Almost every single game on the market is a single player game with multiplayer options. Is that the what an MMORPG is suppose to be? The definition of a MMORPG is: Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing game. Very few games fit that description, like EVE Online, Darkfall Unholy Wars and Mortal Online. Why do you not play a MMORPG that is labled as an MMORPG?
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
Comments
il bite because i agree with you:P
the newer MMO's wich are getting made have all forgotten about the social aspect wich made up MMORPG's so now we have to do with indeed single playing games. thats basicly what they are now. single player games are atractive to more people hence we have to put up with them.
I'm surprised Pong isn't on this website.
Some Pong games can be played solo and some have multiplayer = MMO!!!!!!
Just about every MMORPG IS a solo game with multiplayer options, because content and "levelling" is inevitably far too easy, and it has been designed that way on purpose. Too steep a learning curve or too tough a game and the game just won't make the Big Bucks. The "Why split XP and loot drops with someone if you don't have to?" attitude also comes into effect for a great many players these days, and the result of both these factors is a profound lack of desire to group up. There's just no need and no incentive to grouping up.
As for the social aspect of MMO gaming, once the backbone of MMORPGs, because grouping simply isn't required there's no need to chat to players in-game any more. I'd much rather be chatting to real-life family and friends via Skype, Teamspeak, Ventrilo or whatever while I game. I am most definitely socialising - just not with players currently in the game I'm playing. Why would I? A player I see in a game I'm playing is no more important or relevant to me than the crowds in a mall, or the people on the bus - I see them, but have no interest in talking to them for any great length of time, if at all.
/grabs popcorn for the purist dogpile
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Bonz.....oh wait, I'm not a purist.
/shuffles feet and stares at the ground
Could I......could I share your popcorn?
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
/passes the bag over
Dig in.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Me too! Extra butter plus a rootbeer please!
Where's the any key?
Gamers forgot what an MMO was supposed to be once the genre got flooded with WoW clones and instant gratification players.
But at least there are some true MMOs still out there.
/opens the fridge
Out of Captain Eli's
Out of Sprecher
Out of Masons
Out of Barrel Brothers'
Out of XXX
Crap!
Ummmm, Lok? Could you........
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Not sure really... I next to never solo in EQ2, the game I am playing right now.
But that aside, this is an old old conversation that's been had since these games started going down to solo road. What I have learned over that time though is to avoid games that punish me for grouping and support games that allow me to group.
Not deep wisdom, I know, but it's a core truth I guess- Just look for the games that support the style of play you want and pay into them in the hope that they recognise there is a market for that style and make more. It's all you can do as a consumer.
This has been the way it has gone for the last few years. I also miss group oriented leveling content.
There are a good bit of people around here that feel the same way.
There's also a lot of D bags that will be explaining to you that because of the sucess of games where you can solo to cap, you must be mistaken about what you like.
Nothing like being told what you should and shouldn't enjoy, but just take the good with the bad.
Will they be sitting next to the Dbags who tell you only forced grouping is a true MMO?
/just curious
Good popcorn, not sold on the IBC yet, though.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
im curious do you find diablo 3 to be an MMO? alot of people do apearntly because well there is a massive amount of people online o_0
I'm more comfortable with the acronym of MMORPG as Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. In context massively modifies multiplayer meaning that it is a multiplayer game (a game with a group of players in the same space) but on a scale much larger than the normal (aka huge amounts of players in the same space).
The significance of this is that the increase of scale is not the size of the connected world, but rather the number of players in it.
Huge numbers of players in the same world, playing the same game. Playing together or not isn't in my understanding part of the underlying definition.
So, my answer to the question is: No, an MMORPG is not a single player game with optional multiplayer. An MMORPG is a game with a huge amount of player characters in the same world, playing how they want to play, cooperatively, competitively or solo.
Because label does not matter. If a game is fun, i will play it whether it is called a SP online game, or a MMORPG.