MMO - Wha?!

MMO - Wha?! By Allan Though a grizzled, old veteran donning war-torn robes and a gnarled staff in the MMOG scene, Allan is more like a level 5 squire in a simple tunic wielding a tin blade when it comes to the realm of writing articles. Nevertheless, he is here to train his typing fingers and bring you news and interesting perspectives on things you might not have known you even cared about.

As someone who's played MMOG's for quite some time, I've personally witnessed the evolution of the name attached to the genre. And let me tell you, it is quite hilarious.

They originally came out as this new and exciting form of gameplay, where player interaction and character development were quintessential to advancement. Now, you can argue that MUDs back in the day were the earliest form of MMOG's (and you'd be right), but from my perspective, it was the launch of Everquest that brought these types of games into more "gaming mainstream" exposure.

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The game had these bold initials tied to it, MMORPG, leaving everyone wondering, "what exactly is a MMORPG?" Very few people (in the western world at least) knew what the "MMO" part even stood for, so I like to think they tacked on the RPG portion of it to sort of ease their potential player-base into trying out the game. It's not that the concept of a massively multiplayer online experience scared them or anything, it's just that they didn't have anything to compare it to. Queue in the RPG segment and suddenly everyone has interest in it thinking, ‘hey, I liked Final Fantasy...I'd probably like this game."

So there it was, trudging along holding up that proud MMORPG banner above it. Enter in the next largest moment in MMO history - World of Warcraft hits the shelves. From what I remember, this game still had that MMORPG title attached to it (the world is fantasy-based, so it makes sense). People began to realize that the only MMOG's out there were RPG-based (Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot to name a few), so that aspect of it was thrown out of the title. Plus, people grew tired of typing it out. Simply referring to these games as MMO's turned out to be enough for folks to know you're talking about.

And then once everyone settled down after familiarizing themselves with the whole MMO title, a few games had to go and ruin it. Games such as Planetside and the more recent Global Agenda had to step into the fray and throw off the pattern. Wait, these involve first-person perspectives and require that you shoot people? This forced those other games to reluctantly return to their MMORPG elucidation for their titles.

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Now, after a rollercoaster of changes to how people define their beloved massive multiplayer online experiences, we find ourselves reaching modern times. World of Warcraft, for instance, has long since returned to calling itself a MMORPG. If anyone were to introduce a new fantasy-styled game like it, presenting itself as a MMO would confuse people. They still wouldn't know what type of game to expect. Even some people believe that the fact that the game simply holds a massive amount of people, it should be considered some form of MMO. Let's take a look at the various subgenres that have spawned in recent times, shall we?

MMORPG's

Ah yes, the old RPG styled-ones. Most of this description goes without saying, so brevity will be retained. We all know by now what to expect here - create a customizable character that starts from nothing yet levels into some form of hero. Classes help to differentiate what role your character plays within the world, and player interaction is the key to further propelling your character into that hero role.

Not only are these the most common forms of MMOG's, but they also boast the most successful. It really does work; RPG's in the past might have included some sort of team with your character, yet they were controlled by AI. What if now you could maintain that same experience, but have those sidekicks be real players? The concept was already there, it just needed to be expanded to an online environment. RPG's also thrive in worlds that have some sort of real story and a tangible audience. A large player-base serves this function as well as many other respects. RPG's couldn't ask for a better set of three letters to throw on top of it.