MMORPG

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (commonly abbreviated MMORPG) is a genre of computer role-playing games in which a large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world. The term MMORPG was coined by Richard Garriott,[citation needed] the creator of Ultima Online, the game credited with popularizing the genre in 1997.

As in all RPGs, players assume the role of a fictional character (often in a fantasy world), and take control over many of that character's actions. MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player CRPGs by the number of players, and by the game's persistent world, usually hosted by the game's publisher, which continues to exist and evolve while the player is away from the game.

MMORPGs are very popular throughout the world. Worldwide revenues for MMORPGs exceeded half a billion dollars in 2005, and Western revenues exceeded US$1 billion in 2006. In 2007 and 2008 the virtual goods buying and trading has taken an amazing increase. Next to the more traditional subscription model, virtual goods are a second source of revenues for publishers. In 2008, Western consumer spending on subscription MMOGs grew to $1.4 billion. The most popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft, has over 11 million paying subscribers as of 2009.

Although modern MMORPGs sometimes differ dramatically from their antecedents, many of them share some basic characteristics. These include several common themes: some form of progression, social interaction within the game, in-game culture, system architecture, and character customization. Characters can often be customized quite extensively, both in the technical and visual aspects, with new choices often added over time by the developers. Many games also offer some form of modding in order to allow for even greater flexibility of choice.

Character abilities are often very specific due to this. Depending on the particular game, the specialties might be as basic as simply having a greater affinity in one statistic, gaining certain bonuses of in-game resources related in-game race, job, etc.

Themes
The majority of popular MMORPGs are based on traditional fantasy themes, often occurring in an in-game universe comparable to that of Dungeons & Dragons. Some employ hybrid themes that either merge or substitute fantasy elements with those of science fiction, sword and sorcery, or crime fiction. Still others use more obscure themes, including American comic books, the occult, and other recognizable literary genres. Often these elements are developed using similar tasks and scenarios involving quests, monsters, and loot.

Progression
In nearly all MMORPGs, the development of the player's character is a primary goal. Many MMORPGs feature a character progression system in which players earn experience points for their actions and use those points to reach character "levels", which makes them better at whatever they do. Traditionally, combat with monsters and completing quests for NPCs, either alone or in groups, are the primary ways to earn experience points. The accumulation of wealth (including combat-useful items) is also a way to progress in many titles, and again, this is traditionally best accomplished via combat. The cycle produced by these conditions, combat leading to new items allowing for more combat with no change in gameplay, is sometimes pejoratively referred to as the level treadmill, or 'grinding'. The role-playing game Progress Quest was created as a parody of this trend.

Also, traditional in the genre is the eventual demand on players to team up with others in order to progress at the optimal rate. This sometimes forces players to change their real-world schedules in order to "keep up" within the game-world.


MMORPGs almost always allow players to communicate with one another. Depending on the other interactions allowed by the game, other social expectations will be present.

Teamwork
Many MMORPGs exploit their players' social skills and offer support for in-game guilds or clans (though these will usually form whether the game supports them or not).[3] As a result, many players will find themselves as either a member or a leader of such a group after playing an MMORPG for some time. These organizations will likely have further expectations for their members (such as intra-guild assistance).

Even if players never join a formal group, they are still usually expected to be a part of a small team during game play, and will probably be expected to carry out a specialized role (such as healing). In combat-based MMORPGs, usual roles include the "tank", a character who absorbs enemy blows and protects other members of the team, the "healer", a character responsible for keeping up the health of the party,[9] the "DPS (Damage Per Second)," a character specializing in inflicting damage, and sometimes the "CC (Crowd Control)," a character who temporarily controls the opponent, such as the "NPC" (Non-Player Character), and making the opponent lose its control of actions and abilities. Other common roles include being a dedicated "buffer" or "debuffer", using abilities that affect the team or the opponents in other ways. Any given MMORPG might allow players to take on all of these roles, additional hybrid roles, or none of them. Despite the variability, some players might enjoy one role over others and continue to play it through many different MMORPG titles.

Roleplaying
Some MMORPGs also may expect players to roleplay their characters – that is, to speak and act in the way their character would act, even if it means shying away from other goals such as wealth or experience. However, as this behavior is far from being the norm, most MMORPG players never actually play the roles of their characters.[citation needed] Still, MMORPGs may offer "RP-only" servers for those who wish to immerse themselves in the game in this way.

MMORPG's generally have Game Moderators or Game Masters (frequently abbreviated to GM), which may be paid employees or unpaid volunteers who attempt to supervise the world. Some GMs may have additional access to features and information related to the game that are not available to other players and roles.



Culture
Since MMORPGs have so many elements in common, and those elements are experienced by so many people, a common culture of MMORPGs has developed which exists in addition to the culture present within any given game. For example, since MMORPGs often feature many different character "classes", the games must be balanced in order to be fair to all players, and this has led players of many games to expect "buffing" or "nerfing", which is a term describing the strengthening or weakening of a subset of players, respectively.

As another example, in many older MMORPGs the fastest way to progress was simply by killing the same monsters over and over again, and as this is still common in the genre all MMORPG players know the process as "grinding", or "camping" (sitting at a monster's spawn point in order to attack it as soon as it respawns). The importance of grinding in MMORPGs, and how much "fun" it contributes to the experience, is constantly debated. Many MMORPGs have taken steps to eliminate or reduce grinding, but few such attempts have met with success, and it is generally accepted by players and developers alike that some amount of 'grind' is required to maintain a stable playing experience.

MMORPG addiction, which has been a source of concern for parents,[dead link] also affects the culture. Some players might look down on those who invest huge amounts of time and or money into a game, while others might scorn those who can't put in the time to "play properly". The validity of such viewpoints is heavily debated, with both sides of the issue being discussed frequently on most games' forums.

System architecture
Most MMORPGs are deployed using a client-server system architecture. The software that generates and persists the "world" runs continuously on a server, and players connect to it via client software. The client software may provide access to the entire playing world, or further 'expansions' may be required to be purchased to allow access to certain areas of the game. EverQuest and World of Warcraft are two examples of games that use such a format. Players generally must purchase the client software for a one-time fee, although an increasing trend is for MMORPGs to work using pre-existing "thin" clients, such as a web browser.

Some MMORPGs require payment of a monthly subscription to play. By nature, "massively multiplayer" games are always online, and most require some sort of continuous revenue (such as monthly subscriptions and advertisements) for maintenance and development. Some games, such as Guild Wars, have disposed of the 'monthly fee' model entirely, and recover costs directly through sales of the software and associated expansion packs.

Depending on the number of players and the system architecture, a MMORPG might actually be run on multiple separate servers, each representing an independent world, where players from one server cannot interact with those from another; World of Warcraft is a prominent example, with each separate server housing several thousand players. In many MMORPGs the number of players in one world is often limited to around a few thousand, but a notable example of the opposite is EVE Online which accommodated around 20,000 players in the same world as of August 2007 and 51,675 users online in February 2009. Some games allow characters to appear on any world, but not simultaneously (such as Seal Online: Evolution), others limit each character to the world in which it was created.

History of massively multiplayer online role-playing games
Although MMORPGs, as defined today, have only existed since the early 1990s,[4] all MMORPGs can trace a lineage back to the earliest multi-user games which started appearing in the late 1970s. The first of these was Mazewar, though more would soon be developed for the PLATO system. 1984 saw a roguelike (semi-graphical) multi-user game, called Islands of Kesmai. The first "truly" graphical multi-user RPG was Neverwinter Nights, which was delivered through America Online in 1991 and was personally championed by AOL President Steve Case. Other early proprietary graphical MMORPGs include three on The Sierra Network: The Shadow of Yserbius in 1992, The Fates of Twinion in 1993, and The Ruins of Cawdor in 1995.

When NSFNET restrictions were lifted in 1995, the Internet was opened up to developers, which allowed for the first really "massive" titles. The first success after this point was Meridian 59, which also featured first-person 3D graphics, although The Realm Online appeared nearly simultaneously and may be credited with bringing the genre to a wider player-base. Ultima Online, released in 1997, may be credited with first popularizing the genre, though Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds was primarily responsible for mainstream attention throughout Asia which was released in 1996, about a year earlier than Ultima Online. It was EverQuest that brought MMORPGs to the mainstream in the West.

These early titles' financial success has ensured competition in the genre since that time. MMORPG titles now exist on consoles and in new settings, and their players enjoy higher-quality gameplay. The current market for MMORPGs has Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft dominating as the largest pay-to-play MMORPG , alongside earlier such titles like Final Fantasy XI and Phantasy Star Online, though an additional market exists for free-to-play MMORPGs, which are supported by advertising and purchases of in-game items. This free-to-play model is particularly common in Korean MMORPGs such as MapleStory and Rohan: Blood Feud. Also, there are some free-to-play games, such as Runescape, where only about half the game is free and you would have to pay monthly to play the full version. Guild Wars is an exception. It avoids competition with other MMORPGs by only requiring the initial purchase of the game to play.