MMORPGs
Players interacting in
Ultima Online.A MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) is an online computer role-playing game in which a large number of players can interact together or against one another in the same game at the same time. An MMORPG follows a client-server model in which players, running the client software, are represented in the game world by an avatar ? this is usually a graphical representation of the character they play. Providers, usually the game's publisher, host the persistent worlds these players inhabit. This interaction between a virtual world, always available for play, and an ever-changing, potentially worldwide stream of players characterizes the MMORPG genre.
Once a player enters the gameworld they can engage in a variety of activities with other players ranging from chat with their friends or guild members to teaming up in order to kill large enemies or to complete complex tasks or quests that are not achievable alone. Killing these enemies (typically referred to as mobs by gamers) yield the players experience points (commenly abbreviated as Exp or Xp) and equipment or loot such as armor and weapons. Both the experience points (used to "level up" the character or his abilities) and the loot gained from slaying mobs, help to improve the character so he can handle fighting in more adverse situations. The people who develop MMORPGs are in charge of supervising this virtual world and offering the users a regularly updated set of new activities and enhancements to guarantee a continual interest in the game.
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 access the virtual world. Most major MMORPGs require players do both these things. There are free-of-charge online games found on the Internet, although their production quality is generally lower compared to their "pay-to-play" counterparts.
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.
History
Neverwinter Nights, the first graphical MMORPG.
The beginning of the MMORPG genre are can be traced back to non-graphical online Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) games such as those developed in the late-1970s for the PLATO System. Earlier games such as pedit5, dnd, Dungeon, orthanc, baradur, bnd and sorcery were multi-user games, but the players could not interact with one another. Subsequent games on PLATO including oubliette, avathar (later renamed avatar), emprise and moria allowed players to interact, including helping each other in battle and trading equipment. A line-drawn pseudo-3D display style also evolved during this time. (Moria for PLATO should not be confused with the later VAX VMS based game, Moria.)
1980s
The first text-based 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. This game became available to consumers in 1984 at the cost of $12.00 per hour via the CompuServe online service.
Debuting in 1988 in a reduced form and under the name Habitat, Club Caribe was a "graphical environment" designed by LucasArts for Q-Link. In this game, users could interact with one another, chat, and exchange items. Although it was not a game, its combination of graphics, avatars and chat was revolutionary for the time.
Early 1990s
The first commercial graphical MMORPG was Neverwinter Nights by designer Don Daglow and programmer Cathryn Mataga, which went live on AOL in 1991 and ran through 1997. The project was personally championed and green-lighted by AOL President Steve Case, and 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.
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 (CompuServ, in this case) to the Internet was Legends of Future Past, designed by Jon Radoff and Angela Bull. It was a fantasy roleplaying game featuring an evolving world and professional Game Masters who conducted online events. The game was offered through the Internet for $3.60 per hour in 1992 and ran until 2000.
Late 1990s
The Realm Online was a successful early MMORPG launched by Sierra Online in 1996. The Realm Online included a basic, two-dimensional graphics engine and Dungeons & Dragons style character levels. It had a basic user inferface and turn-based combat, also taken from the Dungeons & Dragons mold.
Ultima Online, released in 1997, is credited with popularizing the genre. The game featured a flat monthly subscription fee (first introduced by the 3DO game Meridian 59 in 1996) instead of the hitherto-traditional per-hour plan; the monthly fee has since become the standard for most MMORPGs. This new pricing model has also been seen as the motivation for business to shift from the 'hardcore gamer' audience (who racked up massive fees) towards a broader, more massive market. Meridian 59 and Ultima Online also set the precedent for monthly $10 USD subscriptions, a figure that would later gradually increase across the genre. These were the first games that used and spread the term "massively multiplayer".
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.
EverQuest
drove MMORPGs into the Western mainstream.
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 ten expansions (as of December, 2005) 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). Yet another fantasy game, Asheron's Call at least featured an original universe; the world of EverQuest was heavily influenced by D&D, and Ultima Online took place in the same universe as several other Ultima games . The future continued to look bright as Origin Systems revealed it had begun developing Ultima Online 2.
2000 to present
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.
In an attempt to keep players paying monthly fees, companies such as Sony Online Entertainment sought solutions of their own by introducing an optional single flat rate allowing players to take out a concurrent subscription with all of their MMORPGs. Many players argued the fees as they were reluctant to continue paying for a game beyond the initial purchase of the software. 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 the massive persistent game world, the subscription fee, the large time investment required to play, and the largely server-dependent software architecture and as such was termed a Competitive Online Role-Playing Game (CORPG) by the developers.
On August 4, 2005, the Chinese government announced a ban on all "violent" gameplay for minors under 18. Chinese officials defined 'violent' as any game that involves player vs. player combat, a common feature among MMORPGs. Later in August the same year, the Chinese government imposed online gaming curbs so players can not play more than three consecutive hours. See BBC news article.
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 more 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.
Amateur development
Daimonin
is one of the efforts to create a free MMORPG.
Many small teams of amateur programmers and artists have tried to create their own MMORPGs. The average MMORPG project takes three to four years to create and large investments of money. Amateur development usually takes longer due to lack of developer's time, manpower or money. Additionally, the costs required for running MMORPG servers may be a reason for projects to be abandoned.
The most well-established amateur projects are AWplanet, Daimonin, Endless Online and Planeshift. Daimonin and Planeshift are entirely open source. The developers of Endless Online have released technical development information with details about their coding.
The WorldForge project has been active since 1998 and formed a community of amateur 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.
Legend of the Green Dragon is an example of a text-based MMORPG
accessible with a web browser.
One of the earliest examples of a browser-based MMORPG is Archmage, which dates back to early 1999. Currently, an extremely 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, largely parodies other games. Some of the more popular of these have become profitable through user subscriptions. One example of a free modern, popular text-based MMORPG is Urban Dead. Others are played by free but get little money through advertisements and donations like Syrnia.
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 which are more similar to standalone MMORPGs.
MUD
- Main articles: MUD
MUDs are a form of MMORPGs, and are most likely the predecessor of MMORPGs. Like most commercial MMORPGs found today, the player logs onto a server, and the player will interact with other players in real time. However, MUDs are played through text and occasionally ASCII graphics rather than full graphics. Most of the time, MUD uses the telnet protocol for players to interact with the server. Since MUDs lack graphics and requires reading large amounts of text, players playing MUDs use imagination to create an image of the game setting.
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
- Main articles: Cheating in online games
Cheating is a major and inevitable difficulty for the game developers. Cheating can come in form of many ways. Botting is when a player uses a script that could automate progress through the game without actually playing the game. This could be done with a simple macro program which records keystrokes and mouse movements, or scripting program that could make ?smart? keystrokes, such as AC Tools. Other forms of cheating includes, when a player uses a flaw in the game mechanics to gain advantages, which known as exploiting. Depending on the situation, game developers usually fix the exploits within hours or even minutes through patches and updates.
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 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. Also, the costs of running a server in China are also 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 a total of over 10,000 private servers. Private servers have significantly damaged the commercial MMORPG development. Many gamers in China feel the companies that developed MMORPG purposely made the leveling progress slow, therefore more money could be made off the gamers. Most of the private servers have placed higher experience rate, and players could progress through game faster than retail servers.
See also
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
External links
- MMOGChart.com - Bruce Woodcock's analysis of MMOG subscription counts based on figures reported by the games' developers.
- MMO Markets - Philip Dhingra's tracking of the virtual economy
- Wage Slaves - 1UP.COM article on farming.
- The Daedalus Project - Nick Yee's ongoing survey study of MMORPG players. Demographics, narratives and essays.