We don't know how to classify stuff any more

[Azazel]

We called it an MMO back then because that is what it claimed to be, but it was no more MMOish than the division is and we agree that one isn't.

Who's this "we", white man?

It's more of an MMO than WoT and WoWarships - those are both lobby shooters with persistent upgrades, no more or less MMO than Battlefield 2-4 or all of the more recent CoDs. The Division fits the bill much more due to the other stuff already discussed and the fact that the Dark Zones, despite being instanced per tier - are persistent. As opposed to temporary arenas as in, say Destiny.

I dunno. Do you see other people while you're just running around in SW-TOR? Do they have traditional servers?

[ezrast]

Just for the record, Arenanet has never actually referred to GW1 as an MMO. They even still have their old FAQ about it: http://gw1101.gtm.guildwars.com/products/guildwars/features/default.php

[hal1]

This  conversion was the point of the original post. And I thank every one who posted for there thoughts. But I don't see us any closer to saying this game is an able and that game is a cane. All I'm hearing is none of the current games are mmorpg's. So what are they? Is Black Desert a sandbox and the division a third person shooter with persistent qualities? Or how would you categorize them?

[Azazel]

May as well throw GTA Online into there as well. It's got a persistent, online world that doubles as a hub for group instances, quests (missions) that give cash, purchasable weapon and clothing upgrades, mounts (purchasable vehicles), player housing, open-world PVP.

[Malakili]

In some ways, the Guild Wars model is the one that won out. It turns out that people are, on average, way more interested in the persistence of their character's development than the persistence of the game world. But that's just "RPG elements." Because of the fact that the vast majority of MMO games are RPG games, I think they two terms slowly became pretty associated. So a First Person Shooter than has unlocks has "RPG" elements, I guess, but that does not make it an MMO. Sussing out exactly where MMO starts and everything else ends isn't really all that useful given how much overlap they have on "persistence" fronts.

In some ways, I feel tempted to take a different approach altogether. When I think of the games that I most clearly associate with the "MMO" term, I think of games that share one particular feature - you have to care about what other players are doing. A game that allows me to effectively ignore all other players isn't an MMO the way I like to think of the term. It doesn't mean I have to directly interact, but if what other players are doing out there in the game is of literally no consequence to me, then the fact that we are all running around in the same shared space isn't particularly interesting.  This isn't really a binary thing so much as a scale or continuum.

Examples of "very-MMO" games based on this model:

Planetside 2
EVE Online (even if all I do is run missions, the economy is so important that what other players are doing substantially influences what I am doing).
Everquest

Examples of middle-ground options:

World of Warcraft (2005) leaning towards "very MMO" in many respects, particularly in that the game really assumed you were going to have to group up for end-of-quest-chain quests a lot of the time.
Guild Wars 2
Rift and any number of WoW clones.

Examples of "not-very MMO games":

Neverwinter
World of Warcraft (2016)
Guild Wars 1
Marvel Heroes


 

[KallDrexx]

That's an odd way to define MMOs.  By that definition the only reason Everquest is more of an MMO than WoW is because other players can train mobs onto you.  I don't really see any other way that other players in the game is any "consequence to you" or affect you in any way. 

I also don't understand how you can separate WoW 2016 vs WoW 2005.  The only difference I can tell is more instances but you still have a huge persistant world you and other users are running around in. 

[Venkman]

The only true MMO left is Eve in my opinion (that I know about anyway), because it's the only one that is true to the heart of what MMORPGs were when the term was first invented:

• You can't play it by yourself for the most part
• The other people you are alongside can have a direct impact on your game play for the most part
• The changes you or other people make to the world are made permanently for all to experience for the most part
• The world is always there, whether you're in it or not, for the most part.

"For the most part" is fuzzy of course.

Pre-Trammel UO, Eve, pre-JTL SWG, Second Life, ATiTD. "PvP" was just another tool for interacting with players.

Of course we know the history since. Players wanted less interaction forced on them, less open world to be confused by, more guided game play they could play co-op and structured arena-style PvP.

The "authentic" MMORPG (by my definition, so of course imho) is something that didn't have longevity as a thing. That's ok. Text adventures didn't either.

[Rendakor]

That's an odd way to define MMOs.  By that definition the only reason Everquest is more of an MMO than WoW is because other players can train mobs onto you.  I don't really see any other way that other players in the game is any "consequence to you" or affect you in any way. 

I also don't understand how you can separate WoW 2016 vs WoW 2005.  The only difference I can tell is more instances but you still have a huge persistant world you and other users are running around in. 

Early WoW had world bosses, world PvP (TM/SS was it, but that's still more than what they have now), Elite quests that required grouping, dungeons that required you to actually talk to people on your server, etc. Now everything is just "press a button, play with randoms" which removes the worldly feeling.

[Malakili]

That's an odd way to define MMOs.  By that definition the only reason Everquest is more of an MMO than WoW is because other players can train mobs onto you.  I don't really see any other way that other players in the game is any "consequence to you" or affect you in any way.  

I also don't understand how you can separate WoW 2016 vs WoW 2005.  The only difference I can tell is more instances but you still have a huge persistant world you and other users are running around in.  

In 2005 my basic experience of playing WoW was going out in the world and doing stuff. In 2016 my experience of WoW (actually 2014 was the last time I played) was sitting in a city and queueing for things. Also, they've gone out of their way to make it possible to essentially ignore other players while out in the world. Quest chains almost never end in quests than require a group or have a really tough elite that you can't kill unless you find someone to help. Basically every change WoW has had has made it as easy as possible to never interact with anyone unless you want to.

As for EQ, I'm more referring to the fact that the shared world meant that what other players were doing mattered. Basically, lack of much instancing, especially earlier on. I haven't played this game in a LOOONG time and have no idea what it's like now.

To phrase it all a different way - I think the interesting thing about the MMO genre is not always being able to do what you want to do at that exact second. Those limitations add something to the genre, rather than subtract it. Using the WoW example again: while it sucked having to wait 2 evenings in a row until I could finish quest chains because I couldn't put together a small group to finish them, the fact that I couldn't just waltz through at my leisure added something to the game.

[hal1]

Calling Eve an mmorpg blows my mind. Eve is a space sandbox. But trying to define these games is the point of the original post.

[Azazel]

Using the WoW example again: while it sucked having to wait 2 evenings in a row until I could finish quest chains because I couldn't put together a small group to finish them, the fact that I couldn't just waltz through at my leisure added something to the game.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Hammernuts isn't a particularly good design philosophy. Your and Darniaq's attempts to codify "What makes an MMO" is interesting as well, though if anything, the caveat should be the "massively" part. Not how much you're forced to interact with them, but how many people are around.

Most of these games these days are MORPGs, not MMORPGs. And I'm fine with that. And if anyone wants to nitpick the "roleplaying game" difference between TESO and The Division, I'll counter than approximately NONE computer games ever are true Role-Playing Games because there's no actual role-playing involved, which you'll probably only understand if you've played non-munchkin-style P&P RPGs. Or to put it another way, any game with a communication interface is just as good as an avenue for actual role-playing as any other.

[Malakili]

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Hammernuts isn't a particularly good design philosophy. Your and Darniaq's attempts to codify "What makes an MMO" is interesting as well, though if anything, the caveat should be the "massively" part. Not how much you're forced to interact with them, but how many people are around.

When it makes no difference if those players are real humans or NPCs (because I don't actually interact with them), then what's the point? The grouping example is actually probably bad because for some reason people hate having to group. But even more passive versions of having to care what other people are doing is important. It matters in Planetside 2 because what the others players around you are doing influences what you should do. What the other factions are attacking influences where you should go. Even small stuff like that makes a big difference. If I log in and wanted to play medic, but there are 12 other medics in the area, I should switch. If I wanted to play on Amerish, but Indar needs more help, I should travel there to fight. That isn't a bad thing, it makes things more interesting that I ostensibly have to care what decisions other actual humans are making.

Most of these games these days are MORPGs, not MMORPGs. And I'm fine with that. And if anyone wants to nitpick the "roleplaying game" difference between TESO and The Division, I'll counter than approximately NONE computer games ever are true Role-Playing Games because there's no actual role-playing involved, which you'll probably only understand if you've played non-munchkin-style P&P RPGs. Or to put it another way, any game with a communication interface is just as good as an avenue for actual role-playing as any other.

As someone who plays pencil and paper, I've really come to dislike what "Roleplaying" generally constitutes in CRPGs and MMORPGs. Sitting around in a chat room and talking about things that the game itself can't render/support with mechanics is boring as shit and could be done literally just as well in an IRC channel or sometimes even asynchronously on a forum. At that point what you're doing isn't even part of the game and seems pointless to me. I get that some people like it, but it seems like without the ability to actually have your actions influence the game world in some way, you're not really roleplaying. The absence of a DM to shift the story around your actions makes it essentially impossible to role play.

Incidentally, one of the reasons I like the "hammernuts" games is that they tend to have a kind of de facto roleplaying. Let's use an EVE example. I was mining and a pirate came by. He demanded a ransom, we went back and forth, ultimately I stalled long enough to get some allies to warp in from nearby and chase him off. Was that interaction between me and the pirate roleplaying? I realized it actually didn't matter and that's why I liked that game so much. It didn't matter if that guy was into the idea of RPing a pirate or just actually BEING a pirate in the game - there is no distinction really. Compare to WoW where RPing in my experience tended to amount to sitting around the bar in Stormwind talking about character storylines that had no bearing on anything.

[Falconeer]

Incidentally, one of the reasons I like the "hammernuts" games is that they tend to have a kind of de facto roleplaying. Let's use an EVE example. I was mining and a pirate came by. He demanded a ransom, we went back and forth, ultimately I stalled long enough to get some allies to warp in from nearby and chase him off. Was that interaction between me and the pirate roleplaying? I realized it actually didn't matter and that's why I liked that game so much. It didn't matter if that guy was into the idea of RPing a pirate or just actually BEING a pirate in the game - there is no distinction really. Compare to WoW where RPing in my experience tended to amount to sitting around the bar in Stormwind talking about character storylines that had no bearing on anything.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. I wouldn't discount sitting in Stormwind talking about characters backgrounds as shitty or invalid, but I agree that it loses a lot of its charm when it is not supported by how the game forces itself on the players, especially in a multiplayer environment. From an RPG perspective, nothing feels less roleplaying-y to me than a streamlined heroic MMORPG where everything is functional, instantaneous, essential and convenient.

Again, not everyone has to feel the same way, but interestingly, even in Pen & Paper roleplaying there are players who just want to cut to the chase and kill monsters and get the loot, and those who genuinely appreciate a long campaign full with complicated interactions with NPCs and some roadblocks that have to be dealt with in ways different than just rolling a die or swingin a sword. Clearly, I belong to the second group, and I've been playing and DM'ing for 30 years, so I like the "hammernutsing" in multiplayer games because of what Malakili said and because to me it adds a weight to the world instead of making it feel like a very artificial movie set where I just walk to shoot a few lines, get paid and sign autographs. The "forced" multiplayer and the shared world to me was the whole point of MMORPGs, it really fit my playstyle and my school of thought when it came to RPGs. And I wouldn't choose an MMORPG to to do roleplaying, but having that as part of my background, I loved that these games -originally- offered a lot in that sense. Now, they just don't.

But then again, my favourite P&P RPGs of all time are Call of Cthulhu and Hârnmaster, so there.

[Amarr HM]

Calling Eve an mmorpg blows my mind. Eve is a space sandbox. But trying to define these games is the point of the original post.

Can't it be both? I don't think these terms you mention are mutually exclusive.

[Falconeer]

hal1 sprung an interesting albeit old conversation, but on this topic he's the one who is utterly confused and close to clueless.

[Kail]

I think "MMO" is more an ideal these days than a working definition.

The term MMO was coined when there was a huge difference between MMOs and non-MMOs.  You were either UO or Everquest (or similar) with thousands of players sharing a huge world, or you were some other multiplayer game like Starcraft or Street Fighter or Quake where you're looking at usually something between two and fifty people per game.  There was not a lot of in-between. 

Nowadays, though, with even single player experiences being run through an online server, there are a lot of ways for companies to mash two players together that don't fall strictly to one side or the other.  Like in Spore, you've got thousands of other players putting out content that you'll be seeing, that you'll be interacting with, but you'll never see another actual player in your game.  Or in Dark Souls, where you've got potentially thousands of other players who COULD invade your game at any given moment, but you're not going to see more than a handful at a time.  Or in Mechwarrior Online where you're fighting in 12 vs. 12 matches but those matches are all tied in to a galactic map which has potentially thousands of people playing.

To me, genres act as more of a central point of comparison than as a border that defines precisely what falls inside and outside this term.  Stuff near the middle is clearly an MMO (like WildStar, World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls Online).  But further away, it gets harder to tell, and that matters a lot less.  Like, what does it matter if Destiny is technically an MMO or not?  It's like arguing if tomatoes are technically a fruit or a vegetable.  It doesn't taste any different, it doesn't change how many calories are in it or how many you need to make a pizza, it's just semantics.

You could come up with a definition that includes The Division as an MMO and you could also come up with a definition that excludes The Division as an MMO.  Which one would be the "real" definition?  Neither, really, we aren't the word police, we can't claim that we have the REAL definition here.  Language is consensual, and if there is no clear consensus then it's both really difficult and fairly useless to argue about what the "correct" meaning of a term is.

[Amarr HM]

Well the bone of contention comes from games marketing themselves as an MMO when they clearly aren't. World of tanks stands to mind, never sat well with me the MMO tag for that one. No persistent world,  no virtual market,  if thats an Mmo then Battlefield and Cod are too.

The term MMO is ambiguous and therein lies the problem. But deeply interactive persistent multiplayer worlds doesnt quite roll off the tongue,  so I guess we're stuck with MMO to describe the games that are more deserving of the classification and the ones that aren't.

[hal1]

Again this is the point of the op. I was shocked at some of the opinions voiced on some of these games. As far as I  judge if other players are around and their a class that has ability's it's a mmorpg. That is all I require. But hearing your thoughts is another way to think about it. I am not hearing this game is this and that game is that. I  am just hearing that they ane not mmorpg"s. I think they are. I think the above definition works. But please continue to discuss if you think otherwise.

[Malakili]

As far as I  judge if other players are around and their a class that has ability's it's a mmorpg.

Team Fortress 2 is an MMORPG by this definition. League of Legends is an MMORPG by this definition. In fact, almost every multiplayer game in this day and age where "RPG elements" have seeped into pretty much every genre is an MMORPG by this definition.

Also, "MMO" is not equivalent to "MMORPG."

[hal1]

I think we know what a lobby game is (dialbo). If it isn'ta lobby game it's an mmorpg. Now I don"t present this as fact. But its how I view these games and hearing your thoughts are of value.

[Kail]

I think we know what a lobby game is (dialbo). If it isn'ta lobby game it's an mmorpg. Now I don"t present this as fact. But its how I view these games and hearing your thoughts are of value.

Assuming that by "lobby game" you mean "a game with a lobby of some kind" then that still leaves a lot of room for debate.  Mario Kart and Street Fighter have different classes with different abilities and don't have a lobby.  If you mean ONLINE games without a lobby then there are still a bunch of matchmade games these days which don't have lobbies.

edit: honestly, this feels kind of like grasping at straws.  I wouldn't agree that lobbies are related in any way to MMOs (I don't see how a server browser in TF2 is functionally any different from the server browser that loads whenever you start World of Warcraft) and stuff like classes and abilities are mechanics that aren't related at all to multiplayer.  It's like trying to define cola by what type of bottle it comes in.

[Count Nerfedalot]

First off, if You are going to try to define terminology, be specific.

MMO != RPG
RPG != RP
MMO != MMORPG
CRPG != PnP-style RPG

Each of those acronyms was made from real words with specific (ish) meanings which at least originally were important to the meaning of the acronym, and particularly to the difference in meanings between similar acronyms.

Pretty much all of the arguments about these terms come from one or both sides eIther:
  Ignoring one or more of the words,
  Disagreeing on the definition of one or more of the words,
  Differing in assumptions about what other words "belong" in the term,
  or just flat-out using the wrong term for what they are trying to describe

For example, most debates about the term MMO stem from ignoring, misusing, or disagreeing on the definition of the first M which is Massively. And the arguments about that pirate Guild Wars by a good deal, back to whoever first added instancing, was it COH?

But yeah, all the terms have been appropriated and misused to mean whatever the hell each user wants them to mean at that moment with no regard or consensus on what the words behind them mean or even on the (varied) historical meaning they had. So unless you enjoy debating semantics and taxonomy it's probably wisest to not use them at all, and assume that you probably don't understand someone else to mean the same thing when they use them as you would if you did, even when they say exactly what you would have said!

[Venkman]

back to whoever first added instancing, was it COH?

I think it was AO. But CoH was the first one I thought did it well.

I also remember some gnashing of teeth about how "dangerous" comparmentalizing players was going to be to the "genre" 

[hal1]

OK , I'm gonna chime in. And I know theirs disagreement here. Some think that RPG means saying forsooth and stuff. I do not, I think rpg means speaking about what my level and my class is finding challenging. If any one runs past me, or is in sight of me and is not in my group then is is an mmo. Oh it is not an mmo because there are channels. Well ya but there are concurrent servers as well. Again your thoughts are worth thinking about and are welcome. But I am cumming to the conclusion that I can not describe a game to another. The labels just don't make sense.

[rattran]

Fuck, I can't tell if your constant use of the wrong word/spelling is due to head trauma, meds, stupidity, or an elaborate troll. It's making me stabby.

[Lucas]

But I am cumming to the conclusion

Good for you.

[Hutch]

Fuck, I can't tell if your constant use of the wrong word/spelling is due to head trauma, meds, stupidity, or an elaborate troll. It's making me stabby.

He could be on a mobile device. Autocorrect is an endless fount of mirth.

[Pendan]

If any one runs past me, or is in sight of me and is not in my group then is is an mmo.

Someone else playing in the same game space as you while online makes it a Multiiplayer game for the second M but does not make it Massive for the first M in MMO.

[Chimpy]

Also, remember that the term massively has different notions now than it did back in the late 90s.

The largest possible quake server (which required the quakeworld networking modification and a ridiculously high powered for the time machine running the game server) was 64 players.

Even if only 200 people could connect to a game world at the same time, that would be considered "massive". Now though, the term "massively-multiplayer" really has no relation to anything. It is just an old word that has continued to be used to describe something that is mostly different but shares a fundamental similarity to the object it originally described.
Example: the "trunk" on a car. The term was actually originally used to describe a portable trunk that was mounted on the back of horse-drawn carriages/coaches to hold personal items. The first automobiles had a place for those trunks as well, but eventually they integrated them into the car and personal luggage became suitcases instead of "steamer trunks". But the name trunk stuck.

[carnifex27]

Fuck, I can't tell if your constant use of the wrong word/spelling is due to head trauma, meds, stupidity, or an elaborate troll. It's making me stabby.

He could be on a mobile device. Autocorrect is an endless fount of mirth.

My phone autocorrected vape and vaping into rape and raping for the first few days I had it . Hilarity ensued

[Venkman]

Also, remember that the term massively has different notions now than it did back in the late 90s.

You're right that "massively multiplayer" could mean anything from a few hundred to a few thousand, and smaller since almost all of the games are further broken down into zones (with either hard loading or seamless streaming).

But ths is why I relate "massively mulitplayer" with "persistent state world". Technically different things, but the persistence of the world beyond your time in it was (and is) a clear differentiator, a unique set of expectations beyond arena battling games like FPS, RTS, or MOBA.

The main differentiator is that at any given time your game can be affected by the random coming and going of any number of people who may or not be there because you want them to be and are doing things you may or not expect. You can't get that without persistence, and I think it's only in massively multiplayer games that we see this.

[Rendakor]

Don't a lot of these recent survival games have persistent world states? I generally don't classify any of those as MMOs simply due to low population count on their servers.

[Malakili]

Yeah, a lot of them do.

[Amarr HM]

Don't a lot of these recent survival games have persistent world states? I generally don't classify any of those as MMOs simply due to low population count on their servers.

Surely an mmo doesn't need a high population count,  just potential for one.

[Rendakor]

True, but I though those games were capped at 100 players/server or something. That isn't quite massive to me.