MMORPG
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game) is an online computer role-playing game (RPG) in which a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world. As in all RPGs, players assume the role of a fictional character (most commonly in a fantasy setting) and take control over many of that character's actions. MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player RPGs 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, with combined global memberships in subscription and non-subscription games exceeding 15 million as of 2006<ref name="subscribers">Chart of Subscriber Growth, http://www.mmogchart.com</ref>. Overall, revenues for MMORPGs exceeded half a billion dollars in 2005 and are expected to reach over a billion dollars by 2009.<ref name="revenue">Parks Associates (2005), Online Gaming Revenues to Triple by 2009 http://www.parksassociates.com/press/press_releases/2005/gaming-1.html</ref>
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[edit] Common features
Though MMORPGs have evolved considerably, many of them share some basic characteristics.
- Traditional Dungeons & Dragons style gameplay, including quests, monsters, killing monsters, and loot.
- A system for character development, usually involving levels and experience points.
- An economy, based on the trade of items such as weapons and armor, and a regular currency.
- Guilds or clans, which are organizations of players, whether or not the game actively supports them.
- Game Moderators or Game Masters (frequently abbreviated to GM), which are sometimes-compensated individuals in charge of supervising the world, though in most games they are unable to completely moderate the game.
As most MMORPGs are commercial, such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft, players must either purchase the client software for a one-time fee or pay a monthly subscription to play. Most major MMORPGs require players to do both. By nature, "massively multiplayer" games are always online, and require some sort of continuous revenue (such as monthly subscriptions, advertisements) for maintenance and development. The alternate term MMGS (Massively Multiplayer Gaming Service) is also appropriate for describing MMOGs in general and MMORPGs in particular.
[edit] History
The term MMORPG was coined in 1998 by Verant Interactive, 989 Studios and Sony Online Entertainment to describe their new joint game offering, EverQuest. Although MMORPGs, as defined today, have only existed since the early 1990s, their history begins as early as the late 1970s.
[edit] The first gameworlds
The beginning of the MMORPG genre can be traced to text-based (entirely non-graphical) Multi-User Domains, or MUDs, with the first being developed by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw in 1978. These games ran on private servers, usually at a university, and sometimes without the knowledge of the system's administrators. Players would typically connect to the games using a TELNET client, and gameplay was similar to role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons. By typing commands into a parser, players would enter a dungeon, fight monsters, gain experience, and acquire loot.
Similar games quickly surfaced during that period for the PLATO System. MUDs (and later their descendants such as MUSHes and MOOs) were sometimes wildly different from one another, but shared many basic interface elements. An example of this would be a player's means of navigating his or her character around the gameworld by typing in compass directions ("n", "se", etc.).
Many MUDs are still active and a number of influential MMORPG designers, such as Raph Koster, Brad McQuaid, Mark Jacobs, Brian "Psychochild" Green and Damion Schubert, began as MUD developers and/or players.
[edit] Early commercial development <ref name="Online World Timeline">Koster, Raph (2002) "Online World Timeline," http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/mudtimeline.shtml</ref>
The first commercial MMORPG (although what constitutes "massive" requires qualification when discussing mid-1980s mainframes) was Islands of Kesmai designed by Kelton Flinn and John Taylor. Still text-based (or, more accurately, roguelike), this game became available to consumers in 1984 for $12.00 per hour via the CompuServe online service.
The first graphical character-based interactive environment, though not actually an RPG, was Club Caribe. Although first released as Habitat in 1988, Club Caribe was introduced by LucasArts for Q-Link customers on their Commodore 64 computers. Users could interact with one another, chat and exchange items. Although very basic, its use of online avatars (already well established off-line by Ultima and other games) and combining chat and graphics was revolutionary.
The first graphical MMORPG was Neverwinter Nights by designer Don Daglow and programmer Cathryn Mataga. "Neverwinter Nights" went live on AOL for PC owners in 1991 and ran through 1997. This project was personally championed and green-lighted by AOL President Steve Case. Both Club Caribe and Neverwinter Nights cost $6.00 per hour to play.
During the early-1990s, commercial use of the internet was limited by NSFNET acceptable use policies. Consequently, early online games like Legends of Future Past, Neverwinter Nights, GemStone III, Dragon's Gate, and Federation II relied heavily on proprietary services such as CompuServe, America Online, and GEnie for distribution.
Following Neverwinter Nights was The Shadow of Yserbius, a MMORPG on The Sierra Network (TSN), which ran from 1992 through 1996. The game was produced by Joe Ybarra. The Shadow of Yserbius was an hourly service, although it also offered unlimited service for $119.99 per month, until AT&T acquired TSN and rendered it strictly an hourly service. The name was then changed from TSN to the ImagiNation Network.
As NSFNET restrictions were relaxed, traditional game companies and online services began deploying games on the internet. The first commercial text-based MMORPG to make this transition to the Internet from a proprietary network provider (CompuServe, in this case) was Legends of Future Past, designed by Jon Radoff and Angela Bull. The game utilized a staff of professional Game Masters who conducted online events, and originally offered at $6.00 per hour in 1992<ref name="1992pricing">Lombardi, Chris (1992) "Legends in their Own Minds," Computer Gaming World, http://static.filefront.com/cgw/1992_08_issue97.pdf</ref>. Prices were later decreased to $1.80/hour for Internet users, and ran until 2000.
[edit] World-wide MMORPGs
Access to the Internet, forming a global playerbase, caused game companies to grow in popularity and accumulate truly massive numbers. With this global access to paying customers, there also came a surge in profitability for game companies.
Meridian 59, launched by 3DO in late 1996, was one of the first Internet MMORPGs. It was the first Internet game from a major publisher, the first to be covered in the major game magazines, and the first to introduce the flat monthly subscription fee. Most significantly, however, and another first for online RPGs, was its 3D engine, allowing players to experience the game world through the eyes of their characters. A cult following quickly grew for Meridian 59 that still exists today.
The Realm Online was another successful early Internet MMORPG, launched by Sierra Online. Although released just after Meridian 59, the beta was active several months before. The Realm Online had fully animated 2D graphics, both in and out of combat situations, which made it accessible to a wider audience compared to more text-based games or the graphical MUDs on which it was based. Also, its gameplay and interface were already familiar to those accustomed to the graphical adventure games earlier popularised by Sierra. Like many of its predecessors, The Realm Online only featured simple turn-based combat, however, it did feature a huge number (for the time) of visual character customization options. It, too, is still running.
Ultima Online, released in September 1997, is now credited with popularizing the genre. It featured 3D isometric/third-person graphics, and was set in the already popular Ultima universe. It was also a more involved, complex game than many of its predecessors.
Meanwhile, commercial online gaming was becoming extraordinarily popular in South Korea. Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds, designed by Jake Song, was commercially released in 1996 and eventually gained over one million subscribers. Song's next game, Lineage (1998), enjoyed even greater success gaining millions of subscribers in Korea and Taiwan. This helped to secure developer NCsoft's dominance in the global MMORPG market for several years.
EverQuest, launched in March 1999 by Verant Interactive (later acquired by Sony Online Entertainment), brought fantasy MMORPGs into the Western mainstream. It was the most commercially successful MMORPG in the United States for five years, and was the basis for 12 expansions (as of October 2006) and several derivative games. In 1999, following Ultima Online and EverQuest, was another hit, Asheron's Call. Together, these three games are sometimes referred to as the original "big three" of the late 1990s.
[edit] MMORPGs in the new millennium
By the turn of the century, game companies were eager to capitalize on the new market. The concept of massively multiplayer online games expanded into new video game genres around this time, though RPGs, with their ability to "suck in" the player, were (and still are) the most financially promising.
The next generation of MMORPGs, following the "big three" of the previous decade, was to include the medieval PvP-oriented Dark Age of Camelot, the sci-fi Anarchy Online, and Ultima Online 2. Anarchy, released first in June 2001, was saddled with crippling technical problems upon its release, mostly due to an inability to handle the huge playerbase. Camelot launched smoothly four months later, introducing "Realm vs. Realm" PvP and other innovations, but still never attained the media attention or fame garnered by the previous "big three", which were still running strongly. Ultima Online 2, while greatly anticipated by its community, was cancelled when Electronic Arts decided that it would be more profitable to instead concentrate on the first Ultima Online. Growth of the 'big three' nearly plateaued, and some began to believe that the market had possibly been saturated.
Of course, developers didn't stop trying, and dozens of MMORPGs continued to be produced.
In 2002, Final Fantasy XI was released, which hoped to bring in fans of the extremely popular (but mostly single-player) Final Fantasy series, which was particularly popular in Japan. Like the previous Final Fantasy games, this one was playable on a console, using a handheld controller, but bore little resemblance to gameplay in prior Final Fantasy titles. It was also notable for randomly selecting servers for new player-characters (instead of letting players pick for themselves), a practice which was highly criticized, but resulted (intentionally[citation needed]) in game worlds in which players would regularly interact and play the game with both English and Japanese. Final Fantasy XI still persists as one of the leading MMORPGs on the market to date.
Also released in 2002 was the sprite-based Ragnarok Online, produced by Korean company Gravity Corp. Unbeknownst to many Western players, the game took Asia by storm, as Lineage had done. Gravity once claimed that there were 17 million subscribers of the game, though this number may not be entirely reliable.
May 2003 saw the release of Eve Online, produced by Crowd Control Productions, which had players taking the role of spaceship pilots and had gameplay similar to the cult series Star Control. Though not the first space MMORPG ("Earth and Beyond" was released in September 2002), Eve was able to achieve lasting success. One of the reasons for its success may have been the game's design, in which all subscribers play in one unsharded universe, rather than the population being split across multiple shards as used by other games, as well as a heavy emphasis on player versus player interaction.
In October 2003, Lineage II (NCsoft's sequel to Lineage) became the latest MMORPG to achieve huge success across Asia. It received the Presidential Award at the 2003 Korean Game awards, and is now the second most popular MMORPG in the world. As of the first half of 2005 Lineage II counted over 2.25 million subscribers worldwide, with servers in Japan, China, North America, Taiwan, and Europe, once the popularity of the game had surged in the West.
In April 2004, NCSoft produced another significant title, City of Heroes. Though it introduced no major innovations in gameplay, it featured an extreme number of possible visual character appearances, and its comic-book superhero theme made it stand out.
[edit] Modern MMORPGs
The most recent generation of MMORPGs, based on arbitrary standards of graphics, gameplay, and popularity, is said to have launched in November 2004 with Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest II and Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft (WoW). At the time, Sony expected to dominate the market, based on the success of the first Everquest, and decided to offer a flat monthly rate to play all of their MMORPGs including EverQuest, EverQuest II, and Star Wars Galaxies, to keep from competing with itself. However, World of Warcraft immediately overtook all of these games upon release, and indeed became so popular that it dwarfed all previous monthly-fee MMORPGs. At present, WoW is one of the most played games in North America, and the most played MMORPG worldwide, with a total of over 7.5 million customers. A total of approximately 97.5 million dollars a month is being made by blizzard in subscirption costs. [citation needed] With the release of these newer games, subscriptions began to decline for many older MMORPGs, even the year-old Lineage II, and in particular Everquest 1. The current MMORPG market has World of Warcraft in a position similar to the position of Dungeons & Dragons in the tabletop RPG market, with both games' market share being greater than 50% of the overall market. {fact}
In April 2005, Guild Wars launched successfully, introducing a new financial model which might have been partly responsible for its success. Though definitely an online RPG, and technically having a persistent world (despite most of the game's content being instanced), it required only a one-time purchasing fee. It was also designed to be "winnable", more or less, as developers wouldn't profit from customers' prolongued playtime. Other differences compared to traditional MMORPGs included strictly PvP-only areas, a relatively short playtime requirement to access end-game content, instant world travel, and strategic PvP. For these differences it was termed instead a "Competitive/Cooperative Online Role-Playing Game" (CORPG) by its developers, and is now seen by some as occupying a new niche in the MMORPG market. With two million players as of June 19, 2006<ref name="guildwars members">Guild Wars hits 2 million, http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?loadNews=5553&bhcp=1</ref>, Guild Wars is still continously profitable (due to several expansions) and can be seen as a serious competitor to WoW.
Finally, despite WoW's domination in the pay-MMORPG market, there still has been significant competition (and potential for profit) among free MMORPGs. A good example of a profitable free MMORPG is the Korean MapleStory, a 2D side-scroller developed by Wizet, which features purchasable in-game "enhancements". Due to its free nature, the game is said to have more than 50 million players in all of its many versions, with the majority of them from East Asia. Another good example would be the popular Java-based online RPG RuneScape, developed by British developer Jagex. It allows for players to sign up for a member's account for extra content, in addition to the ad-supported free accounts. It is also extremely popular, and claims almost ten million members [citation needed].
[edit] Economics of MMORPGs
Many MMORPGs feature living economies, as "items" and currency have to be gained through play and have definite value for players. These economies can be easily analyzed (using data logged by the game) and have value in economic research; more significantly, these "virtual" economies can have an impact on the economies of the real world.
One of the early researchers of MMORPG economics was Edward Castranova, who demonstrated that a supply-and-demand market exists for virtual items and that it crosses over with the real world.<ref name="poo">Castronova, Edward. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. ISBN 0-226-09626-2, University Of Chicago Press</ref> This crossover has some requirements of the game:
- The ability for players to sell an item to each other for in-game (virtual) currency.
- Bartering for items between players for items of similar value.
- The purchase of in-game items for real-world currency.
- Exchanges of real-world currencies for virtual currencies.
The idea of attaching real-world value to "virtual" items has had a profound effect on players and the game industry, and even the courts. Castronova's first study in 2002 found that a highly liquid (if illegal) currency market existed, with the value of the in-game currency exceeding that of the Japanese yen.<ref name="CurrencyExchange">Online Game Economies Get Real (2002), http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,55982,00.html</ref> Some people even make a living by working these virtual economies; these people are often referred to as gold farmers.
Game publishers usually prohibit the exchange of real-world money for virtual goods, as in the case of World of Warcraft. However, a number of products actively promote the idea of linking (and directly profiting from) an exchange. Some players of Second Life have generated revenues in excess of $100,000.<ref name="SecondLifeEconomy">My Virtual Life, Business Week (May 1, 2006) http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982001.htm</ref>
Some of the issues confronting online economies include:
- The use of "bots" or automated programs, that assist some players in accumulating in-game wealth at an advantage to other players.<ref name="bots">Robert Shapiro (2003), How online games teach us about economics, http://www.slate.com/id/2078053/</ref>
- The use of unsanctioned auction sites, which has led publishers to seek legal remedies to prevent their use based on intellectual-property claims.<ref name="stopauctions">Blizzard Goes to War, http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/12/blizzard_goes_t.html</ref>
- The taxation of virtual wealth by real-world governments.<ref name="taxing">Eric Bangeman (2006), Coming soon to an MMORPG near you: taxes, http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061016-7997.html</ref>
[edit] Private servers
One reaction to the virtual economies has been the phenomena of "private servers," which are servers operated by individuals and groups who have reverse-engineered commercial MMORPG products. Anyone who sets up their own private server has complete control over the virtual world existing on that server. Typically, these servers operate in violation of publisher's copyrights and end-user license agreements. In November 2006, NCSoft and the Federal Bureau of Investigation shutdown a prominent private Lineage 2 server that had claimed 50,000 active users.<ref name="fbi">FBI, NCSoft drop hammer on MMORPG pirates, http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061120-8258.html</ref>
Private servers are mostly run by volunteers, and most of them are free. However, some private servers may wish for people to donate money, sometimes in exchange for a bonus in the game. Private servers remain markedly less popular than the official servers, with player numbers usually in the hundreds, though popular private servers may reach up to one or two thousand online players and even up to ten thousand in terms of player registrations. EQEmu is a server emulator for EverQuest; others exist for World of Warcraft, Lineage II, Ultima Online, Ragnarok Online, and many other MMORPGs.
[edit] Psychology of MMORPGs
Since the interactions between MMORPG players are real, even if the environments are not, psychologists and sociologists are also able to use MMORPGs as tools for academic research.
Sherry Turkle, a clinical psychologist, has conducted interviews with computer users including game-players. Turkle found that many people have expanded their emotional range by exploring the many different roles (including gender identities) that MMORPGs allow a person to explore.<ref name="turkle">Sherry Turkle (1997), Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, ISBN 0684833484</ref>
Nick Yee, a Ph.D student, has surveyed more than 35,000 MMORPG players over the past few years, focusing on psychological and sociological aspects of these games. His research can be found at The Daedalus Project. Recent findings included that 15% of players become a guild-leader at one time or another, but most generally find the job tough and thankless; <ref name="yee1">Nick Yee (2006), Life as a Guild Leader, http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001516.php</ref> and that players spend a considerable amount of time (often a third of their total time investment) doing things that are directly-related to, but outside of the game itself.<ref name="yee2">Nick Yee (2006) Time Spent in the Meta Game, http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001535.php</ref>
Other researchers have found that the enjoyment of a game is directly related to the social organization of a game, ranging from brief encounters between players to highly organized play in structured groups.<ref name="nardi harris">Nardi, Harris (2006), Strangers and Friends: Collaborative Play in World of Warcraft, Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work</ref>
Also, Richard Bartle has classified multiplayer RPG-players into four primary psychological groups. His classifications were then expanded upon by Erwin Andreasen, who developed the concept into a thirty-question test that helps players determine which category they are associated with. With over 200,000 test responses as of 2006, this is perhaps the largest ongoing survey of multiplayer game players.<ref name="bartletest">Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology, http://www.guildcafe.com/bartle.php</ref>
[edit] Developing MMORPGs
In general, the cost of developing a commercial MMORPG title exceeds ten million dollars.<ref name="devcost">Adam Carpenter (2003), Applying Risk-Based Analysis to Play Balance RPGs, Gamasutra, http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030611/carpenter_01.shtml</ref> These projects require multiple disciplines within software engineering, art design and network instrastructure:
- The front-end (or client) component of a commercial MMORPG features 3D graphics. As with other modern 3D games, the front-end requires expertise with implementing 3D engines, real-time shader techniques and physics simulation. The actual visual content (areas, creatures, characters, weapons, spaceships and so forth) is developed by artists who typically begin with two-dimensional concept art, and later convert these concepts into animated 3D scenes, models and texture maps.<ref name="3d game design">Frank Luna (2006), "3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.0c, a Shader Approach," Worldware Publishing, ISBN 1598220160</ref>
- Developing an MMOG server requires expertise with client/server architecture, network protocols, security and relational database design. MMORPGs include reliable systems for a number of vital tasks. The server must be able to handle and verify a large number of connections; prevent cheating; and apply changes (bug fixes or added content) to the game. A system for recording the game's data at regular intervals, without stopping the game, is also important.<ref name="game server">Jay Lee (2003), Gamasutra, Relational Database Guidelines for MMOGs, http://www.gamasutra.com/resource_guide/20030916/lee_01.shtml</ref>
- Maintenance requires sufficient servers and bandwidth, and a dedicated support staff. Insufficient resources for maintenance lead to lag and frustration for the players, and can severely damage the reputation of a game, especially at launch. Care must also be taken to ensure that player population remains at an acceptable level by adding or removing servers ("shards"). Peer-to-peer MMORPGs could theoretically work cheaply and efficiently in regulating server load, but practical issues such as asymmetrical network bandwidth and CPU-hungry rendering engines make them a difficult proposition. Additionally, they would probably become vulnerable to other problems including new possibilities for cheating. The hosted infrastructure for a commercial-grade MMORPG requires the deployment of hundreds (or even thousands) of servers. Developing an affordable infrastructure for an online game requires developers to scale to large numbers of players with less hardware and network investment.<ref name="architecture">GDC Proceedings 2005, Online Game Architecture: Back-End Strategies, http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2005/features/20050310/esbensen_01.shtml</ref>
- In addition, the team will need to have expertise with the fundamentals of game design: world-building, lore and game mechanics,<ref name="game fundamentals">Chris Crawford (2003), Chris Crawford on Game Design, New Riders Games, ISBN 0131460994</ref> as well as what makes games fun.<ref name="fun games">Koster and Wright (2004), "A Theory of Fun for Game Design," Paraglyph Press, ISBN 1932111972</ref>
[edit] Current trends in MMORPGs
The trend in MMORPGs is to supply heavy guidance in a linear world, i.e, quests that must be completed in order to advance, backed by constantly improving graphics and sound. Player-created content was the greatest trend until approximately 2004, when World of Warcraft hit the scene and changed the climate of the MMORPG industry dramatically.
Movie "tie-ins", common in other video game genres, have so far seen limited success in MMORPGs. The most recent example of this is The Matrix Online, based on the Matrix trilogy of films; the earliest possibly was Star Wars Galaxies. Neither of these titles was a great financial success, probably due to their divergence from the original property and poor gameplay. In addition to movie-license MMORPGs, there may be games produced on licenses from television; for example, Stargate Worlds, based on the popular Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis television series, is currently under development. The process is also apparently being applied in reverse, with James Cameron designing a MMORPG that will precede a film (Project 880) it is tied to. <ref name="Cameron">James Cameron's Game Theory, Business Week (Feb. 13, 2006) http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_07/b3971073.htm</ref>
Player-created content may or may not become more common in future games. Some MMOGs already rely heavily on player created content, from animations to complete buildings with player-created textures and architecture - examples include Second Life and the noncombat RPG A Tale in the Desert. However, these games are very different from the far more popular "standard" MMORPGs revolving around combat and limited character tradeskills. Player-created content in these games would be in the form of areas to explore, missions to carry out and specific weapons and armor to use. The Saga of Ryzom, was the first of these "standard" types of MMORPG's to offer players the ability to create content. Whether or not this becomes mainstream is anyone's guess.
Finally, some predict[citation needed] that a new rush of independent MMOG development, spurred on by easy-to-use software engines, will result in successful "mods" for MMORPGs, similar to what has happened with the FPS genre (see Counter-Strike).
[edit] Independent development
Many small teams of programmers and artists have tried to create their own MMORPGs. The average MMORPG project takes three to four years and large investments of money to create. Independent development, or game development not run by any company, usually takes longer due to lack of developer's time, manpower or money. Additionally, the long-term lack of funding required for running MMORPG servers may lead to the abandonment of the project.
However, many smaller developers are producing games with pay to play graphics, gameplay and features. Only time will tell if these games can afford to run.
Sometimes these independent games are free-to-play, but will confer in-game privileges to paying customers.
Some of the best-established independent projects are RuneScape, AWplanet, Crossfire, Daimonin, Endless Online, Star Wars Combine, Eternal Lands, Dream Blue Online and Planeshift. Some independent MMORPG projects are completely open source, such as Daimonin, while others like Planeshift feature proprietary content made with an open-source game engine. The developers of Endless Online have also released development information with details about their coding.
The WorldForge project has been active since 1998 and formed a community of independent developers who are working on creating framework for a number of open-source MMORPGs. The Multiverse Network is also creating a network and platform specifically for independent MMOG developers.
[edit] Browser-based MMORPGs
- See also: List of text-based MMORPGs
With the success of the MMORPG genre in recent years, several multiplayer games played in web browsers have also begun using the MMORPG moniker. This largely text-based sub-genre developed from old BBS games and pre-dates the modern idea of an MMORPG. Browser-based MMORPGs are usually simpler games than their stand-alone counterparts, typically involving turn-based play and simple strategies (e.g. "build a large army, then attack other players for gold"), though there are many interesting variations on the popular themes to be found. Many browser-based MMORPGs are more like turn-based strategy games or wargames than role-playing games.
One of the earliest examples of a browser-based MMORPG is Archmage, which dates back to early 1999. More recently, faster computers and the Java programming language have allowed the introduction of graphical browser-based MMORPGs such as RuneScape, which are more similar to standalone MMORPGs. Macromedia's introduction of Shockwave 3D and the MUS Multiuser Server in 2001 makes it possible to create 3D browser-based MMORPGs based on the Shockwave plug-in.
[edit] Cheating in online games
Cheating is a major challenge for game developers and legitimate players. Exploiting is a form of cheating involving the use of a flaw in the game mechanics to gain unfair advantages. Depending on the nature of the exploit, developers can address the exploits within a short time through patches and updates. Even when fixed, exploiting can still be an issue, as exploiters may still have the advantage or items they gained before the patch was released. Depending on the nature of the exploit, a rollback may be needed just to counter the effects. Twinking may also be seen as another form of cheating.
Third-party programs may be used to automate in-game actions, often with such efficiency that it gives users a huge advantage. Botting is a term for a player using a script that could automate progress through the game without them actually playing the game. Farmers, if they are unable to use exploits, will use such methods to harvest ingame currency or materials from the game world around the clock. They often sell the currency and items they earn via eBay or other commerce sites, thus possibly unbalancing the game's economy. This gives players a chance to make their way into the upper tiers of the system without following the logic originally intended by the designers.
Some third party programs are released with code in them to capture and relay account details back to the author, enabling them to steal virtual possessions from the account or impersonate the rightful owner to perpetrate confidence tricks and other scams. These are often packaged, trojan-like, with seemingly-innocuous software tools for easier distribution amongst unsuspecting users.
Even more subtle methods are known to be used to cheat; depending on the way the game handles certain aspects of gameplay the client can be modified, either on disk, directly in memory, or on the wire as data passes between the client and server. So far as the server does not verify the veracity of client data or, ideally, take care of important calculations server-side, this can be used to modify values such as character health or armour, speed up movement, or change other aspects of the game to the cheater's advantage. There are programs that have been designed to prevent external programs from running during a game, such as GameGuard. The integrity of client files can also be checked each time the game is loaded, although of course there are usually methods to disable these protection programs.
[edit] See also
- Computer role-playing game
- List of MMORPGs
- List of free MMORPGs
- Comparison of MMORPGs
- MMORPG terms and acronyms
- MMOFPS
- AMMORPG
- XORG (MMORPG/FPS)
- MUD
- MMORTS
- Online wedding
- Virtual crime
- Virtual economy
- Avatar
- Browser game
- List of text-based MMORPGs
- Player versus player
[edit] References
<references/>
- Ferrell, Keith. (November 1987) "The Future Of Computer Games: Ten Industry Leaders Speak Out". COMPUTE!
- Kent, Steven (September 23, 2003). "Alternate Reality: The history of massively multiplayer online games". GameSpy.
- Bartle, Richard A. (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds. Indianapolis: New Riders. ISBN 0-13-101816-7.
- "Massively Money-Eating Online Games" (October, 2005) PC Gamer 12 (10), p.28
[edit] External links
- MMOGCHART.COM - Bruce Sterling Woodcock's tracking of MMOG subscription data.
- The Daedalus Project - Nick Yee's ongoing survey study of MMORPG players. Demographics, narratives and essays.
- Massively Multiplayer Online Games - A set of articles posted at Gamespy.com, concerning the past, present, and future of the genre.
- Evolution of MMORPGs - An article from Jiyan Wei on the role of the ordinary user in shaping MMORPGs.zh-min-nan:MMORPG
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