What even IS an MMORPG? [MMOPINION]
Вставка
- Опубліковано 9 кві 2023
- Patreon: / joshstrifehayes
Twitch: / joshstrifehayes
Discord: / discord
Twitter: / joshstrifehayes
Reddit: / joshstrifehayes
#####
Every MMO UA-camr has tried to define 'MMORPG', but we still don't have an agreed upon definition, and I think it's because, honestly...
The acronym 'MMORPG' is really, really bad at telling you anything about what the genre actually is, it's not mechanical, or asthetic, it creates a set of games so broad they can look completely different from each other.
So why is the acronym so bad? Let's discuss.
Thanks as usual to all the supporters on Patreon, Twitch and UA-cam who keep the content alive. - Розваги
![Why do people play MMO's solo? [MMOPINION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/AcGezDYNLIU/mqdefault.jpg)
![Why do people play MMO's solo? [MMOPINION]](/img/tr.png)
![Can you Judge an MMO in just 1 hour? [MMOPINION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JpkGbVVLExw/mqdefault.jpg)
![Horizontal VS Vertical Design [MMOPINION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/BoGrTWEt7y8/mqdefault.jpg)
Well, when a mommy MMO and a daddy RPG love each other very much…
you get a disappointment
The result will consume your money and time for years and in the end give very little back of substance.
They go fishing.
@@NormalJinx Unless your parents love you, in which case you get to live a fulfilling meaningful life.
Most MMORPG players are just orphans, abandoned or abused children. And in certain cases, those with expectatives in indie/kickstarter MMORPGs: Aborted.
6th grade me would say something like "your mom is massive and multiplayer"
“An MMORPG is an online game that has fishing.”
Me, spending my entire 2011 spring break catching Rocktails in the Living Rock Caverns to get 99 Fishing: “This is the most MMORPG an MMORPG has ever MMORPG’ed.”
I roared out laughing, such a perfect conclusion for the video ;)
So Genshin is a MMORPG?
@@sanyanders *Y E S*
He didn't even talk about the best mmo, Bassmaster Fishing 2022.
I always see you in doc's comments! didn't expect to see you here
This had big "when the teacher starts to go off on a massive tangent and the whole class just puts their pens away because you all quietly know if you just play along, you won't have to do any work" vibes
How massive was the tangent though?
@@FurrySpatula at best its lunch time or end of day or your least favorite class is over
In France, one of the best MMORPG forums website used to be "Mondes Persistants" which means "persisting worlds" and I feel like it's a better descriptor for the genre than any part of the MMORPG acronym. There is this idea that your character exist within a world that does not cease to exist even when you're offline.
@@kadupse it's still a persistent world for a time - for the collective of players experiencing it.
@@kadupse None? that's not accurate either. Persistence doesn't mean permanence. It just means a thing a player will do to affect the world could remain in place until its changed again by some one else or that player, etc. Even a server wipe/reset doesn't negate that idea.
Yea. I always saw the O meaning it would have to be persistent. For how long? That's up to debate.
@@kadupse I see what you mean, but to me persistance isn't about duration. It may persist a month or even less... The concept of persistance is that it stays alive even when you don't play. It creates a lot of what MMORPG players (such as myself) love about these game : a feeling of belonging, of being part of something bigger, that you can shape at your scale.
Yep, he did not even mention this part which makes an mmo feel like an mmo
I feel like the novelty of MMORPGs went away with the internet becoming commonplace in gaming and it evolved into games as service. The ironic thing is, "games as a service" took what was worst about MMORPGs and made it the thing it was all about.
I 100% agree with everything you just said. The social aspect of MMOs, and being on the internet, 20+ years ago was a very novel experience.
Now that nearly everyone and their moms can afford a PC and internet, and the advent of social media, the novelty is gone.
So true!
I agree with this a ton
this should be the first paragraph of its wikipedia article
It legitimately felt SO exciting buying WoW for the first time at Target with my own money, running home and following all the setup steps and waiting patiently, agonizing for an hour over a username, etc. When i finally hopped into the game, I felt like I was in a very special place that I finally achieved access to. Nowadays, MMORPGs feel like a crowded mall, no "customer service", with little motivation to explore, or talk to anyone.
As someone who has gotten most of the fishing achievments in WoW and completed the fish journal for ARR in FF14 on a trial account, I like your closing definition of an MMORPG
I always end up a blacksmith or alchemist.
When will they add fishing to star wars
I can't express how much I dislike fishing in most games, although WoW & ESO are merely mild dislikes. Even so, I salute you for your achievements!
Me, a mathematician, when I hear Josh first start referencing set theory: "Yessss, more must know!"
Me several minutes later: "PLEASE JOSH, USE THE WORD 'subset'"
same
100%
would love a dive into topology to explain the current mmo landscape
Ahhh set theory, lemme whip out my discrete math book. Has an entire chapter to counting as well.
My prevailing theory is that MMORPG was coined because "Online Fishing Simulator With a Magic System" or OFSWMS didn't roll off the tongue quite so gracefully.
A genre of role playing video game where we make achievements faster than in real life, in more fun ways because IRL sucks, and we act like we're social but most people play alone while being surrounded by people.
I don't see that as a negative, tbh.
Alot of people like being in a shared world with other people, and that's enough for them, from a social point of view.
this is the most real statement in the comments
True and real
I dunno about "faster"... I'm pretty sure I could have built my own Sailboat out of the abandoned stuff around my house faster than it took me to build one in Black Desert
@@allthatishere Yep. Being with people online gives social satisfaction without being exhausting. Because in real life, you always have to be a certain way, even if just a little, and it is qutie tiring.
A relic of a time before social media and regular game updates.
Yup the term was defined until every other game went online.
Also very correct.
Can't believe people didn't remember that you can play games alone with no Internet.
Nonsense, social media had nothing to do with the decline of MMORPGs.
World of Warcraft is not competing with facebook and instagram. This is such a ridiculous sentiment and I’m honestly tired of hearing it.
@@WALTAH2000 Relax bud. I don't think the guy is saying social media caused the decline of MMORPG's. He's using the advent of social media to suggest the moment in time.
I just like the fact how MORPG is something simple and straight to the heart of it but adding the extra M causes mass chaos.
Like, Massive Online Role Play Game?
@@wailmerwithinternetaccess7934 probably Multiplayer Online Role Play Game since it gets rid of the term massive
The thing that pushes a multiplayer online game into a massively multiplayer online game is when you share the gameworld with other people who are also playing the game, but aren't playing the game with you.
That includes games like Destiny which limits the amount of players that can be on the same server as you to like 16 or something. That does, for me at least, not satisfy the "massively" part of the genre name.
Interesting counter-example: MAG
The game shoved up to 256 players into one map with two teams playing one big fps conquest match against each other.
You know its an MMORPG when you have "Many Males Online Role Playing Girls"
Josh: "We need to look at how we use language to communicate and pass information on"
Me: "Oh, linguistics! This'll be interesting!"
Josh: "In maths, there's a thing called 'Set Theory'"
Me: "...."
It's because maths defined words very carefully, whereas linguists are forced to define things as they are used in common speech. For example, a linguist must describe the singular they as a function of modern language, but a mathematician will never allow quadrilateral to describe a line segment.
@@SirVilder Not the best analogy, as it depends on the form of linguistics you are talking about. Some concern themselves with language as definite as or more definite than some mathematical terminology which can itself be imprecise, such as mean, even etc. It isn't as black and white as you claim.
technically you could take Josh's "set theory" and applied it to semantics so you're back in linguistics but nothing really changes
@@diewowlatenight4047 Holy fucking shit that's funny
bad example. They has been used as a singular pronoun for ages.
An important thing to recognize is that most genre tags are interpreted more by genre convention than by the denotive meaning of the words used. If someone says they like visual novels, you'll probably think of those anime dating sim games even though literally none of the those concepts are contained in the words "visual novel." Artists picked up on what people seemed to like in VNs, and were inspired to make these things based on what they themselves liked. At this point, the genre tag is mostly how you find things related to these games online, and this allows for surprising disconnection between the concepts people think of when they use the genre tag, and what an uninitiated outsider can take from the words alone.
Do you have any other examples besides visual novels? Because I really don't think of dating sims when that's brought up.
@@bevvvy1374 JRPGs and RPGs. RPGs don't have to be Japanese to be a JRPG, and if you say RPG, people will generally understand it as a game where you play a character that can gain exp and levels and stuff. If you just play a character that can't gain exp or anything, it usually won't be called an RPG even though you play the role of that character.
@@bevvvy1374 Most people mean "visual novel with dating/romance elements" when they say "dating sim", and not actual dating sims.
Well you see, visual novels actually have a story. That's what gives them the novel part.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a visual novel, change my mind
Another great video, Josn. Last line was also very on point :) Keep up the great work
Here's a definition of Massive that I haven't seen raised. A game fits into the MMO genre when I can go out into the world and see other groups of players doing things that I'm not necessarily involved in. I'm talking about world buff runs in WoW, hero point trains in GW2, multi-sided fleet fights in Eve. FFXIV fits in here as well; If you can stand on the roadside and watch groups of players going off to do content, then the game is more than a mere 'multiplayer' game. Feeling like you are sharing the same game world with groups of other players is the Massive bit.
While I like this definition it’s still kinda vague. With this definition GTA Online could be defined as an MMO, but maybe not an RPG.
@@Linus_B GTA5 is one of the most popular games for actual online roleplay - it is literally an RPG.
@@Elidan1012 Yeah, I agree, but it’s not what people would think of if anyone said they like “MMORPGs”. Just goes to show how broad of a subset the genre is!
@@Elidan1012 That's not the game being an rpg, that's people playing their own made up rpg game using gta as the "board". Because RPing can happen anywhere and in any multiplayer game, even in an instant messenger chat group. Doesn't make Messenger an rpg.
I think we have to take into consideration the time at which "MMORPG" as a term was invented. Back then 100 people was already "massively multiplayer", because the standards were so low (Or non existent). It comes from a time where online games were beginning to pop up. We just use it today, because it decribes the genre overall still the best. I do believe that "Massively Multiplayer" can be seen in the context along the lines of "Am I able to interact with multiple people, that aren't connected to my network via LAN".
so.... fornite? overwatch?
Neither of those constitute what a role playing game is. Of course we are under the consideration that the game has its roots buried somewhere in Dungeons and Dragons…which Fortnite and Overwatch certainly DO NOT.
@@modkhi They're MMOs, but not RPGs.
@@modkhi fortine close to it. overwatch big nope. I think hayes is wrong on saying massive is subjective. see astronomy: what we call massive in astronomy? a meteorite or a whole ass planet/gas giant/star? see, fortnite has 100 players at the same time, it's still less than 10% of a full runescape server.
overwatch has TEN people in the same session. it's less than 1% of a full runescape server.
runescape is a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER online game. overwatch is NOT. because you can't compare 10kgs to a MOUNTAIN.
@@kiophoenix But even then, if I log into world 414 on RuneScape right now, there are only 45 other players online. Does an MMORPG stop being an MMORPG when its active player count drops below a certain amount? If it does, then that's a very shaky definition of a genre. And if it doesn't, then the exact number of simultaneous players on one server becomes irrelevant to the definition. So a game like Diablo 4 becomes entirely eligible to being called an MMORPG.
I have no strong feelings either way, because we can define "MMORPG" with additional terms, like sandbox. I would define a sandbox MMORPG as an MMORPG with as close to zero instanced areas as possible, no level scaling, a very high simultaneous player count limit (like RuneScape's 2000), as well as full trading enabled.
I was fishing in OSRS when I listened to your closing line. Great stuff :)
In my head the "massively" reconfigures the "multiplayer" aspect: It's not team-only (like regular multiplayer) or defined expected sizes of groups.
Josh, when you mentioned "Furcadia," you triggered my fight or flight.
You owe me a new phone case.
I am really glad to see you getting involved in the minutia, usually people groan audibly about acronyms, explanations, and what is perceived as gatekeeping. I think through trying to actually obtain a set of standards and proper expectations based on what a game is calling itself, is important for games and players expectations to properly match (so it's not just a grab bag of well this is for this sect of players that's not clearly explained). The point about comparison to other genres, and their identifiers I loved in the video and use when explaining it personally as well.
The one thing I would have liked to see you mention is player count, because when Richard Garriott coined the term, there were many other terms and genre names in circulation at the time. MMORPG won out for sure, but it won out on the basis of Richard Garriott's concept of what "massive" was, which sure you can argue is semantics, but when all the founding MMORPGs were capable of 1000s of players...it does make you at least consider what "massive" means in the context of literally how many players are capable of playing at one time in the same areas. Games like Asheron's Call spoke about hundreds of players being their barometer (which they greatly eclipsed). Though I do ultimately agree, it's hard to distinguish with an MMO because when the genre/acronym took form devs and the community did a poor job of qualifying it. Old devs took the effort, GW1, PSO, and even more recently with POE but these days anything with multiplayer is an MMO. Which unfortunately makes the term pretty useless, so I agree with the negative note. Even more so when you consider that technically every MMORPG ever, is also a Graphical MUD, that name just got beat out in a popularity contest.
Fairly recently came across your channel Josh, but have in the space of a couple weeks binged the majority of your content. I find myself putting on a video from you almost every time I have a spare few minutes, and getting through them all where possible, particularly your Worst MMO series, and it's got me thinking...
Theoretically, you were making your own MMO, what would it look like? Would love to know what your ideal MMO looks like, and is it the same concept as what your ideal MMO would have been before you started the series, or have your ideas about what works and what doesn't changed since you started your series?
I personally am a fairly basic guy and OSRS is pretty much as close as I can imagine to a perfect MMO, but watching your series and listening to all of the points you make, makes me feel like you would be able to come up with a hypothetical perfect game. No easy task of course, but would love to see what you would come up with.
Thanks for the last bit, Finally some good definition for the genre!
I'll take some minutes to gladly thank you for the great content you consistently put out. There are not many channels nowadays taking the effort to create such well explained and fun content as yours! I've been a fan for a long time now, and keep interested on every upload of your channel. despite not having the time or motivation to play MMORPGS and games in general anymore, your videos always keep me in touch with a phase that was once so important to me, with a dedication I find hard to find elsewhere. And for the people that are still on the phase of enjoying games fully: you're on the exact right place and time to enjoy it the best way. make memories, play games that make you feel that you're alive and share this feeling with your closest friends. one day it might end, but the recollections will be here, and it will be awesome to pay them a visit, too.
I'm so glad you made this video Josh. I've been watching your other videos for years just to enjoy your voice, but now I can go back and understand what you were actually talking about.
what is this sudden jump in editing quality...its frightening..I like it.
Loving these kinda videos as always :)
Ah yes, turn based real time strategy, my favorite genre.
Right up there with third-person FPS games. :P
Oh, you're a fan of the cool M.A.X.: Mechanized Assault & Exploration? 😊
I laughed too about that slipup, but then I thought about games like Total War or War for Middle Earth and similar grand strategy games involving both small skirmishes in real time while tying those together on a turn-based campaign map. And gameplay can be focused on both depending on how much the player enjoys the auto-resolve for the RTS skirmishes
For me MMORPG has a specific things. Being able can join up with friends and be in a guild/clan together, go meet up somewhere with our characters and just take pictures, get an awesome hall/house together where we can pool resources, and fight against other groups of people. We can go into cities and chat with complete strangers, maybe help some noobs, play raids and dungeons or maybe just chat about our day at the club. It's an easy way to meet new friends and hang out with old ones in a virtual space that's easy to navigate with fun things to do. It also has enough tools for you to be able to RPG. Ways to customize your character class and let you play the way you want.
By your definition Valheim is an MMORPG, and a lot of other online survival games.
I don't really how why or how but your videos always just take me back to my younger innocent years of gaming and remind me to play some proper games
What's improper?
I really felt this in December when I took a short break from ffxiv before the new patch. I wanted to play an mmo but nothing really scratched that itch. I tried WoW, GW2 and even went back to lotro but none of these were really what I was after even though they’re all mmos. I think I’ll give gw1 a try next time since what I think I am after is more of a rpg with multiplayer than the mmo part.
oh look Josh found his youtube password again
Josh, my man, thank you. This string of logic is exactly what I've been failing to convey to people for years. People are lazy and there's no incentive to nurture a collective agreement on definitions. This can be applied to so many controversial recurring disputes, to include what a sandwich is, what we call an MMO, how to rate a piece of media, porn tags and notions of censorship, and the, often malicious, preservation of the state of ambiguity in order to fulfill some group's agenda or to skirt responsibility drives me up a damn wall. Thank you for taking a step towards an accessible precedent to maybe remedy this madness, you're the goat.
I always took the "massively" part to not be a particular number but a sliding number where people can join and leave without it affecting how the game works for others to a large degree.
If you start a fortnite game and 99 people log off that's affected your gameplay. But if you log on to wow and a random 99 people log off its not affecting you playing the game (it may affect your ability to raid or form a group but it won't stop you going and grinding professions).
People can hop in and out of the living world, interact with each other or not. By comparison other games like fortnite or arena shooters push those 100 people to interact with each other.
Wanted to write something similar ^^
So maybe VM(O) would be a better descriptor (Variable Multiplayer)
I remember seeing the legend of zelda a link to the past classified as an rpg once. I spent longer than i would like to admit trying to wrap my mind around how they reached that conclusion lol
I still would classify it as one, or Zelda in general atleast. It a more accurate description than... Action Puzzle Game?
@@thepompf2049 Don't be ridiculous... clearly, the Zelda games are Metroidvanias.
@@Nshadowtail Foolish. They're definitely rhythm games.
I've been watching your video library almost every night to help me fall asleep, and I was so thrilled to see a new upload today!!! I really enjoyed how well you explained set theory. I like how you got me to consider HOW I think about games and WHAT I actually like about games. Keep up the amazing work, it's a joy to see you upload :)
U single bb?
I've always used the "massively" portion of MMORPG to mean the size of the world instead of the number of players. Since these days when it comes to player numbers, so many have a different opinion on the amount of players to be considered massive. Whereas, one thing that most MMO's have in common is very large worlds that the players play within.
See, I've always considered it that way too, but I also know that that is not how people intended the "massively" to be used in this context.
It's just a cope I use to pretend like the acronym makes any sense.
I can think of one MMO that can't be define as "massive" size world. PSO2, the old one, is the one people consider as one of bigger MMORPG out there. that game only has small instanced area (with enabled battle gameplay) with 12 people at max per instance, but people still consider it "yes it's an MMO". the lobby/hub also really small (for MMO standard) which maybe only contain 100-200 people at once.
@@josewhiteheart1614 Josh had a term for that. that was something like group mmo. I don't recall but I do agree mmo really should had split its ganera to masive and group. sadly we did not and now we are in this mess.
plus a lot of mmo are more limited by tech then you know design..
battlefields 32vs32 is limited by design and not by tech as there was privet servers that rsn some maps st 64vs64 fine.
problem was that a lot of stuff in the gsme was not designed ariund that player size.
Is lost ark an mmorpg? I mean you are instanced most of the time, so do you call it an instanced online arpg?
There can be smallworld mmorpg.
This was proper facinating. Love your content Josh - its always thoughtful, funny, and produced to a high standard.
Fantastic video. This is a question I've been asking myself for years. There's a few key tenets but so many vagaries within the genre.
I'm impressed by how succinct you turned out to be after that 'stretch' of a start. And I love how you do it. I'd even say that that 'stretch' left me wanting a more long video than what I ended up watching :(
Next can we create a cohesive definition of JRPG that does not simply refer to geography
A role playing game that bathes itself in tropes/cliches that one would typically find in japanese media (namely anime) while also having an art direction that is very japanese inspired (not necessarily anime inspired but often it will be seen). Will often have a very narrative heavy story and the main cast will probably be comprised of a group of teenagers with maybe one or two adults (who will probably not be nearly as strong as the teenage protagonist) that will somehow be able to change the entire world based solely on their own personal beliefs regardless of the many systems in place that have kept the world operating in a relatively smooth manner for eons.
Probably not.
@@zedorian6547 You usually kill some gods or god-like entities in JRPGs.
I often took it to mean a turn based party RPG, often isometric
@@HarusIsHere nah, turn based doesnt lump it into jrpg. D&D is turn based and it most certainly is not Japanese. Heck, D&D is a major reason jrpgs exist in the first place for the most part with how much it influenced games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy which in turn went on to basically create the market over there. I will give you the viewpoint though since its very distinct to that region I think.
I do love the tangents you get into to answer a fun question. Definitely 10/10 second monitor content going on right here ;)
Love the new mic! :)
Fantastic video. I felt strongly about this same topic with ARPG, where I live games like path of exile and diablo, not DMC. I'm glad "Looter Shooter" became a good term for describing my addiction to the Division and passing interest in Destiny.
Yet I'm fairly sure Destiny is predominantly being featured on Steam with the "MMO", not "Looter Shooter" tag.
@Lenariet steams got a lot of tags, and many of then are user submitted anyways, so i always take them with a grain of salt. When I expanded the tag list for Destiny 2 it showed me looter shooter was the 4th most popular tag and mmorpg the 5th most popular.
at least ARPG doesn't have meaningless words in it, so you get something out of the term. It's a real-time, probably combat, game where you control a single character with options for character building.
Obviously still not very helpful but at least it doesn't overlap with other terms as badly.
MMO straight up overlaps with MO, depending on who you ask, and the genre is poorly enough defined that you straight up get other genres thrown in there - which would actually be a better description of the game than the original term.
Something Josh spoke of in another video is the Dunbar's number and I'd think that would be a good definition of massive. 150 people on the screen at once being able to move around or interact in some form with one another. Note that this is a subjective definition of massive but massive means exceptionally large. Exceptionally means to a greater degree than normal so with that in mind does it mean to host more players then other games or have more players on said game. Either way using this definition most games are still not a MMO.
I think that "massive" is about context. When I was still playing DDO, it wasn't supermassive and you never had 150 people on screen, but it was big enough that you could virtually always group up with people at your current level. So the overall player base was "massive", which lead to you having someone to group up with - just so it's never quite empty.
These days, I enjoy GW2, but world bosses with so many players that you can't even guess how many there are just feel stupid because it's pure chaos and not winning by skill but by numbers. It's still fun, but it removes people as individuals. In DDO, when you quest with someone, you will form an opinion on them - you make friends, enemies and rivals. You have social interactions with should be a core element of MMORPGs. This can't happen with 150 people on the screen.
@@DrZaius3141 It depends on where you are with said 150 people, if you are in a large lobby without any action you can still talk or even PM like you'd do in real life in a large gathering. But in the context of a action mmo like GW2 when in a battle I'd agree with you. I also agree completely on the whole world boss aspect that you spoke of, I have the same opinion and feeling when I fight in those large battles, same with WvW.
Agreed. MMO means the most players of any genre occupying the world at the same time.
Was MAG on PS3 an MMO? It was a team based FPS but had 256 players interacting all at once every match.
@@verdantnekomoya7965 I'm going to say no, because the world disappears when the match is over.
you have unlocked my pre-pubescent memory of DOA:Xtreme Beach Volleyball.
Great vid and editing.
I mean, as someone who follows the Fighting Game Community, which outside of smash bros is alot smaller than even the playerbase of a singular mmo, we can't even agree what counts as a fighting game. Hell, some people would look at me weird for saying that smash bros is one.
Wow the production value on this is wild! a real treat, thank you a lot!
The "Multiplayer" part is also very nebulous. Some people think this obviously means you will be playing with other people in some kind of group or party to accomplish a goal, at least at certain points, if not for the entirety of the game. Many games are designed to require you to do so to progress. However, many games that are considered MMORPGs are multiplayer in the sense that many people are playing in the same game world at the same time, but you are either able to play the game without interacting with any of them at all if you want, or can tackle the "multiplayer" sections with a set of NPCs in your party instead of other players (or both). I've heard people ask if a certain game is "soloable" and have others balk at the question, saying "It's an MMO, why would you play it solo," as if it's obvious why you wouldn't. But it isn't so obvious when you look at the MMO landscape.
Glad to see you back :)
"Open World Dunbar's Number Game."
An MMORPG has to include a shared open world that an individual can freely explore, while also being openly shared with a large number of other players. This precludes games in which players can only interact in a hub space, games in which the interacting player population is very small, or in which player interaction requires formally grouping first. Everything else is flexible, like setting, or specific gameplay mechanics.
Hmm... by that criteria _Guild Wars_ isn't an MMORPG, since you only interact/see group members unless you're in hub spaces.
@@boobah5643 As Josh says in this video, the Guild Wars devs don't call it an MMORPG. They call it 'an Online RPG'.
@@Dyrnwynn Guild Wars 1, sure. Guild Wars 2 is absolutely an example of a MMORPG but like many other instance-based map games in the genre, the player limit per instance is less than Dunbar's 150. In fact, I suspect if one were to look, most MMOs would likely have map population limits under 150. As Josh said, while 'massively' is a useless descriptor, the moment you try to set an explicit numerical value in its place you will inevitably be forcing in and leaving out games that should or shouldn't be in the set.
I know no one uses the original definition for MMORPG when you can make a video like this, and it's considered true.
Once back in the 1990s.
Massively = 100 or more
Multiplayer = More than 1 person at the same time in the same space.
Online = available to interact with others using the internet
Role Playing Games = Games based on Table Top Gaming experiences, must have mechanics that relate to Table Top Role Playing games, ie D&D, Traveller, CP2020, 7seas, Deadlands... etc.
These days, these definitions get fuzzy, because the frame of reference was based on 90s gamers. Yet 30 years later, those frames of references are gone. Prior to MMORPGs we had MUDs
Multi-User Dungeons. The ancestor of the MMO. These were games with 10 to 1000 users, typing in text boxes while progressing a D&D like adventure. In fact Ultima 1 was the inspiration for many of the early MUDs.
I love the conclusion of "that has fishing". It's so silly and yet so true.
Shoutout for the mention of "Furcadia". That Takes me back.
I think the best alternative descriptor I've come across is "Massively Multiplayer Persistent Shared World", which hopefully excludes co-op but it is still challenging to objectify how many people count as Massive. My take is that in general, most people consider Massive to have the "capability" to be in the hundreds or thousands per "server" - I think it's pretty accepted that a multiplayer game that has a bunch of servers with a max cap of 32 or 64 per server and no interaction between servers is not considered an MMORPG.
I was just thinking "Persistent Shared World RPG" could be a good name for the group, so I looked for comments using the word persistent and came across yours. If a world 'exists' whether or not anybody is around to observe it, and it is shared by more than one person, none of who can claim it as their own save file or something, that should be enough to cover the generally agreed-upon ideas on what an MMORPG is 'supposed' to be while excluding regular RPGs which can be played with friends or games which are played exclusively in lobbies.
An issue comes up when a game has both persistent world areas such as hubs and matchmade areas, and I'm not sure there will ever be a way for us to collectively decide where the line is drawn. We can simply call them PSWRPGs too, and just add in the caveat that the combat areas are instanced, whereas a world where the combat areas persistently exist could be thought of as a True PSWRPG, even if they have certain instanced special areas too.
If for some reason games are released where zones and people's actions inside them continue to exist even though there are no players there, such as conquered territory or resource nodes in a shooting game or RTS, then that could be a PSW FPS or PSW RTS. If nothing else, MMO has really good readability and MMORPG or MMORTS or MMOFPS can be quickly understood on-sight, whereas PSWRPG and PSWRTS just looks like somebody's cat stepped on the keyeboard. I guess that's the MMO's true strength.
Alright, I'm gonna take a stab at potentially defining the "Massive" part of the definition in a way that I think should work. Here goes:
"A multiplayer game is 'massive' if the upper limit of how many players can be sharing the same game space is undefined to the player."
Basically, what makes a game "massively multiplayer" is that the average player could assume they're sharing a game space with an unlimited number of other players simultaneously. Obviously there are technical limitations such as server processing capabilities that create technical limits on what the upper cap actually is, but those sizes aren't advertised to the player. This is, I think at least, the difference between a game where large numbers of people can play together (such as 100-person round of Fortnite) and an actually Massively Multiplayer game - it's in the expectation of the player. In Fortnite, even if the player knows the number of players can be quite big, they know there's a limit. In WoW or GW2 or FFXIV players assume there is no defined limit and that they can theoretically be playing with any upper number of people they can imagine.
This also covers the difference between online games with large playerbases and actual MMO games. In an MMO game there may be specific systems that limit player group sizes (such as instanced dungeons or raids) but those are technically sub-systems within the wider game as a whole and the general expectation outside of those systems is still "unlimited." Whereas online RPGs that aren't massive such as Monster Hunter or the Souls games ALWAYS have an expectation of limited group sizes. A Monster Hunter or Elden Ring player knows they'll never be playing with a group of more than 4 people at a time.
13:15 I try to remember this every time I look down when I take a piss. This gives me hope.
My ears are begging for just a crumb of reverb, it sounds like Josh is physically inside my head
Josh gives a pretty good working definition at 2:18 and then spends the rest of the video talking about how impossible it is to define 😂
While an interesting video regards sets for games, it falls down a bit because Josh is trying to define MMORPG now in 2023, rather than taking into account the terminology from when the term was first defined over twenty years ago.
While "massively" and "online" may have lost their clear and distinct terms now, back then there wasn't any confusion because the waters were much less muddy.
I misclicked meaning to hit the recommendation for Settled's Tileman run episode #25 and instead ended up here and decided to stay (with a plan to go search up Tileman #25 after) and then less than a minute in, there's footage of Settled's Tileman run. Well, alright then! Guess I watched just a little Tileman anyway. Josh has good taste in main screen content.
I was in love the moment you mentioned set theory.
Excellent video Josh this is a perfect descriptor of WHAT an MMO is and 30 year old conversation around it.
i liked this one a lot. as "gameplay" is one of the biggest things I look for in ANY game no matter the set
Would love to see you cover conquer online or eudemons 😂 dunno how many play either anymore but use to be some of my favorite games. Either way love your content keep up the awesome work you legend
Great breakdown, my guy. Really enjoyed this.
In my eyes an MMORPG is a RPG with a lot of players who can also build a character however they like. Specifically the type of RPG where stats matter alot, and theirs a lot of varsity for combat choices.
I don't think vague is inherently bad, but it can cause issues when people get very sweaty about what fits and what doesn't. More aptly, people's unwillingness to accept vagueness, and aptitude for only accepting their own definitions causes issues.
Learned this when debating whether or not something could be defined as a "MOBA" lmao
The amount of Fishing I did in Final Fantasy 11 was insane. There was a fishing guild (linkshell) and you would have players fishing in extremely dangerous zones because they'd rather be fishing than leveling. It was awesome.
My biggest gripe with FFXIV is that they missed the opportunity of making gather/craft dungeons.
Let me explain:
That would be a dungeon you enter with, for example, a tank/dps/heal/fisher team, where the three combat classes have to protect the fisher while he completes fishing tasks in the dungeon
I think it could be fun, it's such a shame that combat and non-combat content it so strictly segregated
@@diersteinjulien6773 This is one of the elements that was so cool about FF11 and I'm sure games like it (Everquest, I'd imagine), where players would have a ton of money from fishing that they could simply pay for bodyguards to protect them going through these high-level areas. Of course they could also pay for those items that made them undetectable to scent, sight or sound.
Obviously it sounds so archaic so many years later with all the quality of life improvements made to modern games, and the time investment you needed in the older titles was massive. But damn, if it didn't feel like you were part of this massive world of players all struggling to make it through the day. That comradery feels hard to come by and it's a shame we don't see it as often today.
@@Akabane101 I will forever remember my first ferry trip in FF11, where our galka teammate decided to fish and pulled out an overlevelled monster that wiped us all
@@diersteinjulien6773 Or the pirate ship comes to take the top of the deck, and the scared players retreated to the cellar with a skeleton in tow. ;o;
@@diersteinjulien6773 1.0 had that. It was one of the casualties of ARR.
was really expecting you to touch on the sandbox and theme park descriptions, super missed opportunity
I've been playing albion online after your review, it's been a blast. Thank you, JSH!
"I love video games" can also mean "There are video games I love," or "Of the games that I love, a subset of them are video games"
When I say I love video games it's more like "I love the medium that is video games". In other words, I like the inherent nature of video games, even if I dislike individual video games.
For comparison we can take video game companies. There are companies that I like, but I'd never say I like video game companies in general.
I love it when people had their own take on "Massive Multiplayer Online" and they're overthinking it.
Just because something is comprehensible doesn't mean that it's correct in and of itself.
"I love video games" is a broad statement as it declares that you love the category "video games" but because this seems nonsensical as it would imply you love every game in existence you phatically are understood to mean you love a number of them, not all of them.
That induction wasn't conveyed within the sentence, it was extrapolated by the absurdity of the proposition.
@@EldestZelot do you always reply to year old comments or is today special?
Man I had… genuinely never thought of this, but this makes so much sense. Now I’m wondering what better ways these games could be broken down.
Not only that, but now I’m wondering if I can more clearly define for myself what TYPES of MMOs I prefer. Because I’ve been playing them since the early 2000s at least (maybe 90s? I can’t remember) and while there’s some I genuinely love, some haven’t really worked for me.
Still trying to find something to fill that void that the mangling and subsequent closing of Star Wars Galaxies left in my heart…
Was hoping there would be some suggestions for a new name/acronym for the genre, or at least an attempt at trying to define what an MMO actually is, like analyzing what the common factors of those vastly different games (FFXIV, Old School Runescape, EVE Online, etc) are and using those to suggest a new name, though I guess that'd make the video way longer as youd then also have to try and redefine RPG which is its own can of worms..
Regardless, great video as always.
This video could not be timed any more perfectly! My friend and I we're literally discussing what an MMO was on his stream because he thinks Path Of Exile is an MMO, and I obviously said he's an idiot and then we all went down a rabbit hole that no one won. 🤣
Just because i said it has massive amounts of of oportunities for multiplayer doesnt make me an idiot :(
I don't really think aRPGs like POE, diablo, grim dawn etc are mmorpgs, much the same way i dont think mobas are rts games
@@Doinkscum That's what I was trying to tell him BUUUUT he's stubborn lol.
@@Doinkscum See, the argument *could* be made that since they're real-time and require strategy, that yes mobas are rts games, but we all consider rts games to be birds-eye-view army-swarm controlling and resource managing games.
And games like LoL and Dota only share the birds-eye-view aspect of that, whereas mobas like Smite are third person, so... really, moba is also a bad acronym, especially considering it shares two of the unhelpful keywords from mmorpg. (like, I personally wouldn't consider Overwatch or Smite to be mobas, but I do realise that the greater gaming landscape does consider them to be mobas based off of how they're played in comparison to LoL and Dota... It's just that Overwatch is also an fps game.... so... Overwatch is an FPSMOBA, placing the first person shooting aspect as a primary, with the massive online battle arena aspect second.... Fucking hell this is brain numbing to think about)
MMORPG isn't a game genre. It's an advertising term. If you get into marketing this will be explained to you as a student. Look up some Wow development history. "Massive" was a term that sounded interesting and cool.
Edit: I appreciate the interaction here. I don't get to talk about this subject very often. Thank you for replying.
So how many advertising terms can we get away with?
Could I get away with calling my game an MMORPG Roguelike Third-Person Open-World Sandbox Adventure RTS?
@Vesdus yes, yes you can theres an open world survival craft automation time management turn based strategy game on steam slap a bit of multiplayer in it and slap mmo on it
the problem there is the term "role playing". The Marketing stooges and producers were never role **players** . They abused that word to sell a bill of false goods from the very beginning. Just playing an optional "class" doesn't let you act out different Roles and social interactions. Just getting a bunch of different randomly generated loot doesn't suddenly free up more room for IMPROVISATION either.
Ya didn't try very hard to define it, did ya.
Yes. It's first invented for advertisement of Ultima Online. To distinct that title from already established genre of Graphical MUDs.
I've always thought of MMORPG as games that borrow many of the mechanisms from other genre of games but in far less refined state. Add the massive grind needed to get to the end game and a 'world chat' menu to that, then you have a mmorpg. And it's often considered okay to have your characters clip through other characters and ennemy models too.
Good ol' Lotro getting a mention
I knew it, Neopets and Club Penguin are mmorpgs!
As I gather from this excellent video, Richard Garriott is to blame for all the holy wars about mmorpg on the Internet. Thank you Josh!
Great video!
Bit of incoherent rambling:
I grew up playing WoW since I was 7, so my interpetation of MMORPG will always be centered around WoW. Any MMORPG I play is subconsciously compared to it, and if it lacks enough features that I've come to expect from my experience with my "base" understanding of this genre, I find the game to feel incomplete, or even unfinished, if that makes sense.
For example the movement control we have over our characters in WoW is pretty awesome, I must say. You're never locked in an animation unless you are CC'd or taking a flight path. You can cancel any spell and start running, no questions asked. You have no delay when you want to strafe right then left then right. It's instant - compared to games where movement is smoothed out to the point where the character appears sloggish to your commands.
Being used to such raw movement controls since an early age had influenced my taste to gravitate towards games with similar traits, even in different genres, like preferring Counter-Strike in the FPS genre for its minimal limitations to pure movement compared to others.
It was easy to recognize Lost Ark as an MMORPG, but hard to make it feel like one because of the movement for me. Lost Ark having the definition of MMORPG by itself wasn't enough to capture the feeling I've come to expect from a game in the genre because of my prior experiences.
And that's just one aspect and preference. There are so many more and they all shape our expectations of a genre. Even if a game fits into the formal definition and has typical genre elements like crafting, trading, gathering, combat, open world, etcetera, it can feel "off" by our expectations, if it's different enough in enough elements, or in the elements that matter most to us, consciously or subconsciously.
Does that make sense? Idk, just writing some thoughts.
"An mmorpg is a game where you create a character, and explore a world while meeting other people" sums up the genre pretty well imo
When Garriot coined the term MMORPG, The "Massively" portion was said to specifically refer to "Thousands of players sharing the same world space." If we use that original parameter, the title becomes perfectly fine at describing the nature of the genre.
The idea of what defined being "an MMO" was only watered down away from that over the years by studio's marketing trying to push their new game that wasn't an MMO, AS an MMO, while the term was an effective buzz word.
Sharing the same world space, how do you define that?
Being intentionally inept or legit question? I somehow doubt the latter.
@@simplybenjamen The exact same way Garriott did, which is readily apparent just by looking at the game that the term was invented to describe, Ultima Online.
A large map, or collection of large maps that themselves has the ability to host and accommodate thousands of player individually. Just like Everquest, WoW, and the sort.
I love Josh, but this really is not complicated. Again, the only "muddiness" surrounding the term comes from its misappropriation by marketing over the past two decades. The variables to determine precisely what an "MMO" is supposed to be have existed since the beginning. You can't just discard them and say "well actually the term is broad-reaching." No, it isn't. You're just ignoring what it actually, objectively means as per the individual who coined the term intended it to mean.
You could argue "language and meanings change" but I'd retort that just because a bunch of people are trying to peddle the term in the hopes it will make their product more money does not actually change the meaning at all. The only reason there's any "broadness" in the definition of what "MMO" entails, is because we continuously follow the whims of those marketers who tried to sell us nonsense over the years and allow there to be by discarding the objective definition it was originally created to fulfill.
The moment you affirm to what MMO was intended to mean, all the sudden it becomes readily apparent what an MMO is. Then, it comes down to what you tack on to the end of that acronym that defines the game itself (MMORPG, MMOFPS, etc). There's plenty of broadness to be had in those sub-definitions, but there really shouldn't be any in the term MMO. Warframe is not an MMO. Destiny is not an MMO. WoW is an MMO. Runescape is an MMO. Ultima is an MMO.
Again though, what does this actually define. If 1000 people are on the same map in fortnite, is it now a battleroyal MMO? If a single rust instance could hold 2000 people at once, is that now a survival MMO? If I boot up minecraft with a server able to handle 3000 logins, is it now an MMO? The idea that "but it has lots players" is any sort of actual definition is lunacy and becoming more outdated by the day. 10 years ago having 20 players at onces in some of those games was massive. Now hundreds exist at once in the same world. Give it another 10 years, and games of all types having open servers able to easily hold thousands of players is going to become commonplace. The very concept of "massively multiplayer online" is an already antiquated term put on a pedestal like it actually means anything when in reality it lost the majority of its meaning years ago and is only becoming more useless by the day.
@@zedorian6547 It was a legit question. Trying to narrow down in plain English the exact definitions in technical terms that we are using to define this whole category of games.
The first term in the compound genre label "MMORPG" is not "Massive" (or Massively); it's "Massively Multiplayer Online". Or, specifically, it's "Online", which is the game mode (it is played by interacting with a remote server), further modified by "Multiplayer" (clarifying that you play online with others), which, in turn, is further modified with "Massively" (since you play with, potentially, a large number of other players in the same game world).
Personally, I'd drop the now-meaningless "RPG" part altogether, and keep it MMO. Then it's more in line with something like FPS or RTS. As FPS is about "shooting" in first person, MMO is about playing online with a potentially large pool of other players. In that shift of focus, the "Online" denotes the game style (just as generally as "shooter" or "strategy"), while the "Massively Multiplayer" now denotes the game mode (the said online game happening in the mode of having a potentially large pool of players participating).
That, or we should just embrace the erosion of that label and just re-introduce it as a new English word for the genre: Memorpeger. Like you said/implied a few times in the vid, just like a shooter game, a car game, or a sports game, this label is a broad supergenre. If we want to be more pedantic about categorization (or need to be in cases where it improves communication), we can just refine it as needed in those scenarios.
Someone activated Josh's trap card making him laugh and says I activate my thirst card with his new artwork
Thanks for covering this, if we get more conscious about it, that opens up a lot of new interpretations of what online gaming could be like, instead of just copying WoW over and over again. Some of those mechanics often found in the genre might be outdated and not even improve the experience.
I just lately asked myself why we often find fetch quests or less quality story telling or presentation in MMORPGs than in other games? We have open world games today with huge worlds, but still a very impressive story, characters and atmosphere (e.g. Red Dead Redemption 2). One answer that came to my mind was, they are social games, you gotta be able to still talk to somebody while playing them. If all the content the game offers needs all of your attention, you couldn’t focus on talking to friends at the same time. But that’s maybe only one possible reason.
Easy question to answer: An MMORPG is something you start a public fundraiser (eg. Kickstarter) for on a Tuesday in order to raise money to support your recreational vices. ;). Brahahahahaha.
Edit: you then proceed to avoid releasing a deliverable unless you find yourself legally obliged to, by which time you have mutated the project into a mobile game. And THAT ladies and gentleman is what an MMORPG is.
While funny, I kind of agree with what you said, to a point. Simplifying MMORPG's is a good idea, imo, since no one wants to work all day and then come home to work again for their hobby.
@@HerbMandoom hahaha no. that isn't what I said. :D.
@@MrJC1 I'm aware that you are making fun of something, I'm saying that I agree with what you're saying despite it being used to make fun of something. So I do believe it is what you said.
I feel like taxonomy is a better school of thought for sorting games than set theory, but either way things get messy when you put things in boxes.
Well, he's not so much using set theory, so much as the idea of a "set"/box and how you split things into sets/boxes could probably be a definition of taxonomy?
It's especially messy with entertainment because as soon as you define the box someone will try to break out of it. Genres are constantly evolving because of this. It's a good thing, but it's also frustrating at the same time.
The end is great :D
One of the best action combat mmorpg i ever played was actually a singleplayer game with a 1-4 player co-op and a 8-16 player raids. It was instance based so you didn't meet other people outside towns unless you were in a group. And you didnt even have to play co-op because you could hire other player companions controlled by AI and play with them. Really wish Dragon's dogma online released outside japan that game was amazing.
Almost all games in which you control a character have RPG-esque features. Game developers attach "RPG" to their game as a genre descriptor when they want to set the expectation that the player will spend a considerable amount of time looking at their character's stats and basing decisions on them.
Based on the name itself, an MMORPG is an online game that can host a lot of players and has Role Playing Game elements as a core mechanic (i.e. leveling, classes, equipment choices, and (hopefully) some divergent story based on choices made).
It honestly seems less like a genre and more of a category of games (alongside FPS and RTS for example).
thx 4 your content ❤
The Massiv part for me would've been back in the day with Dark Age of Camelot, defending or attacking Keeps in the RvR area. there was no phasing so you could see all the players all the time, which also meant sometimes heavy lags. Still though, playing with a friend, running up a hill in the RvR zone and being greeted by 150+ angry norseman/trolls/kobolds and the likes and just getting litteraly run over was probably one of the most memorable sights for me in gaming.
I feel like the problem is breaking up the acronym into individual words, trying to understand those individual words totally in isolation, finding that they don't mean much individually, and then asserting that they must not mean much collectively either. This ignores the possibility of emergent meanings. E.g., if we tried to understand "real time strategy" by breaking it up into "real," "time," and "strategy," we could also argue that this is a meaningless acronym: "real" can mean anything from highly effective simulation to literal actual IRL information and nothing else to acceptable breaks from reality for entertainment purposes; "time" is relatively meaningful by itself, but literally all games require time to play, that's a requirement of all human activity; and "strategy" is very literally the science of making smart choices, which can apply to absolutely anything called a "game." But we understand that these things have to be grouped, as you did, "real time" + "strategy." And we understand that some of these terms have idiosyncratic specific meanings within the video game landscape: "strategy" _does not_ mean what it means in general, instead it means something like "managing logistics, construction, resource acquisition, and C&C in order to accomplish definite objectives." Hence why "grand strategy," even though "grand" as a modifier is _totally useless_ on its own, picks out a very specific category of games: those REALLY focused on the societal forces, on leading a whole culture with all that that entails, rather than just being one commander with a squad or base under your command.
In that spirit, I'd like to take a look at how each word relates to its _neighbors._ "Massively," "Multiplayer," and "Online" are, I agree, not very useful individually. However, "Multiplayer Online" is _inherently_ more meaningful than "Online" alone. Worth noting, I don't think you should call a game "online" if that connection is never actually relevant _for gameplay itself._ Many, many, many games have had SOME form of ability to connect to the internet; far fewer actually _use_ the internet as part of playing the game. Checking for updates online should not be part of a game's genre, any more than being coded in Unity should be part of a genre.
Likewise, "Massively" is very vague by itself as you say, and "Multiplayer" is simply "anything not single-player," but together they *do* communicate something beyond their separate meanings. Generally, I would define a _massively_ multiplayer game to be one where, in significant portions of typical play, a _flexible_ amount of people can participate in the same activity at the same time, whether cooperatively or competitively, with the limits being defined _only_ by the hardware and software capabilities of the game (server capacity, data structures, etc.), not by a fixed numerical cap. In theory, it is possible to have an "MMLG"--massively multiplayer *local* game--but such things are rare if they exist at all at present. (One could imagine a "video game theme park" that works this way, however.) Also, note that I specifically consider flexibility a key part of "massively" here: while many MMOs have more rigid numerical requirements for specific content (e.g. 8-man, 10-man, 24-man, etc.), the part that MMOs share (and which GW1 lacks, for instance) is the persistent external world where people can "group up" (or even form mass extended groups, e.g. FFXIV's "hunt trains" or GW2's "world boss" stuff), and in those contexts, the number of people participating together can be anything from a small handful up to hundreds, all participating together in the exact same activity. That's something you see even with EVE, and from what I've seen of Old-school Runescape, it would seem that that is at least loosely true there, too.
So: "Massively Multiplayer" tells us that there is a shared multiplayer space, where large _and flexible_ collections of players can all share the same space and engage with the game at the same time. "Multiplayer Online" is, of course, the simple objective statement that more than one person plays, and they connect to one another over the internet, rather than split-screen, local network, PBEM, etc. "Online Role-Playing" tells us that any progression components will be mediated through an external server as opposed to being entirely client-side--there will be an expectation of objectivity, a disapproval for "exploits" or "cheating" etc., and a general concept of not just _individual_ progression, but _community_ progression in some form.
Mix those up together, and you get a better idea of what "MMORPG" picks out from the set of all video games.
_It's still super vague._ I don't mean to imply otherwise. But the hyper-analytic approach you've taken, isolating every word and ignoring emergent meanings, does a disservice to what meaning _can_ be found in the phrase, and to why people stick with it even when, as I freely admit, it's not very _useful._
This hyper-analytic approach is prevalent in many of Josh's videos and it's why of late I've started to sour on his content. Your comment does a perfect job of breaking down MMORPG as I have always understood it. There's a reason we tend to use additional genre descriptors when describing MMOs these days, such as "theme park" or "full-loot pvp".
MMOs are characterized by a persistent game world, where players can interact in a way that allows for emergent gameplay scenarios, and the social aspects of the game play a significant role in it.
This definition would include a Minecraft server with only two players.
I knew you'd sneak fishing in there somewhere!
7:01 what is this game called i think i played it before but i forgot the name