What makes an MMO?
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2009-11-15 09:48 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
What makes an MMO for me is a couple things
1.Online gaming world with lots of people playing in it
2.Always teams of sorts to join/start
3.Lots of content, like more then any regualar console game way more
I too have tried several other MMOs but they didn't hold me for more then a day and I just didn't like them. I've played some pretty heavly content filled console games like Super mario Galaxy or any of the mario games for that fact and they usually take 100 or more hours to complete. Well MMOs at least this one with all the different powers it feels like no end is in sight to actually finishthe game. Sure you can finish characters but not the game never unless you quit.
So an MMO to my is online game with lots of people to play with and lots of things to do.
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Electrons.
| What makes an MMO? |
To me there are three things that make an MMO:
1) Persistent character progression - you can continue to use the same character and develop their abilities/equipment over time.
2) Persistent world - the zones exist, even if there are no players in them, and the world continues to evolve/change/continue even if you don't log in
3) Massive numbers of players - certainly more than the 64 player cap you run into on most online FPS games/servers, and you can interact with those players in large gatherings.
You need all 3 to be an MMO, in my opinion. Diablo 2 had 1) but didn't have 2) or 3). Battlefield 2142 has 1), but runs into the FPS cap with 3) and doesn't have 2) at all. Guild Wars had 1) and 3) but didn't have 2) (at least it didn't when I tested it). But EverQuest, WoW, etc. have all three.
Beyond that there are no limits to the game designs/playstyles that an MMO can support.
OK, so far I'm seeing basically "persistent world with many players in it." I can kind of go along with that, but where does all the other stuff come in to? Mind you, I'm not saying it's BAD, but where does this idea that that is what EVERY MMO should have come from?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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game design
people
people
content
i know people say people make mmos over n over, but they really do. the num 1 thing tht mmo has over anything else is the people who take part in it.
pain, drudgery, restricted gameplay, recurring fees, and a broken series of priorities in the gaming community.
(and yes, i know im playing an mmo,only by virtue of coh's quality do i stay, i dislike the genre immensely)
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Good old fashioned stupidity I guess. Or just "me too"-ness - considering how bad Crimecraft is supposed to be, I'm guessing they said all that because they were hoping to con some WoW players into trying it.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
OK, so far I'm seeing basically "persistent world with many players in it." I can kind of go along with that, but where does all the other stuff come in to? Mind you, I'm not saying it's BAD, but where does this idea that that is what EVERY MMO should have come from?
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What those devs said was probably run through marketing first, and in all forms of commercial media most marketing departments are very fond of the phrase "the same, but different" (especially in novel publishing and the film industry) - they can associate their product with other successful forerunner products to hopefully drag in their audiences, but with a minor twist to set them apart so their product has its own identity. Sadly the similarities are usually hyped up over and above the differences - one USP is all they really need/want.
In an MMO, I would expect a few things:
First off, the ability to support a massive amount of players, the persistant zones and the progression of a character that is *yours*.
The character can be as basic as a stock NPC with set stats, so long as you can at least name them (to designate one specific player from another) and something changes about the character as you play them, with at the absolute bare minimum being some kind of "score" or record.
But secondly, it has to have more depth than that.
I would expect:
To be able to communicate with people who are neither teammates nor foes, but just other joes going about thier gaming. Think Broadcast or Globals.
A storyline. Seriously. Get my character involved in what's going on. And have something going on. You will probably need NPC's for this. Give my character some reason to do something.
There are a number of other features that are expected by gamers, but you could get by without any particular one of them, so long as you have most of them.
*Crafting isn't needed, but gives that type of gamer something to do.
*RP isn't needed, but gives that type of gamer something to do.
*Having your character get more powerful than when they started probably could be skipped, but I'd have a hard time with that. I'm a builder. I like getting from L1 to the cap and then setting them up to be 90% uber.
*Character cosmetic customization. You can get by with very little, (and some have) but throw in more options and people are happier.
*PvP. For some this is needed. For others, it is a waste. As a developer, pick a side of this argument and stick with it. Or try to include it, but keep it optional.
Now that's an MMO. But there is a big difference between making a bare bones MMO and meeting the definition and making a good one and being successful or awesome.
I really couldn't tell you what makes one or even what I want from an MMO. It's hard to nail properly.
But one prime example I can name is FFXI. I actually really loved that game. With its flaws and all, I truly did like the game. But I hate that damned game and wish it burn in the bowels of hades for eternity! It wasn't particularly the game that made me hate it, but how the players changed the game. The issues with the game weren't that you couldn't find teams or you couldn't solo crap or that everything needed a team to accomplish, it was that the players wanted specially sculpted teams so would wait hours making one and wanted to go after the foes that gave the very most xp per kill even if they were retardedly higher level than you. They farked up *my* teaming.
There are lots of things to do in the game too. Crafting, exploring, mining/loging/etc, questing, so on and so forth. Doing them with friends is even more fun. But when the entire community is burning for cash, it's time to go farm the old NM camp spots for hours on end. It's probably what made me drift apart from my in-game friends enough to finally just stop playing.
The reason I stay here is because the game is just fun, I can make characters look as cool or bizarre as I want and the forums are fun
. If I couldn't get on the forums, I might not play the game for much longer after that...until they put in a new power set for me to come back and try.
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I think "persistent world with many players in it" certainly defines one of the core characteristics of the genre and much of what others have said are also included there. But any genre is an evolutionary concept that is initially defined by some kind of breakthrough process, invention or phenomenon that is later added to by adherents of that genre. At some point, another breakthrough will take that genre to a point where it becomes a whole new thing.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
OK, so far I'm seeing basically "persistent world with many players in it." I can kind of go along with that, but where does all the other stuff come in to? Mind you, I'm not saying it's BAD, but where does this idea that that is what EVERY MMO should have come from?
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For example, when does early rock and roll music become hard rock, and when does that become metal, and so on? Modern music has spawned so many genres and sub-genres and we as a culture have access to so many flavors that it's difficult if not impossible to be a purist any more.
I don't believe there's anything necessarily good or bad about it. As I said it's an evolutionary thing. If a developer incorporates the sort of things that other MMO's have into their product and want to bill it as a member of that genre, that's up to them; it's common marketing practice to position yourself. That doesn't always mean that the product is exactly or entirely what it says it is. Ultimately, what matters is that the product is fun and entertaining. If the developer can accomplish that, most people (except the purists) won't bother with the semantics.
For me, CoH is an example of this. I didn't know or care what an MMO was. I saw the ads in the comic books and they touted a game that would let me design and play a super powered character. It did (and always has for me) so I played it, had oodles of fun and 5 years later am still playing it. It STILL doesn't matter to me that it is or isn't an MMO; I'm getting what I want out of it.
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I think that stuff comes from the "RPG" half of "MMORPG". Not all MMOs are RPGs, but most RPGs have some or all of the things that the CrimeCraft dev was talking about, in some form or another. Even single-player RPGs have some of that stuff.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
OK, so far I'm seeing basically "persistent world with many players in it." I can kind of go along with that, but where does all the other stuff come in to?
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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
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I guess my resentment (yes, resentment) of people billing their games like this comes from the mediocre nature I assume games designed so "back-to-front" would have. It's like they said "OK, we made a game that's basically EQ or WoW, so to speak, but it looks kind of different. But it's the same game, we promise!" To me, a good way to design a game is to come up with something interesting and innovative and then try to build a game system around that, rather than taking an age-old game system and trying to shoehorn a game into it. "OK, we have a game in a modern setting that needs crafting. What can we craft? Err... GUNS!"|
Originally Posted by Cheekers
I don't believe there's anything necessarily good or bad about it. As I said it's an evolutionary thing. If a developer incorporates the sort of things that other MMO's have into their product and want to bill it as a member of that genre, that's up to them; it's common marketing practice to position yourself. That doesn't always mean that the product is exactly or entirely what it says it is. Ultimately, what matters is that the product is fun and entertaining. If the developer can accomplish that, most people (except the purists) won't bother with the semantics.
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Frankly, I like your view of the evolutionary and revolutionary nature of MMOs, but... Well, suffice it to say that I'm still waiting for a real revolution. Whether City of Heroes is one or not I don't want to discuss, lest I get ranted to death, so let's go with WoW. WoW was, yes, a revolution, in that it took the old, tried model and used it almost as-is, but removed a lot of the pain and suffering from it. This is what brings the MMO world to the non-hardcore gamers who don't feel like torturing themselves by devoting their lives to a game. Up until they go raiding that is, but that's still comparatively less.
Generally, I just want to see SOMETHING new in the MMO world. Just rehashes of EQ are getting really tiresome, most of all because I don't think EQ and MMO are synonymous.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Fleeting Whisper makes a very good point.
Not all MMOs are RPGs...APB is more akin to a third person shooter than a traditional MMO but has MMO tendancies. MAG for the PS3 (90 vs 90 FPS is by definition Massive, Multiplayer and will require Online). Things don't HAVE to have all the stuff listed by the Crimecraft dev in order to be an MMO. Even things like the Diablo series, which don't have half the stuff listed, could still be considered an MMO.
Crimecraft is awful, to put it bluntly, it requires both a subscription and to buy additional currency in and official RMT format (gold bars, you get a standard amount every month BUT if you want even remotely decent avatar customisation you'll need to fork out). From what I've heard of friends who tried it out for free is that it was like a crappier version of Gears of War 2 multiplayer that you have to pay to play in order to get anything even remotely half decent out of it (and why bother when you could be playing Gears of War 2 online...).
Basically if you want a MMO that's about Cops vs Gangs...wait for APB to come out.
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I both consider WoW revolutionary and the worst thing to ever happen to MMOs. Revolutionary because, yes, it really opened the genre up and made it mainstream. Horrible because about 2/3 of the MMOs that have come out since it got big just feel like somebody's desperate attempt to make The Next WoW. Its interface style is even fairly widespread in newer games. I don't hate the game, but it's hard for me to not feel that it's stifling innovation by showing that sticking close to the old formula can be very (very very very) profitable.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Frankly, I like your view of the evolutionary and revolutionary nature of MMOs, but... Well, suffice it to say that I'm still waiting for a real revolution. Whether City of Heroes is one or not I don't want to discuss, lest I get ranted to death, so let's go with WoW. WoW was, yes, a revolution, in that it took the old, tried model and used it almost as-is, but removed a lot of the pain and suffering from it. This is what brings the MMO world to the non-hardcore gamers who don't feel like torturing themselves by devoting their lives to a game. Up until they go raiding that is, but that's still comparatively less.
Generally, I just want to see SOMETHING new in the MMO world. Just rehashes of EQ are getting really tiresome, most of all because I don't think EQ and MMO are synonymous. |
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You have to remember that the term RPG doesn't actually refer to role-playing any more, but a system by which a character gains levels and makes choices about their character development. That's how a game like Borderlands (which I love) can bill itself as an FPSRPG even though the story's pretty much on rails and gameplay is a series of connected FPS maps that respawn.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Isn't there... Shouldn't there be more to an MMORPG?
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RPG does mean role-playing, it's just that CRPG does not, and "RPG" is common shorthand for "CRPG".
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Originally Posted by Mental_Giant
You have to remember that the term RPG doesn't actually refer to role-playing any more
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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
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Seems to me a lot of these "givens" derive from paper and pencil RPGs, which provided the baseline models for quantifying kids games (Avoiding "Bang! Got ya!:" "Missed me!" "Did not!" "Did too!" etc.).|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
OK, so far I'm seeing basically "persistent world with many players in it." I can kind of go along with that, but where does all the other stuff come in to? Mind you, I'm not saying it's BAD, but where does this idea that that is what EVERY MMO should have come from?
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1) Multiple players telling the story of their individual characters.
1a) In a way that is heroic/dramatically interesting.
1b) Affecting the world in which they live (the weakest link for MMOs, where the same challenges are, and perhaps must be, offered to the guy who logged on yesterday as well as the guy who logged on years ago at go live).
2) Understandable rules for interaction (they can be as whacky as you like, viz things like Paranoia or Toon, as long as they are mutually understood by all).
2a) Mediated by a trustworthy referee (the live GM, versus the computer program)
3) Characters can change as they become more experienced/powerful. XP are the earliest form of this (that model itself derived from miniatures rules point cost systems) and certainly the easiest for a program to handle. You do X, the counter increments by so much, until you get Y event/reward.
Point based skill systems are more flexible but harder to manage to avoid gamebreaking results without a live referee.
Systems like the old DC Heroes, where players can modify outcomes of their actions on the fly, are even harder for a computer to handle, and are virtually impossible in a realtime simulation.
Story based systems (for lack of a better term), where players can express rewards by manipulating the world (viz. Feng Shui), are harder still, and run into problems in the "persistent experience for all players" thing.
3a) Most MMOs use character classes with limited flexibility for which abilities players can get on a given character. Again, it makes like easier for the poor program.
4) Many MMO players are demanding (not to say spoiled). If this game offers (for example) banks, they will agitate for banks in other games even where the designers feel they don't fit. Scenarioes that allow for failure, or character designs that can produce suboptimal results, are viewed as insults, as are marketing decisions which do not reward everybody.
If a large portion of the market demands homogeneity, then vendors will tend to be homogenous.
The tech, code base and platforms are so expensive that a startup with a really idiosyncratic (in market terms) design concept would be hard pressed to find capital.
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Sooo ... it's kind of like what Tolkien was for the fantasy genre.
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Originally Posted by Kelenar
I both consider WoW revolutionary and the worst thing to ever happen to MMOs. Revolutionary because, yes, it really opened the genre up and made it mainstream. Horrible because about 2/3 of the MMOs that have come out since it got big just feel like somebody's desperate attempt to make The Next WoW.
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Sam, you're taking this to extremes. Those features you mention are the MMO equivalent of 'standard equipment'. It's like power steering in a car, people won't buy it if it doesn't have it. If you have no crafting, that kills a large part of the non-combat activities side of the equation. With no auction house (or similar mechanic), you miss out on the interactions that occur between players in a trade environment. An efficient mail system supports the trade aspect but it's not required (CoX doesn't have one). Those features were highlighted by CrimeCraft's devs because for people who know nothing about the game (which would be most of the prospective audience, honestly), that's one of the first questions they tend to ask. Many times, people assume that every MMO is going to have these "MMO standards" but not all of them actually do. But those features have become expected by the audience over the years because of their utility and usefulness. In the US (God, especially in New York City), if someone went to buy a car and the salesman said, "We only have manual transmission models", that salesman would choke on the dust of that prospective customer leaving.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
So let me repeat the question: What makes an MMO? Is it the crafting, the loot, the economy, the XP and levels? Is it? Really? I mean, I know that for a lot of MMOs, that's what they essentially are - just a skin over that. But is that really all that it comes down to? Isn't there... Shouldn't there be more to an MMORPG? Again, this is not a leading question - I honestly don't have a good answer to it. But, just... Every time I see a new MMO being made, it's always advertised like the exact same game, but in a different setting. Literally. If you manage to miss any talk about the game's setting (like I skipped in my quote), it might as well be EverQuest or some such, right down to the terminology used.
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Present day CoX has all those things (except an efficient mail system). The focus is always going to be on combat from a design perspective (unless the game is designed to be firmly niche, ala A Tale in the Desert) and if it's not, it leads to disaster (right Horizons....errr Istaria?). So the main questions are often: what's there to do besides combat...and (nowadays) what's there to do at max level. The former is asked up front, the latter often leads the second tier of questions (and is often answered with the cryptic "More details on that will be released closer to beta (or launch)".
By your own admission, you haven't really played any MMOs besides this one so perhaps these points didn't initially occur to you. Speaking as someone who has played at least 80 hours in every MMO released in North America since May of 2000, it comes with the territory. As years go by, some things become defacto standard features in MMOs. An MMO that launches in this day and age with forced teaming and little to no solo content, will die on the vine (or be so niche, it might as well have). Thus, solo content has become standard in MMOs today. That's how the genre advances. So games without these expected standards, don't tend to do very well.
An MMO is exactly what the dictionary definition states. Whether it's what you or I or he or she thinks is irrelevant because our opinions reflect our experiences and preferences, which aren't facts. There are some people who think a game can't be an MMO if it doesn't have PvP as its focus (understandably, that's the opinion of most of my corp in EVE). Others might say a game without an endgame isn't an MMO. None of that is factual. Also what's kinda funny is that your initial question is 'What makes an MMO?' and then you later ask "Shouldn't there be more to an MMORPG?" Which question do you want answered? They're not the same thing, after all. Going back to the car thing, your first question is like "What makes a car?" and the second question is "Shouldn't there be more to a midsize family sedan?". The terms are only interchangeable to people who don't know better (that there are many different types of MMOs outside of the RPG subcategory).
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This. Although in my case I really dislike the game. I think WoW moved MMOs squarely into the mainstream and simultaneously doomed the majority of them to mediocrity. They all want to try to be what it is...they all can NEVER be what it is. Simply because what WoW became was not truly planned by its creators.|
Originally Posted by Kelenar
I both consider WoW revolutionary and the worst thing to ever happen to MMOs. Revolutionary because, yes, it really opened the genre up and made it mainstream. Horrible because about 2/3 of the MMOs that have come out since it got big just feel like somebody's desperate attempt to make The Next WoW. Its interface style is even fairly widespread in newer games. I don't hate the game, but it's hard for me to not feel that it's stifling innovation by showing that sticking close to the old formula can be very (very very very) profitable.
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Back to the topic of what MMOs are. Most people have stated the facts. Lots of people. Some form of persistent character progression and usually a persistent world.
If you're looking for a commentary on MMOs though, I will say that while most of us can probably recognize one when we see it, MMOs are generally much less than they can be. A lot of this is due to developers and publishers playing it 'safe' and not stepping outside the carefully marked lines left by their predecessors. And yet more of it is due to the changing face of the people who play these games.
For instance, not all of the things from the EQ era are necessarily bad in an MMO(in moderation), but most modern MMOs have worked incredibly hard to remove or minimize them to such an extent that the idea of actual challenge in MMOs is laughable and met with general scorn.
I'm hoping that the future brings more MMOs not afraid to take risks and try new things. Or at least add more of the things that make single player games compelling. But then I'm one of those weird people that like all my games to actually contain some varied gameplay.
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I see where you can feel resentful in a way but I think that the businesses that come up with this stuff feel some sort of pressure to cash in on the successful bandwagon any way they can. It's like the suits who saw the Beatles and decided to create the Monkees as a response. Missed the point by a mile and then some, but they prolly still made money. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I guess my resentment (yes, resentment) of people billing their games like this comes from the mediocre nature I assume games designed so "back-to-front" would have. It's like they said "OK, we made a game that's basically EQ or WoW, so to speak, but it looks kind of different. But it's the same game, we promise!" To me, a good way to design a game is to come up with something interesting and innovative and then try to build a game system around that, rather than taking an age-old game system and trying to shoehorn a game into it. "OK, we have a game in a modern setting that needs crafting. What can we craft? Err... GUNS!"
Frankly, I like your view of the evolutionary and revolutionary nature of MMOs, but... Well, suffice it to say that I'm still waiting for a real revolution. Whether City of Heroes is one or not I don't want to discuss, lest I get ranted to death, so let's go with WoW. WoW was, yes, a revolution, in that it took the old, tried model and used it almost as-is, but removed a lot of the pain and suffering from it. This is what brings the MMO world to the non-hardcore gamers who don't feel like torturing themselves by devoting their lives to a game. Up until they go raiding that is, but that's still comparatively less. Generally, I just want to see SOMETHING new in the MMO world. Just rehashes of EQ are getting really tiresome, most of all because I don't think EQ and MMO are synonymous. |
As for evolution and revolution, in a way, some genres get too well defined that the purists within won't accept too much change and woe be unto the developer that tries to sell them a new product that doesn't have all the things they liked in their other MMO's.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
What makes an MMO?
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I think there's massive room for innovation in the gaming space in general and in the MMO space in particular. But I will say that even if you were given unlimited resources to make a game, there is still the valid game design rule of thumb that says don't reinvent the wheel. If you want to improve gaming, you can't leave the players themselves behind. There's something to be said for offering your players familiar touchstones so they do not need to start completely from scratch in terms of figuring out what your game is about.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I guess my resentment (yes, resentment) of people billing their games like this comes from the mediocre nature I assume games designed so "back-to-front" would have. It's like they said "OK, we made a game that's basically EQ or WoW, so to speak, but it looks kind of different. But it's the same game, we promise!" To me, a good way to design a game is to come up with something interesting and innovative and then try to build a game system around that, rather than taking an age-old game system and trying to shoehorn a game into it. "OK, we have a game in a modern setting that needs crafting. What can we craft? Err... GUNS!"
Frankly, I like your view of the evolutionary and revolutionary nature of MMOs, but... Well, suffice it to say that I'm still waiting for a real revolution. Whether City of Heroes is one or not I don't want to discuss, lest I get ranted to death, so let's go with WoW. WoW was, yes, a revolution, in that it took the old, tried model and used it almost as-is, but removed a lot of the pain and suffering from it. This is what brings the MMO world to the non-hardcore gamers who don't feel like torturing themselves by devoting their lives to a game. Up until they go raiding that is, but that's still comparatively less. Generally, I just want to see SOMETHING new in the MMO world. Just rehashes of EQ are getting really tiresome, most of all because I don't think EQ and MMO are synonymous. |
I guess what I'm saying is that you should innovate somewhere, but its probably not a good thing to innovate everywhere. And whether CrimeCraft is a good game or a bad game, the fact that they start describing it in terms of reference points to other MMOs is not an intrinsicly bad thing.
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Kind of. People said LOTRO was just copying WoW's interface early on, even after others pointed out that LOTRO is using a modification of their own Asheron's Call interface -- which predated WoW. Not everything WoW did/does is original either. They do their fair share of borrowing. |
Originally Posted by Kelenar
...The Next WoW. Its interface style is even fairly widespread in newer games.
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Now, I know, the easy answer is to just read the acronym. Many players sharing an online world. But over the years, it seems that the notion of what an MMO IS seems to have become massively intertwined with the motion of what an MMO OFFERS. We've already seen the vicious circle of MMO developers adding features because MMO players expect them, and in turn MMO players expecting features because MMOs just sort of have them and have always had them. But is THAT what makes an MMO? Is it the items, the stats, the grinds and so forth?
Now, I don't play any other MMOs. I mean I've tried, but none held me for more than a couple of days, so I tend to not pay much heed to what they offer, and as such my idea of what an MMO should be is quite skewed. However, watching a developer walkthrough for CrimeCraft (I'm dead serious here) had me shaking my head so bad I think I shook my brain stem loose. What got me was that no more than 30 seconds into the walkthrough, we get a sentence that just... Blows my mind.
So let me repeat the question: What makes an MMO? Is it the crafting, the loot, the economy, the XP and levels? Is it? Really? I mean, I know that for a lot of MMOs, that's what they essentially are - just a skin over that. But is that really all that it comes down to? Isn't there... Shouldn't there be more to an MMORPG? Again, this is not a leading question - I honestly don't have a good answer to it. But, just... Every time I see a new MMO being made, it's always advertised like the exact same game, but in a different setting. Literally. If you manage to miss any talk about the game's setting (like I skipped in my quote), it might as well be EverQuest or some such, right down to the terminology used.
There has to be something more, right?