Discussion of theory is acceptable but very difficult. Please try and be careful, we'd rather not have to lock/remove this thread. That being said I think that the term MMO is an artificial distinction. It may be useful for communicating the broad scope of a game, but what does it really mean?
And given that Massively is contained within the definition of MMO, can you really have a Multiplayer online game that is massive and micro at the same time?
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One could make a distinction between a Massive and Micro multi-player experience and still use the same general abbreviation. It would be difficult to convey verbally, but in writing I'd refer to the former as an MMO and the latter as an mMO.
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Originally Posted by Moderator 08
And given that Massively is contained within the definition of MMO, can you really have a Multiplayer online game that is massive and micro at the same time?
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Goodbye, I guess.
@Lord_Nightblade in Champions/Star Trek Online
nightblade7295@gmail.com if you want to stay in touch
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Yes, but I wanted to make the distinction between an MO(Multiplayer Online), which could be referring to say, a randomly populated deathmatch, and something with a persistent world that all the players are in and have specific characters which get more effective over time.
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Originally Posted by Moderator 08
And given that Massively is contained within the definition of MMO, can you really have a Multiplayer online game that is massive and micro at the same time?
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Read the title immediately thought of very small cars from my childhood.
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That's where MORPG could come in|
Originally Posted by ShadeovBlack
Yes, but I wanted to make the distinction between an MO(Multiplayer Online), which could be referring to say, a randomly populated deathmatch, and something with a persistent world that all the players are in and have specific characters which get more effective over time.
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Multiplayer Online Role Palying Game.
IN fact several PC RPG's actually offer this kind of functionality. A full single player game and then offering the same campaign available online to play with other friends.
IIRC one of the earlier PC games had this. You had 5 cd's of single player and if you wanted you could actually start an online game where up to 5 other people could join you(which was the party limit).
So here you have a clear difference between an MORPG, and an MMORPG like CoX
Alright, I admit it. I just like saying Micro-MMO. 
Also, I don't like using RPG, its just so loosely defined.
Hmm, the way I could see it work would be if you had a subscription to somewhere, but instead of just having a subscription to one MMO, you'd have a subscription to a "mother-MMO" so to speak.
You'd create a character there and then take it into one of many smaller worlds. Like perhaps you're in a fantasy mood, so your character puts on elf ears and joins the fantasy world for the night. Maybe you're in a sci-fi mood? Your character jumps into his pilot suit and you're off hunting space pirates in the space world. Then you'd in a superhero mood and your character puts on its superhero costume and flies off into the superhero world.
It'd be the same character, and the various worlds would play more or less similar, but you'd be free to jump from any world to any world while playing. It could allow the developers to create several smaller worlds with themes that might not support a full MMO, but are happy distractions when your character gets tired of the fantasy/sci-fi/superhero worlds. Maybe you just feel like going fishing, and hey, there's a world for that, too.
It's a monumental job to make that work, though. Imagine having to make sure that this works, and that nothing in one world will create a bug in another. Still, the concept could be awesome, if pulled off. I'm just glad I don't have to develop it.
Oh, and I'm glad video game theory isn't an instant delete in the new rules. We just have to be careful not to discuss actual games.
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Originally Posted by Lord_Nightblade
One could make a distinction between a Massive and Micro multi-player experience and still use the same general abbreviation. It would be difficult to convey verbally, but in writing I'd refer to the former as an MMO and the latter as an mMO.
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Except "m" is "milli". The Greek letter Mu is used for micro, although many folks use a "u" which looks similar. So "uOG" is what I'd go for.
The second M in MMO stands for "Multiple" and it doesn't really make sense to me to refer to "mirco-multiple." Once you're micro, I'm not sure the multiple part really matters. Also I can't figure out how folks keep dropping the "Game" from "MMO." I know many folks do it, but where the heck does that come from? It's Massively Multiple Online Game. Dropping the "game makes no sense, it's just an adjective then. Probably some used it to describe a "MMO game" but there you have the noun in a sentence. OK grammar Nazi rant over.
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Yes, one could use Mu, but I've never seen it used in that context outside of a mathematical or scientific context, and MMOs aren't generally considered in that manner by the gaming community.|
Originally Posted by gameboy1234
Except "m" is "milli". The Greek letter Mu is used for micro, although many folks use a "u" which looks similar. So "uOG" is what I'd go for.
The second M in MMO stands for "Multiple" and it doesn't really make sense to me to refer to "mirco-multiple." Once you're micro, I'm not sure the multiple part really matters. Also I can't figure out how folks keep dropping the "Game" from "MMO." I know many folks do it, but where the heck does that come from? It's Massively Multiple Online Game. Dropping the "game makes no sense, it's just an adjective then. Probably some used it to describe a "MMO game" but there you have the noun in a sentence. OK grammar Nazi rant over. |
Also, I'm pretty sure the second M in MMORPG (which is often shortened to MMO) stands for Multiplayer, not multiple. A Massively Multiple Online Role Playing Game makes no sense, how can one have multiple onlines?
Goodbye, I guess.
@Lord_Nightblade in Champions/Star Trek Online
nightblade7295@gmail.com if you want to stay in touch
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Originally Posted by lord_nightblade
how can one have multiple onlines?
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^awesome^
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Originally Posted by Moderator 08
Discussion of theory is acceptable but very difficult. Please try and be careful, we'd rather not have to lock/remove this thread. That being said I think that the term MMO is an artificial distinction. It may be useful for communicating the broad scope of a game, but what does it really mean?
And given that Massively is contained within the definition of MMO, can you really have a Multiplayer online game that is massive and micro at the same time? |
Hmmm, I think I might take you off of my crap list...
My Lego Models http://www.flickr.com/photos/30369639@N07/ lemur lad: God you can't be that stupid... I'm on at the same time as you for once, and not 20 minutes into it you give me something worth petitioning?Lady-Dee: Hey my fat keeps me warm in the winter and shady in the summer.
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I remember someone attempting to do that in the old, OLD days of text-based "Multi User Dungeons", AKA MUD's (typically hosted on university mainframe computers, well before anyone thought to try and run businesses based on the idea). Was called "Islandia", I forget who hosted it. |
Originally Posted by McNum
Hmm, the way I could see it work would be if you had a subscription to somewhere, but instead of just having a subscription to one MMO, you'd have a subscription to a "mother-MMO" so to speak.
You'd create a character there and then take it into one of many smaller worlds. Like perhaps you're in a fantasy mood, so your character puts on elf ears and joins the fantasy world for the night. Maybe you're in a sci-fi mood? Your character jumps into his pilot suit and you're off hunting space pirates in the space world. Then you'd in a superhero mood and your character puts on its superhero costume and flies off into the superhero world. It'd be the same character, and the various worlds would play more or less similar, but you'd be free to jump from any world to any world while playing. It could allow the developers to create several smaller worlds with themes that might not support a full MMO, but are happy distractions when your character gets tired of the fantasy/sci-fi/superhero worlds. Maybe you just feel like going fishing, and hey, there's a world for that, too. It's a monumental job to make that work, though. Imagine having to make sure that this works, and that nothing in one world will create a bug in another. Still, the concept could be awesome, if pulled off. I'm just glad I don't have to develop it. Oh, and I'm glad video game theory isn't an instant delete in the new rules. We just have to be careful not to discuss actual games. |
Of course, there was no concept of character advancement, as characters were text descriptions and their actions were whatever you typed.
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Or we could revert to the grandfather of the internet based multi-player world, which was... MUD... Multi-User Dungeon (or Multi-User Domain... depending on who you listen to.) The ORIGINAL term was Dungeon, but Domain later replaced it as the genres became more diverse and not everyone was doing a Medieval world with "Dungeons". To give you an idea of how micro these things were, a decent one would average out at about 25-30 players online during peak hours. A really really busy one would max out at about 150-300. There were several hundred that would do 10-20 players on a really really good day.
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Originally Posted by Lord_Nightblade
One could make a distinction between a Massive and Micro multi-player experience and still use the same general abbreviation. It would be difficult to convey verbally, but in writing I'd refer to the former as an MMO and the latter as an mMO.
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- Garielle
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Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme
I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".
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I think we need to remember development time and resources vs content and variety. Having small dedicated fans playing a small MMO is nice, but it takes an enormous amount of time and energy on the development side to keep the content fresh and interesting.
Therefor I see a danger in that having many micro games means having more "worlds" but less content in each world. Less content means less long standing interest in play. Once you've done the ten or so hours of play, you will move on to something else.
So if this is the case, why even develop it as an MMO, and just make a RPG with Multiple player internet access and perhaps an open source mod tool that the players can then create content, one notable RPG franchise did this and it was pretty popular.
As MMO's stand now, I have this experience anyway, with being in a Massive world, but my play experience is with a small dedicated group of players that I play with. The other players don't even need to be there for all the interaction we have with them, but without them, the game would fail because of economics.
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I used to play on a MUSH that had different areas for different time periods with a meta theme involving time travelers from the future who were fighting a some kind of time war. You had to choose a time period when creating a character and were locking into that time period. The far future time travel area, which gave access to all areas of the game, was invitation only so the mods would have control over it. It was kind of a neat concept but all of the players gravitated to the Old West area (I don't remember what the others were except one for Ancient Rome) so the game eventually morphed into an Old West game, shedding the other time periods and the time travel metastory.
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Originally Posted by Thug_Two
I remember someone attempting to do that in the old, OLD days of text-based "Multi User Dungeons", AKA MUD's (typically hosted on university mainframe computers, well before anyone thought to try and run businesses based on the idea). Was called "Islandia", I forget who hosted it.
Of course, there was no concept of character advancement, as characters were text descriptions and their actions were whatever you typed. |
"Tell my tale to those who ask. Tell it truly, the ill deeds along with the good and let me be judged accordingly. The rest is silence." -- Dinobot
When you enter an instanced mission in any current MMO the 'Massively' disappears. Only the people in your instance have any effect on your immediate game experience, while all the other people on the server could just as well be hanging out on IRC or in a graphical lobby.
This style of play (matchmaking(lft), strong interaction with a few players, and communication with a larger group) is present in all forms of online games, including FPS, RTS, poker, chess and even play by email.
In my opinion, the future, just like the present, of online gaming is fun games with tools that make it easy to form a community. There are already a number of game distribution services that provide a lot of the community support services, which allow smaller developers to focus on their core gameplay, so I think it is very likely that we will see an increase in the number of smaller game releases.
The thing that makes something an "MMO" to me, has nothing to do with the Massive part of the translation of the initial, just like the D in MUD didn't really have anything to do with the setting being a Dungeon.
The thing that makes it an MMO to me is the persistence of the world setting. This is something MUDs gave to the early MMO games, essentially. A world that keeps running when no players are in it.
It could be a micro MMO by being a very small graphical RPG game with a persistent world, I think. It could even potentially be a FPS type game or another game type instead (RTS?)
*All these abbreviations I am using represent game genres that are not completely defined by what their letters stand for. For example, many RPGs include a first person mode, some real time strategy the player needs to exhibit, and shooting. Some RTS games and some FPS games have elements of role playing. But the genres are pretty distinct - RPG has levels and gaining new abilities as you go up in level, with the retention of earlier abilities too. FPS has aiming, twitch gameplay with little power progression tied to time played. RTS has the ability to build up resources and create a lot of units each with distinct offensive/defensive/resource building capability, and defend buildings which also provide those same traits. And MMOs are about playing in a persistent world with other people also playing in it, where everything you do is stored on the server, and the client is just a view into that persistent world.
So, very possibly micro MMOs will take off. But I don't see much evidence of them doing so...? And if I did, I'd have to talk about it so vaguely I might as well not 
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At the same time, a lot of the problems with MMOs, and a lot of the reasons they need so much content, are because of that first M--Massively. (Way back when I discussed this very topic with my friend, I jokingly suggested the name of Moderately Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games for smaller MMOs.) With fewer players in a given world, you can have more dynamic content and less big, empty plains full of wandering animals to kill.|
Originally Posted by QuietAmerican
I think we need to remember development time and resources vs content and variety. Having small dedicated fans playing a small MMO is nice, but it takes an enormous amount of time and energy on the development side to keep the content fresh and interesting.
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If players are allowed to make substantial impacts on the world, that leads to a lot more replayability right there. There are groups here in CoH that pretty much do nothing but RP shared plots together and have been doing so for years, and that's with little except the game's chat client to work off of. Content doesn't necessarily have to be really time-consuming to hook players. Those kinds of people are probably a much smaller niche than some mainstream MMOs are going for... but with an emphasis on smaller playerbases, MMOs could afford to try to attract niches instead of trying to have something for everybody.
Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.
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In all honesty, MMOs haven't really expanded all that far beyond the old lobby systems that online gaming was first built around. You meet up in a central gathering location, isolate yourselves from other players, then go adventure as a small party. The only real difference is that the place you go adventuring is part of an open world where you come across other, isolated groups of players. The problem is that games generally want to provide isolated experiences to players, despite dropping them into shared environments. This leads to environments balanced around the isolated group, with a bunch of heavy handed rules to avoid exploitation and griefing that mostly serve to further isolate players from one another. It's reached a point where you might as well simply make the persistent world a hub, and design most of your content in isolated instances.|
Originally Posted by QuietAmerican
As MMO's stand now, I have this experience anyway, with being in a Massive world, but my play experience is with a small dedicated group of players that I play with. The other players don't even need to be there for all the interaction we have with them, but without them, the game would fail because of economics.
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I think if the true massive MO experience is going to continue, rather than contract into a smaller experience, its going to have to find a way to embrace the petty, squabbling masses and make the persistent concept something that matters. Likely this means going back to the MMO roots, and giving players paths to follow other than adventurers, replacing the game's usual PCs with players instead. It also likely means finding a way to keep the players persistent in the world, even when they're not logged on. Giving them a day job that serves the other active players as a shopkeeper, bodyguard, doctor, or whatever when they're not online. It also means letting them radically effect the world, which is the most difficult task to include while keeping the game fun.
Do I think any of this will happen? Absolutely not. Players in general are simply too self centered, impatient, and prone to treating one another poorly for a real persistent, unguided experience to do anything but drive its playerbase away rather quickly. I think the answer is simply to regress to a less massive scale. Hubs where players can chat and gather with instances of designed combat. The true open world game is a neat premise; it just doesn't seem to hold up in theory to the reality of the community it attracts.
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So... we CAN discuss Video Games, as long as we're not discussing SPECIFIC video games?
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Originally Posted by Moderator 08
Discussion of theory is acceptable but very difficult. Please try and be careful, we'd rather not have to lock/remove this thread. That being said I think that the term MMO is an artificial distinction. It may be useful for communicating the broad scope of a game, but what does it really mean?
And given that Massively is contained within the definition of MMO, can you really have a Multiplayer online game that is massive and micro at the same time? |
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Yes and no.
Making the hundredth clone of an existing game and improving on only one aspect or another, or simply transitioning a proven formula to a different setting can only go so far.
On the other hand, most attempts at doing something else entirely meet with rejection or people trying to shoehorn their tried and true methods from the big formula games into the new game.
As such, it's impossible to truly invent the MMO wheel anew and actually get away with it, I believe.
In that sense, aiming for a smaller, non-massive audience and aligning one's structures accordingly might be sensible. However, the question is whether such an approach is economically viable. If not, it'll remain the domain of hobbyists, but at that point, you might as well go play a MUD or MUSH since it's hard to do appealing graphics without an appropriate budget. Yes I know there are tons of successful indie games out there, thanks to download platforms covering the distribution side these days. But very few of those have graphics in any way comparable to big money productions.
"If you're going through hell, keep going."
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So I was recently playing <Redacted> which isn't an MMO but a mod on another <Redacted> to allow multiplayer. I often have as much fun in that <Redacted> as I do in a full MMO. (the <Redacted> is based off D&D so its kind of MMO-ey already.) While I have never seen more than 7 people logged in at one time, and though I'd like to see more, its alright because its a smaller <Redacted>.
So what I really want to discuss the possibility that in the future we might have thousands of smaller niche Micro-MMOs alongside the big bruisers.
Do you think this is a good idea or a bad one? Do you play anything similar? <no names remember> Any other thoughts?
ps: The mods have already seen this, and we seem to found a compromise, so this thread is staying, so please feel free to actually post.