Talk:Massively multiplayer online role-playing game/Archive 6

Membership count
"MMORPGs are very popular throughout the world, with combined global memberships in subscription and non-subscription games exceeding 15 million as of 2006."

That seems to be a vast underestimation considering this from the wiki on Ragnarok Online:

"The game boasts an estimated 25 million players worldwide, making it larger than World of Warcraft"

...for a single MMORPG. Both statements are sourced, but...

Revision
I think that this page needs some formatting revisions as well as some new content.

Things that need to be covered are: What is a mmorpg as opposed to mogs, and rpgs.

History - There need to be more landmarks, including ones made available by new technologies. Possible merge with development?

System Architecture - Sharded Vs Single Server Systems, Persist Worlds Vs Instanced Worlds

Economics - Merging of real world and game world economics, virtual money/real money transfer. Also needs to show how virtual economies work, and how some can be used to simualte real world economic systems. (Im writing it atm, but if anyonw wants to do some further reading heres a link http://www.3pointd.com/20070629/eve-online-raises-bar-on-virtual-economics/)

Psychology - Social roles, gender roles (guys playing female characters etc)

Sources, needs to be limited to pages linked in articles, and sources need to be relevant. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ghosttr (talk • contribs).

GA update
Has worked stalled? I notice a lot of debates over naming conventions and history sections on this page, so I'm tempted to "fail" (I hate that word in regard to GA, because it makes a user sound like they have more power than they do) the article for now so that everything can settle and work can eventually pick up. I normally hate the stability criterion, but it might be a good reason to postpone the GA several days beyond what the hold will allow. Your thoughts? &mdash; Deckill er 04:59, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the discussions and edits underway are relatively minor at this time, and simply a part of the ordinary evolution of an article. Tarinth 12:31, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * We are pretty much done. I hate to bug you Deckill, but could you please go into more detail on what still needs to be done? Thanks! By the way, the requested move was completed in the end. Greeves (talk • contribs) 18:07, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * In comparison with the other GAs, it looks fine. &mdash; Deckiller 18:37, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

GA Celebration
Whooooo!!! We are finally here! Greeves (talk • contribs) 19:30, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Good work, everyone. After the "Good article collaboration of the week" period is up, I'd suggest that the next step be to request a Peer Review as a prelude to going for Featured status. Tarinth 12:32, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Awesome! Kudos to all that contributed to making it a better article :) --Rambutaan 22:42, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Next steps in the article
Seems to be that WP:GACo is fairly inactive, but I have also submitted this article to WP:ACID and WP:CVG/PR to be worked on and peer reviewed. Hope this helps our goal of FA status! Greeves (talk • contribs) 23:22, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The article was previously part of WP:ACID without much input aside from those who had already been working on the article. A peer review should be helpful...  Frankly, I'm curious what is needed in the article to get it to FA that hasn't already been done. Tarinth 15:58, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not an expert in writing, nor MMORPGs, but here are my thoughts.


 * 1. The entire Common features section needs to be turned into "good writing". In particular, the first sentence of each paragraph should be the "topic" of that paragraph.  As it stands the content has no coherent organization, as the paragraphs were haphazardly composed by cutting and pasting the contents of a list.


 * 2. The table of contents should reflect an intuitive organization. Only "common features", "history", and "development" are section titles one might expect in an article on a genre of video games; "economics", "psychology", and "browser-based " are not.  I don't know what to do with the first two offending sections, but the third should certainly be scrapped, and its content redistributed to History of MMORPGs and to other parts of this article, particularly "history" and "development".


 * Economics and Psychology are fairly significant concepts within this genre and my preference would see them remain as-is; I don't think that articles on a particular video game genre need to be based on some sort of cookie-cutter template (if anything, the current article is an example of what most of the other genre articles should aspire to, and I'd enclourage them to have sections of information that are of special interest to a particular genre...)  Browser-based MMORPGs could probably be reduced to a passing comment, and then have the content moved to the History article. Tarinth 13:54, 2 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I completely agree with that. Greeves (talk • contribs) 22:53, 2 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I always thought the Econ/Psych content was important (sorry for not stressing that originally), and since I can't think of any better way to organize it, I suppose I'm happy with the current organization. It looks quite a lot better now, even though the only changes have been the moving of "current trends" to inside "Development" and the removal of the browser-based section. --Beefnut 19:11, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * 3. If browser-based MMORPGs are, indeed, MMORPGs, then our "development" section is often wrong. For example, the section opens with the statement "In general, the cost of developing a commercial MMORPG title exceeds ten million dollars".  This statement simply cannot be true given that some games (such as Urban Dead) are developed entirely by single persons.  The entire section needs to be rewritten taking all MMOPRGs, not just the big-budget 3D ones, into account.


 * The keyword there is "commercial" MMORPGs. While there is certainly a domain of experimental/academic development, as well as older games that required less resources in the past, the market for the subscribers of MMORPGs is predominantly the commercial games with significant budgets, as documented and referenced elsewhere in the article.  If it is preferred, we could re-title the section "Commercial Development." Tarinth 13:54, 2 April 2007 (UTC)


 * With all respect, I really don't believe that would be adequate - MapleStory is certainly commercial, and it's sprite-based (definitely not 3D). Reviewing the rest of the section, though, it seems that most of the points are actually relevant to all MMORPGs, and not all that much needs changing... my bad... but still the section should acknowledge the development of other types of titles, including those that are browser-based or free-to-play or text-only.  --Beefnut 23:00, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The section talks about MMORPGs "in general" (it does not state that 3D is a characteristic of absolutely all games, merely the plurality of products). This is also reflected in our sources.  MapleStory certainly has a lot of people playing it, but the typical way that commercial products are measured is through revenue.  Are there any good sources that reveal MapleStory's revenue, how it compares to other major titles, and what percentage market share it has based on revenue?  Until it can be shown that this is significant from a commercial standpoint I don't know that an argument can be made against the idea that 3D immersive MMOs currently dominate the commercial landscape (and thus deserve the focus of attention in a section on their development). Tarinth 01:49, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


 * One more thought--perhaps a section on "free" MMORPGs could be added, under development? I'm not sure the "independent" section is particularly meaningful (independent of what?) although a trend regarding alternative business models might be interesting and notable.  Within the domain of such games, it could be mentioned that there are F2P games like MapleStory as well as browser-based Web games that are beginning to compete with the traditional 3D immersive MMORPG market (which currently commands the lion's share of the $1bn+ revenue mentioned in the lead paragraph). Tarinth 01:54, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


 * 4. The article doesn't really even attempt to portray the wide varieties of games in the genre. I'm not sure how this could be best accomplished - maybe a new "Possible features" or "Subgenres" section.  I believe this would be necessary in the name of the "complete" requirement of A-class articles.  --Beefnut 07:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Can you suggest a couple of specific examples that you feel aren't covered by the article? Perhaps that could put it in context, and help us come up with an idea for inclusion. Tarinth 13:54, 2 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Sub-genres? MMORPG is a sub-genre of MMO which is discussed in that article. The only sub-genre here is BBMMORPG (Browser-Based MMORPG). Greeves (talk • contribs) 22:53, 2 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, that's my point. I wasn't sure whether he was referring to genres of worlds (science fictional, fantasic, superhero, etc.) or some type of  gameplay or interface-based categorization. Tarinth 00:45, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I left it open, as I'm not sure which is the best way to do it. But surely some sort of in-depth categorization would help the article, right?  There really are a huge variety of MMORPGs and the current article doesn't convey that.  --Beefnut 22:27, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Props to Dreftymac for his expansion of the "Common features" section! I think this section will eventually contribute the necessary categorization to make this an "A-class" article.  Not to put down all the good work that's been done already, but look at all that potential for really relevant content... a featured article needs to have all of it! --Beefnut 19:07, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks Beef, and I agree with you on the potential, good stuff! dr.ef.tymac 21:12, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

On the left hand side of this page, you will notice the to-do list. I have been updating it regularly crossing off what I have done. Right now we need referencing, old references in the proper format, and the BBMMORPG section merged with several other sections. Let's get to it! Also, the peer reviewing seems to have come to a halt. Greeves (talk • contribs) 01:00, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Removal of BBMMORPG Section
I was bold and deleted the entire BBMMORPG section. The section didn't have barely anything to merge to now it's gone. Greeves (talk • contribs) 21:21, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I tossed the removed content over to the new History article in case someone could use the titles as starting points for new content over there. --Beefnut 23:00, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I do think browser MMOs are worthy of mention somewhere in the article, although perhaps not with the amount of detail previously included. Note that there's also a rather sketchy article called Browser_games that might benefit from the inclusion of some of this content. Tarinth 01:58, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

MapleStory is the most populated MMORPG right now, and of all time.
I believe the World of Warcraft statement/picture needs to be removed or updated, as it has never been true. 70.113.74.80 01:38, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


 * There is a significant difference between how free-to-play and pay-to-play MMORPGs are measured. Currently, WoW continues to be the largest game in terms of both revenue and active (paid) subscriptions.  It may be helpful to comment on the (estimated) large number of players who play free MMOs, however. Tarinth 01:44, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Revenue is not the only way success can/should be attributed, or else YouTube would never be talked about. If we are addressing the MMO with highest active subscriptions, we should also discuss the two other widely used metrics -- the MMOs that have high concurrent users and highest peak users. Both of these will help describe the true variety of MMORPGs, and include more appropriately folks like Maplestory (which did about $100m in revenue last year) and Yulgang (#1 chinese MMO in terms of peak concurrents right now). Nabeelo 02:10, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

MASS Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game
Isnt this the correct title? I think we need to nominate it to be moved to the correct title. User:Zorlin 04:43, 14 April 2007 (GMT+08) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)
 * Please sign your posts on talk pages by using, do not manually insert a time in your own time zone, on Wikipedia we use UTC. Also do not make out that you are using an account when you are editing from your IP address.


 * On the topic of the name of this article, the issue has been discussed in the past on weather to use Mass Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game, Massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Massive multiplayer online role-playing game, MMORPG, MMGS, Massively Multiplayer Gaming Service, etc. and this is the name that was decided upon as it is in most mainstream usage. Greeves (talk • contribs • reviews) 15:53, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Some New Content, Removed "Common realms"
I just replaced the "Common realms" section, as I felt that most of it was hard to read and rather uninteresting, with a new section called "Goals". I don't have sources for most of it, but I feel that it is all relevant, informative, and (eventually) verifiable. I then went ahead and rearranged the whole Common features section, with some new subsection titles, which I think really improves it. Still, I'd appreciate any feedback, as these are biggish changes. Should the old content be put back in, perhaps in a new section? Is everything I wrote crap? Please let me know. --Beefnut 01:16, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The realms (or 'worlds') part deserves some treatment in the article. I agree that what you took out was not the best though. This article really needs some more cites too. I wouldn't call it crap, but there's definitely still lots of room for expansion. I'm ambivalent, because if you look at MapleStory, that structure seems to match a lot of what should be in this article, but this article would seem to be too "generalized" to support it all. Still thinking. dr.ef.tymac 04:28, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * So, some unregistered user wiped the whole goals section, which made me realize it wasn't really necessary. I'm okay with it not being there and actually feel a little silly for writing it.  Discussion on whether or not some sort of section like that is necessary would probably be a good idea, however. --Beefnut 07:49, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

missed RP
I may have missed it, but this article should mention somewhere that the vast majority of people in these games never role-play, in fact, most are not even aware of what the term, and that the few that roleplay resent this fact. DanielDemaret 10:18, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and added a paragraph on this to the "social roles" section. It's more unsourced material, but I believe it's relevant, important, and (obviously) true. --Beefnut 18:33, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Well written! Sources should only be needed if anyone is likely to challenge the text. DanielDemaret 09:44, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

"the MMORPG that is Wikipedia"
http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html, which is references in Criticism of Wikipedia describes "the MMORPG that is Wikipedia". The more I think of it, the more analogies there are. I suppose wikipedia described as a MMORPG, might not be appropriate in this article? pity :p DanielDemaret 09:44, 6 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I've been thinkin' about this for a while (exactly what falls in line with the definition of MMORPG), and I'd say that Wikipedia *is not* an MMORPG simply because it's not an RPG. Second Life may or may not be an RPG, and so its MMORPG-ness is therefore up for debate.  Wikipedia is clearly not one, though, and in general I have to draw the line with games/communities that involve creating a character instead of just a pseudonym. --Beefnut 14:14, 6 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Those who treat Wikipedia like a game are often cancer to the encyclopedia. There are exceptions. &mdash; Deckiller 14:18, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Open source reference
I noticed that the article mentions open source games such as Daimonin and Planeshift. Planeshift is singled out as featuring proprietary content, but Daimonin also features content that is licensed separately from the "open source engine." Daimonin is not actually completely free as the article claims.


 * Good to know; as you obviously are more familiar with these titles than we are, though, I encourage you to edit the section yourself! --Beefnut 15:34, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

MMORPG - Persistent World
I think the term persistent world to define an mmorpg is misleading. There are only few mmorpg games that have a persistent world. To name a few: UO, EVE Online

The other games simulate a persistant world. Events don't start, if they are not triggered by a player. Actions of players don't have a lasting effect on the environment....

I would change the definition that every mmorpg tries to simulate a persistant world. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.233.250.7 (talk) 08:28, 11 May 2007 (UTC).


 * I don't understand the distinction you're suggesting. Whether the world features the ability for users to make a long-lasting changes on the terrain/ecosystem of the world is a separate subject.  Persistence is simply the ability for the world to maintain a datastore of all the characters, their possessions, etc. within one continuous virtual environment.  Tarinth 14:17, 12 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, in the MMORPG sense, I think what people usually mean when they define "persistent" it is defined as the antonym to "instanced". I.e. some games (e.g. Diablo, Guild Wars, Neverwinter Nights etc.) are heavily instanced with very little areas that are "persistent" where characters can just roam freely with hundreds of others. Admittedly it's quite hard to define. --Rambutaan 23:47, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Personally, I define a persistent universe as a universe that will still exist after you leave. I still think that Guild Wars (a game that I play) is a MMORPG as most areas of the game (ie. non-combative areas and combative areas with a party) are persistent. Greeves (talk • contribs • reviews) 02:37, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

persistent world: If the server is restarted everything in the world is still there. For example ATITD.

Most MMO games currently are only player persistent and NOT world persistent. The worlds are just transient. But the trend goes to real persistent interactive and simulated worlds.

Opposite sex
Huh, some people use these things to roleplay characters of the opposite sex? That's not right. -24.38.21.252 18:19, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Ethan Dude
 * Please create a new section for new discussion. Also, off-topic discussion is not appropriate here; this is for discussion about how to improve the article, not discussion about MMORPGs in general. Finally, I see that you made this edit with an IP address though you wrote "Ethan Dude" after it. Weather or not you are Ethan Dude, you should not sign as them unless you are logged in as them. Please keep this in mind when you use talk pages. Greeves (talk • contribs • reviews) 00:06, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Lacking an introduction for non-computer gamers?
I originally posted this on the peer review but nobody seems to be reading that or nobody is commenting on it so I'm going to post this here.

I think one of the things lacking in this article is the details about how MMORPG is different from other type of computer games. In general, things like, what exactly is MMORPG, how does it work? How does the artictecture work? How exactly does one player interact with another in a virtual world? What exactly is a virtual world? This article does not seem to target people who is new to computer games, I know some of these answers may have been answered already, but not in a great detail which a non-computer geek or gamer would understand. At least not to me. Anyone else like to comment on this? --Yamamoto Ichiro (山本一郎)(会話) 20:36, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This has been a concern of mine in the past, but now I think the article does a pretty good job. I believe that the answers to all of your questions are either in the article or in one of the articles we link to.  Let me try to go point-by-point:

I think the most significant reason this article appears to lack "non-gamer" information is that a lot of that content is already on the article on role-playing games. We do a single-sentence summary in the intro paragraph which could be expanded, and I'm very much open to the idea. I encourage anyone who agrees with the parent to give that a try. --Beefnut 16:14, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The MMORPG is succinctly defined in the first paragraph, with most details extracted to Role-playing game (video games).
 * The architecture of the software definitely varies from title to title. We do our best to cover this in Common features->System architecture.
 * Interaction is presumably what happens when people play the games together; we get into more detail in Common features->Social roles. You're right in that this isn't completely spelled out, I'll add a paragraph on it.
 * The detailed definition of virtual world can be found over at virtual world, which is hyperlinked in the article.


 * Well, is it possible for this article to be written in a way that it assumes the reader have no knowledge of RPG or Computer/video games? I think MMORPG are getting more popular these days that people probably don't even know what RPG's are. I think one of the important criteria for getting this article to FA (at least to me, correct me if I'm wrong) is to have an averge joe who don't know about anything about computer/video games to understand what MMORPG(might be exagerrating a bit) is. Anyhow that's my view. --Yamamoto Ichiro (山本一郎)(会話) 22:02, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

MMOGChart data is incomplete
The article uses MMOGChart's chart to determine the popularity of certain games such as WoW, but the chart fails to incorporate game statistics in China, arguably the largest online gaming market. The chart misses 9 of the 10 most popular games there, where Fantasy Westward Journey and Zhengtu both have more peak users than WoW. Fantasy Westward Journey, which is paid-to-play like WoW, already had over 20 million accounts in 2005. The game's Chinese Wikipedia page says it has over 120m accounts now but I can not find a reference for that number. WoW should not be labeled "the largest commercial MMORPG based on active subscriptions" when this is not apparently accurate. Shawnc 20:05, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm removing the link to MMOGchart, it's over a year out of date and apart from the figures based on industry press releases (i.e. Blizzard), the numbers have always been highly questionable. --DrFod 02:07, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

No Mention of End-game
I don't seem to see any mention of the "end-game" in "Progression". As it's a vital part of character progression beyond the leveling treadmill (and arguably subject to the majority of heated debates in the communities themselves), it might be prudent to include a more defined section about it. --Cybercoco 02:49, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Another free MMORPG Kit with commercial option
www.prairiegames.com has published Torque MMO Kit (www.mmoworkshop.com) wich is an indie MMO RPG toolkit based on MoM (Minios of Mirth). It is in preview state but fully usable and contains everything to run fine out of the box. It is not open source but in the noncommercial version there is full source code excluding the core engine. In the professional version (Price: TBD, Release date: TBD) even the core engine source is included and commercial usage will be allowed.

Our representative picture
Wouldn't it be better to have a picture that shows off the chatbox and a lot of people in the same place, such as in a major city? I don't know how large WoW's chatbox can be expanded to show this. I know one of the best ones I could think of was that old picture of Lord British getting killed off, but that would be horribly outdated for this article. As it is, the picture looks like it came straight out of a WoW ad. I don't think WoW is a bad thing to show off, since it is undoubtedly the single most popular western MMO, and most popular modern one, but putting it at the top like that seems inappropriate. Something like a city with a flooded textbox saying "Cities in MMORPGs are often full of people looking for help, items, or services." or something to that effect, or rare monster camp saying "Groups of people often compete over a single rare monster, in hopes of getting rare items", something like those -- Phoeba WrightOBJECTION! 09:51, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The caption isn't too important, but yes, we definitely need a more representative image of MMORPGs than "two gnomes riding eagles", which could be taken from any 3D game genre. Just something with a dozen or so characters in shot would be fine. --McGeddon 10:40, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone dig out a better screenshot for the top of the page? Image:WoW-Lakeshire.png only had a couple of characters visible in it, and the current Image:evescreen.jpg is even worse, and could be from any spaceship game or TV series from the last ten years. --McGeddon 23:18, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Shawn Woolley
Why is this link under "See Also"? I don't think it's relevant to this article.

Rollosm 23:14, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Favoritism
There are some mentions of WOW like the more popular in sales (hard to determine it since many companies keep for themself the revenue/sales gross) but there are no a mention of Maple Story. Also if a game is popular in western (USA/Cananda and some few european countries) this data is irrelevant. --Magallanes 17:40, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * World of Warcraft is indeed the most popular MMORPG currently released. It supports tens of millions of players and rakes in more than enough subscription money to power their hundred-plus servers. Its financial success is simply unrivaled at this point. Many MMORPGs are mentioned, and I saw at least one image from EverQuest II. As for a game being pupular in the USA being insignificant, allow me to direct you to our 300,000,000 citizen population and a partnership with Coca-Cola Company which WoW used to launch in China, reaching greater success than in the US. 63.166.226.83 16:49, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Psychology irrelevant
It's truth that there are some studies about RPG Online and Psychology BUT it aren't a final veredict, more likely a "in study" rather "we conclude that..". So it's FALSE and irrelevant to put a not so clear study or a partial study, a hypothesis is not a proof and hardly can help to conclude in some facts. In the same way, nobody (currently) can determine a plain relation between violent games and violence in the real life.

--Magallanes 17:48, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * These psychological studies cite (valid) references, and were the subject of a talk I attended while studying psychology last year. They are also articulated plainly as studies and no claims of theory exist. 63.166.226.83 16:44, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

--207.7.98.78 03:25, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the conventions used here so you will have to forgive me. I'm not sure I understand the conventions behind why MMBRPG is being redirected to MMORPG. I just came from the Pardus article and it's listed as an MMOBG which fall short. I googled MMBRPG and found just under 1000 hits with many on the front page directed to MMBRPG as a type of game, found within the google results page I copied this - "MMBRPG stands for Multi-Massive Browser Role Playing Game and is essentially the same thing as an MMORPG except that the game is played in a browser window". I play Pardus and there is a distinct difference between it and World of Warcraft and I think those that play WoW would scoff at the idea that Pardus is a MMORPG. But I'm just a gamer. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=MMBRPG&btnG=Search naming convention seems to be known on onrpg: http://www.onrpg.com/boards/57283.html It is defined here: http://whane.the.whip.googlepages.com/mmbrpg it is mentioned on yahoo answers: http://sg.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070711055917AAKHNzV It is defined again here: http://www.damnedisle.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=372&view=previous&sid=4b011d80f96876dd6a1db12b476ca7e8

Improper redirect?
Why does the Massive Multiplayer Roleplaying Game category redirects to this? Non-online massive roleplaying games are enough of a separate entity that they should have their own section, and not be lumped in with WoW and the like. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.154.84.2 (talk • contribs) 16:15, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Welcome to Wikipedia. If you want to edit the Massively multiplayer roleplaying game article into a stub, explaining what a non-online MMRPG actually is and digging out one or two sources that use the term, then be WP:BOLD and go for it. --McGeddon 16:50, 14 August 2007 (UTC)