Hey.
Okay, this is starting to bug me a little bit. I remember a few years ago, when GuildWars was added to the list, and I shook my head because it isn't an MMO, only an online RPG. Same with Phantasy Star Universe. The only "MMO" part about these games, is the towns, which basically act as virtual lobbies and nothing more. Fair enough, they're both RPGs and they have 3D lobbies that could be considered MMO, fair enough. Listing games like these didn't bother me too much, I suppose.

Now, recantly they have been putting games on the list such as WarRock, and SuddenAttack. Can I ask why? Both of these games are FPS games, and no. They are not MMOFPS games, in terms of gameplay they're the same thing as Call of Duty or CounterStrike. In SuddenAttack for example, each server cannot hold more than 16 players. This is neither MMO, nor RPG, it's an online FPS. This made me think-  "alright... Weired. They're starting to list all those Korean FPS games that market themselves towards MMORPG players, why?".
And then it hit me: Maybe they list these Korean FPS games, because the "money" you earn, and the weapons you buy is persistant, and you take it all with you from game to game. This is why they list it, right?

Well personally I think it's bloody stupid. A couple of days ago I was talking to a friend of mine who thought CounterStrike was an MMOFPS. I'll say no more. Listing games like these will confuse the heck out of newer gamers.
Then where will it stop? Pretty soon Quake, Call of Duty, Halo, CounterStrike, will all be listed on this website being called "MMOs". Every single online game should be on here in this case. Why isn't Diablo 2 on here? Diablo 2 fits the website more-so than these FPS games. Diablo 2 follows the same layout as these Koraen FPS games, you take your progression with you from room-to-room. However, Diablo is actually an RPG.

Has the acronym "MMO" truely lost its meaning these days?
As far as I can see, all new gamers think "MMO" simply means "you can play it online".

This is actually quite sad to see, actually. I think what's caused this confusion is developers making very heavily instanced games (a la PhantasyStarUniverse), and labeling them MMOs.

Anyway, question to the MMORPG.com authorities, what's going on with the website? Are you going to start listing all online games now? Maybe you should change the name to OnlineGame.com. It's a shame to see this happen, that even the high-ups of MMORPG.com cannot see the difference between an "MMO", and an "online game". Or can they? Maybe these games paid to get listed here, to market towards MMO players more?

I just want to know what's going on that's all. Has MMO really lost its meaning, don't people know the difference anymore? Or is this not a mistake?

Cheers,
/Discuss.

PS. I don't dislike the games I talked about in this post. I used to play PhantasyStarOnline way back on the Dreamcast, love the game and have lots of memories of it. And I've been playing SuddenAttack almost daily for a couple of months now. Don't get me wrong, I like the games. They just have no place on this website. Don't you agree?
 

I see your point and I remember several other similar posts over the years.

In the end, its their website and they can do what they see fit. They may be trying to branch out to become more inclusive. HOwever I think GW (and the upcoming GW2) are more an MMO than COD4 / diablo etc. It all comes down to how we define the term 'Massive' (The first M). Generally its thought of as > 500 ...however I dont know that its set in stone

I will take a stab at this, Because they can.

Jihad works both ways

Yeh i agree, they have quite alot of games that are no way MMO and as you can see now there's like 100+ games on the list that have no ratings.

I find it amusing that in 95% of MMOs you don't get massive amounts of players gathered in one place -- or at least that's not the primary way the game is played.

...and yet the second you have a little more instancing, like Guild Wars, people get all indignant about it not really being a MMORPG.

"MMORPG" is a genre.  A genre, by definition, is a loose description.   Nitpicking specifics is therefore quite silly and a waste of time.

Just accept the fact that the genre is vaguely named, and that because its vague it encompasses things you don't typically consider MMORPGs (like, perhaps, GW.)

Originally posted by Adam1902

 

Well personally I think it's bloody stupid. A couple of days ago I was talking to a friend of mine who thought CounterStrike was an MMOFPS. I'll say no more. Listing games like these will confuse the heck out of newer gamers.
 

Has the acronym "MMO" truely lost its meaning these days?
 

I am less concerned about the 'MMO' part of the name being ignored then I am the 'RPG' personally.

Last night, when I was playing LOTRO, there was one other person on the same map as me when I opened up the social panel (South East Angmar).

Basically the only time I ever see people in that game is inside towns/hubs. Not much different than GW in practice.

And who decides just where the MMO of a MMORPG comes from? Does it have to be every single part of the game? Or just parts of them? I think the fact that it's a shared persistent world (with no offline play) with 1000s of players makes it an MMO, even if it instanced for parties.

Originally posted by trancejeremy

Last night, when I was playing LOTRO, there was one other person on the same map as me when I opened up the social panel (South East Angmar).

Basically the only time I ever see people in that game is inside towns/hubs. Not much different than GW in practice.

And who decides just where the MMO of a MMORPG comes from? Does it have to be every single part of the game? Or just parts of them? I think the fact that it's a shared persistent world (with no offline play) with 1000s of players makes it an MMO, even if it instanced for parties.

No one does much in Angmar at least on Landroval.

Originally posted by vesavius

Originally posted by Adam1902

 

Well personally I think it's bloody stupid. A couple of days ago I was talking to a friend of mine who thought CounterStrike was an MMOFPS. I'll say no more. Listing games like these will confuse the heck out of newer gamers.
 

Has the acronym "MMO" truely lost its meaning these days?
 

 

I am less concerned about the 'MMO' part of the name being ignored then I am the 'RPG' personally.

maybe you are on the wrong forums then? The only thing that sets MMORPGs apart from RPGs is the MMO part.

I think to be a MMO it should at least be POSSIBLE to have battle with over 100 players, even if it never occurs.  Games like Huxley say they are MMOFPS but the only place its even possible to see more than 32 players is the town. 

Why?

I think it's because MMORPG.com's rules need a review as they are outdated.

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/247530/FARM-TOWN-vs-MMORPGcom.html

Because our interests span many areas within the RPG realm, they just bring us the stuff we talk about here already.

Originally posted by Czzarre

I see your point and I remember several other similar posts over the years.

In the end, its their website and they can do what they see fit. They may be trying to branch out to become more inclusive.

I agree with the OP's thoughts in general .  Unfortunately Czzarre (and others) are right.  It's their site, and they can run it into the ground just as hard as they want.

Originally posted by Mysk

Originally posted by Czzarre

I see your point and I remember several other similar posts over the years.

In the end, its their website and they can do what they see fit. They may be trying to branch out to become more inclusive.

 

I agree with the OP's thoughts in general .  Unfortunately Czzarre (and others) are right.  It's their site, and they can run it into the ground just as hard as they want.

Yet 1000's of people will continue to visit and post daily regardless of what they think of the site lol.

I actually give up this crusade,as it seems every single game that comes out now ,calls itself a MMORPG.

When i look at gaming realistically,and what ACTUALLY happens in game for interaction,they aree all just ONLINE games,not mmorpg's.

There are SOME moments,like in FFXI you have Campaign and Besieged,where you join up with [in some cases] tons of players to battle the beastmen horde and defend your zone or Aht Urghan.

What are 90%[maybe higher] of the players doing in a MMORPG?? playing solo,i think that totally eliminates the MMO feeling.The reason is because if you are not interacting with the masses then it is no different than playing a FPS like UT,where you have a few interacting with each other on the same server.In many cases you have 8 vs 8 battles witch is far more than a 1 player soloing scenario.

The other problem is zones and instances,well instances are zones lmao.When you think about it,it is exactly like having several different servers,each zone is a server.Sure you can warp to that next zone or cross a loading zone ,but that is no different than popping onto another server in any online game.

What game has come the closest to being able to pull off the massive feel?Vanguard,the problem is you need the players to fill up those huge zones.Why i say VG?because of the large view distance,you can't use the massive word if a game does not render players because they are just out of the viewing area,how does that count,if you can't see them or the game does not draw them or you cannot interact with them?IMO it does not count towards the term "massive".

None of these games can truly handle "massive" that is why they have short rendering distances/zones/instances and if you did have a lot of players,you would not see half of them because of the limitations of the engine or outright LAG,both net and GPU.So again IMO if you cannot handle "MASSIVE" you have no business claiming your game is a "MASSIVE" miltiplayer game.

To me they are all just "ONLINE" games.

Does it matter? And why do you all care so much about the classification of a game so much?

Originally posted by tvalentine

Originally posted by vesavius

Originally posted by Adam1902

 

Well personally I think it's bloody stupid. A couple of days ago I was talking to a friend of mine who thought CounterStrike was an MMOFPS. I'll say no more. Listing games like these will confuse the heck out of newer gamers.
 

Has the acronym "MMO" truely lost its meaning these days?
 

 

I am less concerned about the 'MMO' part of the name being ignored then I am the 'RPG' personally.

 

maybe you are on the wrong forums then? The only thing that sets MMORPGs apart from RPGs is the MMO part.

I think you have tried to snap at me before taking a second to understand what I was saying.

But thank you for the input.

Simply because the MMO industry is now evolving and branching, I think this answer was pretty obvious.

It's starting to seem like MMO just means there is NO single player, offline option. That would keep Halo et al out. Everything else is welcome it looks like.

I think a lot of you didn't ready this guys post all the way, he's not talking about GuildWars.  Hes talking about First person shooters that aren't even in a persistent world they just have persistent items, like TF 2.

So he does have a point, there are no gray area issue here these are flat out not MMORPGs, they are FPS's period.

Oh yes, GuildWars etc is definately more MMO (and it's an RPG!) than FPS games. These generic FPS games are not MMO at all (Planetside is however, see the difference?).

A couple of posts irritated me a little (sorry, just being honest :D, don't take me personal), those were "Why do I care about a genre classification so much?", and "the genre is evolving".

Well... I can tell you that the MMO genre is definately not evolving (yet), but rather, it is de-evolving. The only thing that's evolving is graphics and effects.
Look at this for instance, Ultima Online. One of the first MMOs in the west, the one that started it all pretty much, I like to think that this game almost defines what MMO really means. Some people won't understand where I'm going with this, but let me say this: Ultima was an completely open world with no instancing, it had player housing, and each player had a totally different aim from the next. For example, one players aim would to be a popular trader and crafter. The next persons aim might of been to build a village. Someone else might want to put an end to PKing, whilst the other guy would want to be a criminal who lives by killing and robbing other players. The game may not have had spectacular graphics, but that was because of the date it was made.

Now, we've gone from this game, to WoW. In WoW, every player has the same objective. You are limited to your class by what you choose at the character screen, your enemes are pre-chosen for you at the character screen. Every player has the same goal, get to lv.80, then raid (or PvP for gear, I suppose you have the "PvEers" and "PvPers". Even this is bad point in my eyes, in WoW PvE is totally seperate from PvP, like they're different games almost. In Ultima, PvP tied in with everything). You might want to punch me in my whiney ranting face, and say "HEY! You can craft and trade in WoW, what the f*** are you talking about?". Ahh, yes you can indeed. However, your chaaracter cannot live his "life" in the game, being a crafter and trader. Unless ofcourse you don't want to get anywhere in the game. It's actually quite hard to explain.

Anyway, I'm not trying to say WoW isn't an MMO, because yes. WoW is an MMORPG, wether I like it or not. I'm just explaining how the genre, in general has been dumbed down. There is less diversity, every player does the same thing with the same objective. The genre has de-evolved rather than evolved in my eyes.

This whole post is off-topic by the way, I wanted to answer the question "Why I care so much", and exlain to the other poster why I think MMORPGs haven't evolved.

Anyway, back on topic. They're listing non-persistant (except for items), room based generic online FPS games on MMORPG.com now. These are NOT MMOs, in any way, shape or form. They are not RPGs either. They have no place on this website, so what are they doing here? I've seen answers such as "because they can", "it's their site", etc. Yes, that is quite obvious, it's their site and they can do whatever they want with it. But my question of "WHY do they list those games here?" still stands.

Whew! Wall of text, eh?
Seen a few intresting replies anyway, cheers.

acronym nazis, is it really that bad to have a forum for a game? they dont force you to go to it. All it does is give people another place to talk about that game. Do people really just whine about pointless stuff like this?

 since they have ads from those fps and have forums for them them i would goes more $$$? and really who ever comes to this site and looks at the list?i don't remember the last time i looked at that horrible long and useless list.

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Originally posted by MursaJr

acronym nazis, is it really that bad to have a forum for a game? they dont force you to go to it. All it does is give people another place to talk about that game. Do people really just whine about pointless stuff like this?

Why would they name their site "MMORPG.com" if acronyms were merely loose and vague pseudo-descriptions?  Here's why there is whining: most people seem to now think that all sorts of games are MMOs - which makes companies make non-MMOs instead of MMOs.  Is it so hard for you to allow people to enjoy a genre, or does everyone have to live in Plainville, Ordinaryland?