contributes years to the games lifespan. A game is only as 'massive' as it's largest and most complex server.''


Position #2:
An MMO is characterized not by how many players can interact at once in the same environment, but rather that the game has a large concurrent online playerbase - no matter how many servers they are spread across, or their individual capacity (32,64).  Examples of such MMOs are Starcraft %26 Counter-Strike. No matter how small the minority, if a few people describe a game as having a 'Massive' player population, its an MMO – regardless of their experience with the genre. Additionally, the achievement systems in these games are equivalent to accumulated weapons %26 gear found in games such as WoW.
''The 'Massive' in MMO comes from the combined sum of every player on every server, especially if they are somewhat linked by stats or achievements. A single server is only as 'Massive' as it's contribution to that overall sum of players. Technically, the only games that are not MMOs are games that people simply do not play online anymore.''Official Criteria for an MMO?
Um...this does not belong in off topic.

No comments:

Post a Comment