Talk:History of massively multiplayer online games

Untitled
I would like to help--LizardPariah 06:24, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Merger
History of MMORPGs is a good article, but I don't think it should be a stand alone... Vint 20:24, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed that the original "history" should just have stayed with the article. {Caliah 05:04, 18 April 2006 (UTC)}


 * Support merging. Brand 01:36, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

"History" has been returned here, 11 months later, as the original article is just too long. -Beefnut 06:38, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I moved it here as it was so incredibly long in the MMORPG article which is almost GA. I didn't want one section to take up 50% of the article; I was afraid that it could affect the result of the GAC which is currently on hold. Greeves (talk • contribs) 21:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe that this should be presented in more of a time line format, than a descriptive article. Perhaps a year by year. I do not like the fact that World of Warcraft is presented subjectively in this format, and is in comparison to all MMORPGs after. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.235.66.52 (talk) 20:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Requested move
I guess the result of the move at the MMORPG article will affect this one. If you would like to participate, please visit Talk:MMORPG. Greeves (talk • contribs) 21:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Free MMORPGs?
Why was the free MMORPG section removed. From the article? It should be mentioned.--65.174.252.12 19:56, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Free-to-play MMORPGs should of course be mentioned, but throwing them all in at the end of the article upsets the chronological organization. Though a summary paragraph on the state of the free-to-play market would be appropriate there, the introduction of notable free-to-play titles should occur earlier, where chronologically appropriate (as it does for MapleStory). --Beefnut 19:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Nationwide/Global MMORPGs
I am wondering which MMORPG was the first to have a USA-wide audience, with players all around the country (was any of the PLATO games truly nation wide?), and which one was the first to be global, with the same server hosting players from many countries? Does anybody know that for sure? I think it is historically important, and the article does not address this. Vincent Lextrait 06:32, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think there's a way to effectively demonstrate that, since the Internet was global almost from the beginning. In the commercial MMO space, LOFP had a national/international audience on the 'net when it moved from CompuServe to the Internet as soon as the commercial Internet backbones were added (allowing non-academic uses).  For non-commercial uses, there were plenty of MUDs that predated the commercial backbones but I imagine it would be hard to find a secondary source that could talk about any one of them being the "first" to gain international usage... But I'd love to be wrong! Tarinth 11:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

But do you know of any single MUD which predated Internet and had succeeded at having an international (or even nation-wide) audience, with a true community of users? Was any of the PLATO games running over a network over the US or internationally? Truly international games should have run on some network predating Internet. The only international network I know of which predates Internet is the University network BITNET (Arpanet was national). And there has been one MUD (data available on internet) on BITNET with a large community of users between 1984 and 1986. Any other? Vincent Lextrait 14:43, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Stored BBMORPG Content
This is the content that was removed from MMORPG, and presumably should be dispersed here. --Beefnut 22:25, 3 April 2007 (UTC) - 	 	 - 		 - 	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 browser game 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. Adobe's Flash Player 8 also provides functionality for a full function MMORPG such as Horse Isle and Dofus. 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.

History Incorrect
I'm probably about to redo a lot of the beginning of the article. Oubliette on PLATO was out before MUD, November of 1977. And Mazewar introduced a graphical virtual game world back in 1973. -- Akb4 00:28, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * If you're doing a major revision to a key point in the history, be sure to update MMORPG. Greeves (talk • contribs) 03:40, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Whoah! It may be incorrect, but what you're saying instead is misleading. We're talking about the history of MMORPGs here: where, in the audit trail from World of Warcraft (or any other modern MMORPG) do any PLATO games appear? They had pretty well zero influence on the development of MMORPGs! By giving a chronology, you're implying a pedigree that simply isn't there. If you want to claim Oubliette as the first MMORPG (despite its singular lack of persistence), you should also clearly state that it was in isolation from the mainstream. PLATO's strength - its shared system and its graphics - were also its weakness: no-one on a non-PLATO system could run PLATO games. History is not just a timeline. RichardBartle 11:31, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry guys if I post this on the wrong place, but you forgot one thing: in France we had real massively online games, tenths of thousand of people playing pvp in a persistent world, in the 80's already. Remember that France created a kind of "Internet" before the Internet. We were 25 millions of connected to the network, and that was just counting the owners of the phone lines. You should learn about Minitel and the multiple MMO games we had. If it's only an american history of the mmorpg, in that casse I apologize for my mistake. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:E35:2F7B:F300:D124:AF5D:A74F:A29B (talk) 01:43, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
 * This should be added to make the article more global. In 1982, Minitel went commercial, and gaming was one of its features (footnote 9 from the English Wikipedia article on Minitel). 79.134.37.73 (talk) 08:19, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

As someone who played Habitat during the 1986 (not 1988) pilot test, I can tell you it was most emphatically a graphical MMORPG. It had all the elements of a fantasy role playing game. Habitat, Club Caribe and Maniac Mansion together are an early example of one game engine, multiple games. No portion of the game worlds were shared between them.

Regards, Bill Herrin herrin@dirtside.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.199.133.22 (talk) 18:35, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Title is misleading
The header says "Massively multiplayer online games", but the article concentrates wholly on the role-playing side of things, no mention of other MMO (non-RPG) games like Air Warrior or World War Two Online. The title needs to be changed to reflect the content, or, the content needs to be expanded to match the title. John DiFool2 16:46, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

FUry is mmorpg???
Fury is not like gunz, a game that some people say that is a mmorpg but is not?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.79.11.127 (talk) 00:56, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

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Recent edits by KentF
There's been an ongoing dispute on another site, which KentF has been involved in, concerning the categorization of games such as Phantasy Star Online (which he has attempted to label as roguelikes). When this article was linked in the course of the discussion, KentF removed all reference to Phantasy Star Online from the article.

Although I wasn't logged in at the time, I reverted the edit due to the circumstances surrounding KentF's removal of that information. However, he reinstated his changes, labeling my actions "vandalism".

To quote WP:Vandal, any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. In this case, it's about restoring sourced information that was deleted out of a likely conflict of interest. If this continues, I'll be seeking dispute resolution. —Trev-MUN (talk) 07:45, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

The fact that the comment left on the edit was merely a personal attack (specifically, assumption of bad faith) calls a lot of suspicion here.

In all honesty, I think you may have me confused with someone. I came across this article when browsing, and noticed that there was a mistake in the section "Second Generation of MMORPGs," where it was stated that Phantasy Star Online was released in 2001, with little or no real relevance to the article, on top of a reference to an off-site page that no longer exists (and, according to the URL, was apparently about Phantasy Star Universe anyway). The classification of these games as MMORPGs has been covered in their respective articles already, so it really brings into question whether or not a mention here is really relevant.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to state that the games may have served as a some form of inspiration for future MMORPGs, or MMORPG-like media. --KentF (talk) 14:46, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

- Have re-added and corrected Phantasy Star Online mention, with qualifier that it was only an initial step and that 'true' MMORPG features did not appear until the mention of Final Fantasy XI. Have also adjusted the format of the reference, as, as illustrated by KentF, the article title was misleading. Yes, the article was about Phantasy Star Universe, however the reference was to the first line of the article, as per my change to the reference. Please check references before claiming they are irrelevant. - Chibi-Kibou 10:09, 24 November 2010

Generalize tag
The tag was added earlier this year, and removed today. I don't see any discussion of it here, though it may be discussed at the merge-to point. I have restored the tag, only VERY WEAKLY oppose its removal at this time, and don't expect to restore it again if it is removed. I have not yet read the article with an eye toward the tag, and weakly support the merge into the more general RPG article, and assumed the 2 tags were closely related.- Sinneed  17:34, 24 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't have any idea what that tag is trying to say, honestly. The article certainly doesn't seem to be about any specialized aspect, and I have no idea what the tagger was objecting to. &mdash;chaos5023 (talk) 18:26, 24 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, I see what you're saying. That the idea is that the the "real" topic is online RPGs and MMOGs are too specialized a slice of that.  That's an argument, though not one I agree with, but I don't think the tag is a good way to make it.  As long as this article exists, its topic is MMOG history, not ORPG or CRPG history, so the language of the tag is just confusing.  I'd say remove it. &mdash;chaos5023 (talk) 18:38, 24 May 2010 (UTC)


 * On the gripping hand, there does seem to be a problem with the article in that its title indicates it's a history of MMOGs but the content sure looks like a history of MMORPGs. So that seems to need work. &mdash;chaos5023 (talk) 18:49, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Final Fantasy XIV & ARR?
There's a section of the article specifically addressing more recent-gen MMOs, especially ones that are focused on graphics. Age of Conan is listed here, detailing especially its problematic launch. Is FFXIV's history between its abysmal launch conditions in 1.0 and its unlikely transformation into a successful MMO with 2.0's A Realm Reborn not a remarkable part of MMO history? 76.184.115.66 (talk) 01:41, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

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Western Focus
This article is too focused on the West. Particularly from the 2000s on. DFO was the largest MMO in the world for many years, due to enormous popularity in China. Over its lifetime, it has grossed over $20 billion. Peak concurrent players was 3 million users online. This is more concurrent players than any game on Steam has ever achieved as of May 2023.

Aion at its peak had nearly 5 million subscribers. In 2010 it was said that 1 in 10 people in South Korea played Aion. Even in NA/EU it had over 400,000 preorders on release.

https://mmos.com/news/dungeon-fighter-online-has-earned-over-15b-in-life-time-sales-highest-grossing-video-game-of-all-time

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-complexities-of-launching-i-aion-i-

https://www.engadget.com/2010-06-27-looking-back-at-six-years-of-lineage-ii.html DontLikeRedesign (talk) 12:43, 3 May 2023 (UTC)