My MMO Blog

A massively multiplayer online game (also called MMOG or simply MMO) is a video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and feature at least one persistent world. They are, however, not necessarily games played on general purpose computers; most of the newer game consoles (Xbox 360, PSP, PS3, Wii, etc.) can access the internet, and thus can have MMO genre games.

MMO’s can enable players to cooperate and compete with each other on a grand scale, and sometimes to interact meaningfully with people around the world. They include a variety of gameplay types, representing many video game genres. Many MMOs require players to invest large amounts of their time into the game. Most MMOs require a monthly subscription fee, but some can be played for free.

The most popular type of MMOG, and the sub-genre that pioneered the category, is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), which descended from university mainframe computer MUD and adventure games such as Rogue and Dungeon on the PDP-10. These games pre-date the commercial gaming industry and the Internet, but still featured persistent worlds and other elements of MMOGs still used today.

The first graphical MMOG, and a major milestone in the creation of the genre, was the multi-player flight combat simulation game Air Warrior by Kesmai on the GEnie online service, which first appeared in 1987.

Commercial MMORPGs gained early acceptance in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The genre was pioneered by the GemStone series on GEnie, also created by Kesmai, and Neverwinter Nights, the first such game to include graphics, which debuted on AOL in 1991.

As computer game developers applied MMO ideas to other computer and video game genres, new acronyms started to develop, such as MMORTS. MMOG emerged as a generic term to cover this growing class of games. These games became so popular that a magazine, called Massive Online Gaming, released an issue in October 2002 hoping to cover MMOG topics exclusively, but it never released its second issue.

The debuts of The Realm Online, Meridian 59 (the first 3D MMOG), Ultima Online, Underlight and EverQuest in the late 1990s popularized the MMORPG genre. The growth in technology meant that where Neverwinter Nights in 1991 had been limited to 50 simultaneous players (a number that grew to 500 by 1995), by the year 2000 a multitude of MMORPGs were each serving thousands of simultaneous players and in December 2007 EVE Online achieved a new record with 41,690. Retrieved on 2008-01-08. concurrent accounts logged on to the same server.

Despite the genre’s focus on multiplayer gaming, AI-controlled characters are still common. NPCs and mobs who give out quests or serve as opponents are typical mostly in MMORPGs. AI-controlled characters are not as common in action-based MMOGs.

The popularity of MMOGs was mostly restricted to the computer game market until the sixth-generation consoles, with the launch of Phantasy Star Online on Dreamcast and the emergence and growth of online service Xbox Live. There have been a number of console MMOGs, including EverQuest Online Adventures (PlayStation 2), and the multiconsole Final Fantasy XI. On PCs, the MMOG market has always been dominated by successful fantasy MMORPGs.

MMOGs have only recently begun to break into the mobile phone market, beginning with CipSoft’s TibiaME, which is the first MMORPG to arrive on a mobile device and Biting Bit’s MicroMonster which features online and bluetooth multiplayer gaming. SmartCell Technology is in development of Shadow of Legend, which will allow gamers to continue their game on their mobile device when away from their PC.

Science fiction has also been a popular theme, featuring games such as Anarchy Online, Eve Online, Star Wars Galaxies and The Matrix Online.

MMOGs emerged from the hard-core gamer community to the mainstream strongly in December 2003 with an analysis in the Financial Times measuring the value of the virtual property in the then-largest MMOG, Everquest, to result in a per-capita GDP of 2,266 dollars which would have placed the virtual world of Everquest as the 77th wealthiest nation, on par with Croatia, Ecuador, Tunisia or Vietnam.

World of Warcraft is currently the dominant MMOG in the world with more than 50% of the player base. With 10-11 million monthly subscribers worldwide, is the most popular Western title among MMOGs.

Player Base

The amount of players that play MMO’s are ever changing of course. Around 2002, a guy calling himself Sir Bruce, started to keep an eye on the active numbers of players for each of the MMO’s, starting out with the Big Four (Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron’s call and Dark Age of Camelot). From the monitored MMO’s the biggest today are World of Warcraft, Lineage, Lineage II and Runescape, and total amount of players playing MMO’s estimated to be around 12-14 million, but many have several accounts making the total amount of account between 16 and 20 million. Sir Bruce frequently visits the various MMO oriented shows as a speaker.

Virtual Economies

Within a majority of the MMOs created, there is virtual currency where the player can earn and accumulate money. The uses for such virtual currency are numerous and vary from game to game. The virtual economies created within MMOs often blur the lines between real and virtual worlds. The result is often seen as an unwanted interaction between the real and virtual economies by the players and the provider of the virtual world. This practice (economy interaction) is mostly seen in this genre of games. The two seem to come hand in hand with even the earliest MMOGs such as Ultima Online having this kind of trade, real money for virtual things.

The importance of having a working virtual economy within an MMOG is increasing as they develop. A sign of this is CCP Games hiring the first real-life economist for its MMOG EVE Online to assist and analyze the virtual economy and production within this game.

The results of this interaction between the virtual economy, and our real economy, which is really the interaction between the company that created the game and the third-party companies that want to share in the profits and success of the game. This battle between companies is defended on both sides. The company originating the game and the intellectual property argue that this is in violation of the terms and agreements of the game as well as copyright violation since they own the rights to how the online currency is distributed and through what channels. The case that the third-party companies and their customers defend, is that they are selling and exchanging the time and effort put into the acquisition of the currency, not the digital information itself. They also express that the nature of many MMOs is that they require time commitments not available to everyone. As a result, without external acquisition of virtual currency, some players are severely limited to being able to experience certain aspects of the game.

The practice of acquiring large volumes of virtual currency for the purpose of selling to other individuals for tangible and real currency is called gold farming. Many players who have poured in all of their personal effort resent that there is this exchange between real and virtual economies since it devalues their own efforts. As a result, the term ‘gold farmer’ now has a very negative connotation within the games and their communities. This slander has unfortunately also extended itself to racial profiling (since Asians are commonly the farmers) and to in-game and forum insulting.

The reaction from many of the game companies varies. In games that are substantially less popular and have a small player base, the enforcement of the elimination of ‘gold farming’ appears less often. Companies in this situation most likely are concerned with their personal sales and subscription revenue over the development of their virtual economy, as they most likely have a higher priority to the games viability via adequate funding. Games with an enormous player base, and consequently much higher sales and subscription income, can take more drastic actions more often and in much larger volumes. Blizzard Entertainment and their wildly successful World of Warcraft are not afraid to publicly announce that tens of thousands of accounts have been banned due to violations regarding currency selling. This account banning could also serve as an economic gain for these large games, since it is highly likely that, due to demand, these ‘gold farming’ accounts will be recreated with freshly bought copies of the game.