Forza2 motorsport. Why is this not a MMORPG

[hal]

I level up, I add new ability's (cars). The world is persistant. Why is this not a MMORPG? What defines a MMORPG beside elves?

[cmlancas]

I never played Forza 2, but is there more than one person playing? I guess I fail to see the MMO in the racing realm. RPG, maybe. MMO, not so much.

[schild]

Test Drive Unlimited I think is where the line is drawn for a MMORPG racing game. :)

[Nebu]

Racing would make a good mmog as would golf.  So would many team sports.  I'm not sure why more people haven't attempted it yet beyond the fact that long-term retention would be a challenge. 

[Falconeer]

I still think Motor City Online was close to perfection.
My biggest gripe was that races allowed a maximum of 4 players.
But still it was huge, wonderful, great. Fucking fucking fucking EA.

[Venkman]

Why is this not a MMORPG?

No Gandalf wannabe

Is it out?

[Yegolev]

What is Forza 2 missing, then?  It's got everything as far as I know, but I did not play MCO.  Unless you want some jackass in bone armor to nuke your ride?

[Falconeer]

I don't know about Forza cause I don't have the 360.
MCO was classic in its MMO form, I mean servers (hence server communities), rare drops, "loots" and parts, auctions and competitions over it, and the ABSENCE of a Single Player/offline mode.
Can't talk for Forza, but I'd push to the point of saying that what makes Test Drive Unlimited (and maybe Forza) less MMO than Motor City Online is the "offline" mode. I mean, there's no offline mode in the MMOs as we learned to know them, and the only one I can think of which includes it is Guild Wars (which, because of that, many doesn't even consider more MMO than Diablo).
So basically, if and when you are given the opportunity to run the gameworld just for you (as in TDU) and to progress offline, the game is not perceived by many as a true MMO.

I really like TDU for example, but no matter how much I try, I think of it as as a glorious game but a weak MMO. Can't even shine MCO's boots.

What is Forza missing? Don't know. Can you play it offline? Bingo.

[MisterNoisy]

What is Forza missing? Don't know. Can you play it offline? Bingo.

Biggest things imo?  A 'place' for people to get together outside of racing but still within the game - like a drive-in/car show type area (on a track infield or something) where you can chat, show off your cars and talk about whatever and wander around in that space and check out other people's cars from a first or third person view.  Look at a car's history (lap times, etc) and then check out it's setup if it's fast, or talk to the owner about racing tips, etc. or even maybe give lessons.  Basically all the talk that's currently taking place in the Forza forums now (and there's a lot of it) - find a way to move all that discussion in-game and you have an MMO. 

As an aside, the ability to conduct car sales directly in addition to the auction house wouldn't hurt.  :P  All of my car/paint sales have been by request and it's a pain in the ass to do, since you can't lock the paint down on a gifted car.

TDU had some of that, but none of the cars were really customized and the driving was really weak/arcadey compared to FM2, so there was less to talk about.  There's lots to talk about in FM2, but no place to do it.

[Nonentity]

What is Forza 2 missing, then?  It's got everything as far as I know, but I did not play MCO.  Unless you want some jackass in bone armor to nuke your ride?

I... huh.



That would be kind of awesome.

(Sorry, i've been on an mspaint kick)

[Yegolev]

That was super.

Falconeer says Forza2 isn't a MOG because it's not DIKU with cars.  Am I reading that right?

Noisy's points I will give in with.  It's not a "worldly" game, you can't cruise around town and look at people's cars, but really you can't do that in EQ either.  You can sit around and yap it up in Kelethin but realistically most of the yapping happens between races/spawns and during the combat/race.  I like to think of it as GuildWars without the dancing.  I do agree that there should be more infrastructure there as far as communication and car trades, though.

[Falconeer]

Falconeer says Forza2 isn't a MOG because it's not DIKU with cars.  Am I reading that right?

No.
I said it's not *perceived* as a MMO because it can be played offline. Perception aside, what's an MMO and what's not? That, I don't know.

[hal]

That was the question. Hopefully we agree that it has some mmo and even mmorpg aspects. But I guess I agree it falls short because of the communication and trading aspects.

[MisterNoisy]

That was the question. Hopefully we agree that it has some mmo and even mmorpg aspects. But I guess I agree it falls short because of the communication and trading aspects.

It has RPG elements (leveling up, etc) but the MMO aspect is killed by the lack of an in-game social space.  'GW with cars' comes really close, but the MMO aspects of the game occur on the (not directly accessible from the client) forums.  Dropping into a race with people you don't know does bear some resemblance to PUGging in WoW or similar, but you have to leave the client to continue relationships developed in that 'PUG'.

IMO MMOs are defined by their community and the elements of the games that foster that community.  In the case of FM2, there's a community there, but it exists outside of the game client.  Built-in tools/environments that allowed you to continue relationships developed by chance and/or set up oportunities to create new relationships would make it an MMO.

Being able to play it offline has little or nothing to do with it.  If it were designed with the right functionality, people not geared towards highly competitive play would 'level up' offline, but still participate in the 'MMO' functions.

[Falconeer]

No, you don't understand.

I level up, I add new ability's (cars). The world is persistant. Why is this not a MMORPG? What defines a MMORPG beside elves?

You just described Diablo. Is Diablo a MMO?

But let's go further.

The world is persistant.

Is it? Persistant how? Warcraft 3 kind of persistancy (you level up there too)?
Or Need for Speed persistant? Are there places where you can meet your friends without racing? That's not about dancing, it's about the world being persistant (not your saved cahr's information, the world). In TDU the isle instances are basicaly there even when you log out (persistant). Is it like that in Forza? Or do they get created just for racing when enough players queue up to race (Starcraft, or even GT Legends kind of persistancy)?

In Motor City Online there weren't just circuit records, there were turf wars and clans battling for circuit owning. There were races at fixed hours, events that happened for the whole server wheter you were online or not. Weekly results that had an impact on the gameplay for everyone (said turf wars) on your server. That world was persistant to me (although it lacked the free ride part too, sadly), while having a global online ranking with best times doesn't make it more MMO than Trackmania to me.
Yeah it had the social/community tools. It had avatars, which are in TDU too, but for no social function that I know of.

Also, and maybe more important of them all, economy. Does Forza has an economy? TDU's is so simple that it doesn't deserve such a name. You can just exchange cars, but those cars are usually achievable offline too, they aren't customizable, and that's it. Not sure about Forza, again, and I'd love to know more about this. But the bazillion of loot and rares in MCO and the auctioning provided for a healthy and living market and market strategies. Wondering (honestly) how's the Forza2 economy.

Offline component. To me, offline is the opposite of online, and to a certain degree the opposite of "persistant", unless you consider persistant your saved games since the early 80s, I'll keep on with my definition of it.

Being able to play it offline has little or nothing to do with it.  If it were designed with the right functionality, people not geared towards highly competitive play would 'level up' offline, but still participate in the 'MMO' functions.

Which MMO functions?
Matchmaking? Chatting? Leveling as in having a number beside your username increasing (without actually changing anything else)?
Can't see so many MMO functions in Forza2.
MMO stands for Massively Multiplayer Online. Forza is certainly Multiplayer and supports Online Multiplayer. Massive-ness? I am sure Forza's lobbies aren't more massively-populated than earliest Quake or Grand Prix Legends ones. They just have some kind of statistic tracking functions added, but honetsly you could find that stuff in Half Life and Counterstike too. That never made 'em any more persistant.

Last question, is Guild Wars a MMO? More or less than Diablo? More or less than Forza?

[MisterNoisy]

Being able to play it offline has little or nothing to do with it.  If it were designed with the right functionality, people not geared towards highly competitive play would 'level up' offline, but still participate in the 'MMO' functions.

Which MMO functions?
Matchmaking? Chatting? Leveling as in having a number beside your username increasing (without actually changing anything else)?
Can't see so many MMO functions in Forza2.
MMO stands for Massively Multiplayer Online. Forza is certainly Multiplayer and supports Online Multiplayer. Massive-ness? I am sure Forza's lobbies aren't more massively-populated than earliest Quake or Grand Prix Legends ones. They just have some kind of statistic tracking functions added, but honetsly you could find that stuff in Half Life and Counterstike too. That never made 'em any more persistant.

Last question, is Guild Wars a MMO? More or less than Diablo? More or less than Forza?

The 'MMO functions' I'm referring to were what I mentioned above and are precisely what's separating the existing 'racing sim with online functionality and official forums' from the (hypothetical) 'massively multi racing sim'. 

In essence, we're in agreement - as it stands, it's certainly not MMO.  Add a few features to allow the community to socialize within the game (and if you look at the forums, they really really like talking about the game) and it would be, whether you could 'level up' offline or not.

[Trippy]

We've had this discussion lots of times before. To me Guild Wars is not an MMO because the battles are not "massive". In EQ you could have 100+ people fighting the same dragon. That's massive (to me). 8 vs 8 is smaller than your typical non-CS FPS game. If GW is "massive" then so is every online MP shooter game.

[caladein]

We've had this discussion lots of times before. To me Guild Wars is not an MMO because the battles are not "massive". In EQ you could have 100+ people fighting the same dragon. That's massive (to me). 8 vs 8 is smaller than your typical non-CS FPS game. If GW is "massive" then so is every online MP shooter game.

So it's the maximum amount of people that can "do something" together, not just "stand around in a lobby" together that does it? Where does that leave something like DDO? Would it fall under a "Sometimes Massive" distinction because of a portion of its end-game?

[Trippy]

We've had this discussion lots of times before. To me Guild Wars is not an MMO because the battles are not "massive". In EQ you could have 100+ people fighting the same dragon. That's massive (to me). 8 vs 8 is smaller than your typical non-CS FPS game. If GW is "massive" then so is every online MP shooter game.

So it's the maximum amount of people that can "do something" together, not just "stand around in a lobby" together that does it? Where does that leave something like DDO? Would it fall under a "Sometimes Massive" distinction because of a portion of its end-game?

It's actually two parts. One is how many people can get together in one place and share the same gameplay experience. The other is how many people you can "reach out and touch" within the game.

This is the difference between a MUD, which most people don't consider MMORPGs, and something like EQ or UO when they came out. In a MUD you might have a few hundred people on at any one time -- in EQ or UO you had an order of magnitude more people that you were sharing the world with at any given time. Sure, most of the time in EQ or UO you were still just playing together with a few friends or doing stuff by yourself -- same as in a MUD -- but there were so many more people you could interact with if you wanted to. In a MUD you could, if you wanted to, have all hundred or so people in the same room doing something together, but that still wouldn't be a "massive" game, in my book since it doesn't fulfill the second part.

Games like GW and DDO fulfill the second part (sort of, in the case of GW it really just feels like you are hopping from channel to channel like in an IRC client), but not the first, though I'm not sure about the end-game DDO stuff since that came after when I played.

[Big Gulp]

Motor City Online would be the game to launch on the 360.  Everybody would have voice, and the console is already very driving game friendly.  In a lot of ways I just think MCO was launched on the wrong platform.  It's a console game if ever there was one.

[Numtini]

There are some gameplay issues, but to me it's persistance. It's continuity. I don't think anything can sum it up more than the FFXI world camera. You can go to their site and this camera just wanders the world and you can watch what's going on. Occasionally someone will take charge of it and show a raid. But for me it's the sense that there's this world out in the electronic aether and something is going on there. The places have substance in some way.

That's all entirely emotional and has nothing to do with gameplay. Freely admit that. But emotional or not, it is something that strongly affects how I feel about a game.