A View From the Road: The Stool and the Chair

[zBeeble]

I think one primary difference here (and I don't know a lot about Champions)... but games like TF2 (or even L4D) are categorically different than games like WoW or EVE-online because you don't have to continue to pay. The playerbase supports themselves. To some extent, to me, the difference between the two generes is when the "world" requires more resources than the players themselves can muster --- and it then requires a "company" to run the servers.

 

[Destal]

A stool becomes a chair when it has the ability to provide back support, regardless of how little that support is.

I would believe in order for a game to be classified as an MMORPG it would require the following:

Internet
A trade system between players
PvE or/and PvP encounters
Trade skills
And the ability to host large amounts of people in a single server
Persistent world

 

[samsonguy920]

After some time into Team Fortress 2 after its release, when new items began to pop up like Heavy Weapons Guy's second minigun, that was when I started thinking of TF2 as being so much more than your typical multiplayer shootemup. By then people had gotten comfortable with their favorite character (I still favor the Heavy because I love his laugh when I am on a shooting spree) and are now having capability to do customization. Especially with the hats now, you can really set your character up to be your own. It no longer is the Doctor, the Sniper, or Heavy Weapons Guy. It is now Doc Beige, Crocodile Pointnclick, or Sasha's Boyfriend. I guess it is only a matter of time before the same thing happens to Counterstrike, Halo (although what Rooster Teeth has done with Halo so far rocks; Griffball anyone?), even GTA4's multiplayer (I'm already stuck on my balding guy with the red suit, kinda reminds me of a Joe Pesci/Tommy Vercetti lovechild).
Valve has shaken the pillars of MMO-heaven, it only remains for other developers to join in, blurring the definition even further.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

I wouldn't call Guild Wars an MMORPG, either. Guild Wars, like Diablo, is... well, I guess I could call them MORPGs. Multiplayer Online RPGs, but without the Massive aspect.

I only have Guild Wars and I've only played WoW for 30 minutes so I know next to nothing about it. I would like to ask how you make the distinction regarding massively? It's not becuse I disagree with you, because I don't know enough to disagree. I don't particularly fancy those kinds of games so I've never really looked into it. I've just assumed that it was pretty much the same. Anyway, why the difference?

 

[John Funk]

I wouldn't call Guild Wars an MMORPG, either. Guild Wars, like Diablo, is... well, I guess I could call them MORPGs. Multiplayer Online RPGs, but without the Massive aspect.

I only have Guild Wars and I've only played WoW for 30 minutes so I know next to nothing about it. I would like to ask how you make the distinction regarding massively? It's not becuse I disagree with you, because I don't know enough to disagree. I don't particularly fancy those kinds of games so I've never really looked into it. I've just assumed that it was pretty much the same. Anyway, why the difference?

Guild Wars is a heavily instanced game, there is a communal hub, but almost all the actual world areas are for solo gameplay (or for a small party). There's really no chance that two players will just randomly come across each other out in the open world other than the towns. In this vein, it's much more like Diablo than an MMORPG. It's a Multiplayer Online RPG, but there's nothing Massive about it (as opposed to WoW or LotRO or WAR, etc, where the entire world is open and only small sections of it are instanced)

 

[Crunchy English]

Chairs and Stool are arbitrary terms given meaning only by context. If the person who makes it calls it a chair, its a chair regardless of any characteristics it may or may not possess. What makes a dog? There are like 50 species of "dog" but the definition is pretty lax. Teeth? Fur? Canine Genus? Really? So is a Dingo a dog? Howabout a Hyena? The difference is an illusion created by people to fulfill are necessary need to arbitrarily categorize. So Nyah!

Champions Online is an MMO because the people who made it said so and because its what they were trying to make. Whether is subscribes to every single template, trapping or pitfall of a genre is completely stupid and irrelevant.

 

[VanBasten]

Champions, on the other hand, doesn't do that. In fact, the entire game is actually instanced - when you move from zone to zone, it gives you a pick of "Millennium City #49" or "Crisis in Canada #14." You can see how many players are in each little instance

Now, I haven't played Champions Online, but as I understand it you can move freely between #xy zones, i.e. you can play with people in Zone #14, or Zone #25 as you wish - when you wish. The reasoning behind this would be for players to be able to play with everyone who owns the game, and not just people on their server.

So how exactly is being able to play with everyone less "massive" than being able to play with a only a small portion of people that actually play?

As far as players are concerned, the game might have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, but you'll only ever be with a hundred at the same time - tops. Most of the instanced locations don't have anywhere close to that. If you're playing in a Burning Sands with 60 other people, that's just barely twice the population of, say, a popular Team Fortress 2 server. That's hardly Massive at all - what good is having thousands upon thousands of subscribers if you only ever get to see a handful of them?

But isn't WoW kinda the same, when you're in a zone there's rarely more than a dozen or so people in that particular zone, and yes you might see the same people when you quest in the same area, and in CO you'll see more different people, again, how is that less massive?

 

[John Funk]

Champions, on the other hand, doesn't do that. In fact, the entire game is actually instanced - when you move from zone to zone, it gives you a pick of "Millennium City #49" or "Crisis in Canada #14." You can see how many players are in each little instance

Now, I haven't played Champions Online, but as I understand it you can move freely between #xy zones, i.e. you can play with people in Zone #14, or Zone #25 as you wish - when you wish. The reasoning behind this would be for players to be able to play with everyone who owns the game, and not just people on their server.

So how exactly is being able to play with everyone less "massive" than being able to play with a only a small portion of people that actually play?

As far as players are concerned, the game might have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, but you'll only ever be with a hundred at the same time - tops. Most of the instanced locations don't have anywhere close to that. If you're playing in a Burning Sands with 60 other people, that's just barely twice the population of, say, a popular Team Fortress 2 server. That's hardly Massive at all - what good is having thousands upon thousands of subscribers if you only ever get to see a handful of them?

But isn't WoW kinda the same, when you're in a zone there's rarely more than a dozen or so people in that particular zone, and yes you might see the same people when you quest in the same area, and in CO you'll see more different people, again, how is that less massive?

The issue I take with it is that it's less persistently massive. You can only play with the same people if you, say, have them in your supergroup or on your friend list. Otherwise, it'll be people at random; the playerbase itself will not be persistent. By your argument, in TF2 or Halo 3 or Diablo II, since you can play with anyone who has the game, are they MMOGs?

Yes, WoW has moments of relative solitude in zones, but then it also has 200 people crammed into Wintergrasp for the battle there.

 

[VanBasten]

So how exactly is being able to play with everyone less "massive" than being able to play with a only a small portion of people that actually play?

The issue I take with it is that it's less persistently massive. You can only play with the same people if you, say, have them in your supergroup or on your friend list. Otherwise, it'll be people at random; the playerbase itself will not be persistent.

I still find your argument absurdly contradictory, you're claiming something is less massive because it's more massive.

Think of the WoW type shard system as a village, where the community is more tight knit because there's not that many people around and they see each other more often, and CO multiple zone system as a city where there's a bunch of people inhabiting the same space relatively oblivious to each other, but everyone's still able to make a small effort to run into each other more often. Last time I checked cities are still considered more massive than villages.

In the end you'll mostly play with your guildies, real life friends or other friendly people you run into in a PUG anyway, so what does it matter if you always see the same other guy you never intend to play with, or a bunch of different other guys that you never intend to play with?

By your argument, in TF2 or Halo 3 or Diablo II, since you can play with anyone who has the game, are they MMOGs?

That's irrelevant to my argument. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of your argument that something where you can play with fewer people is somehow more deserving of the title "massive" than something where you can encounter and play with a far larger number of people.

I don't really care what anyone calls anything, but the way I'd put it is that something that has one central server where at least a thousand people can be logged on at the same time and easily play(one click) with each other regardless whether they spawn in the same subzone or not -> then its massive. So the games you mentioned wouldn't fall in that category. But that's just me.

 

[cikame]

I call Guild Wars an MMO because if i was playing WoW it would be pretty much the same.

 

[ReverseEngineered]

Existentialism says: a stool becomes a chair when you say it does. Linguists would probably say the same thing. If everybody calls it a stool, it's a stool, and likewise if they call it a chair. What if some people call it one thing and others call it something else? Well, it could be both, or something in between, something entirely different (a chool?).

However, I'm an engineer, so I'll say that it's a device designed for sitting on that includes a back with a height of 1 inch. We've already patented it.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

I wouldn't call Guild Wars an MMORPG, either. Guild Wars, like Diablo, is... well, I guess I could call them MORPGs. Multiplayer Online RPGs, but without the Massive aspect.

I only have Guild Wars and I've only played WoW for 30 minutes so I know next to nothing about it. I would like to ask how you make the distinction regarding massively? It's not becuse I disagree with you, because I don't know enough to disagree. I don't particularly fancy those kinds of games so I've never really looked into it. I've just assumed that it was pretty much the same. Anyway, why the difference?

Guild Wars is a heavily instanced game, there is a communal hub, but almost all the actual world areas are for solo gameplay (or for a small party). There's really no chance that two players will just randomly come across each other out in the open world other than the towns. In this vein, it's much more like Diablo than an MMORPG. It's a Multiplayer Online RPG, but there's nothing Massive about it (as opposed to WoW or LotRO or WAR, etc, where the entire world is open and only small sections of it are instanced)

Allright. Cheers. I'm a total n00b when it comes to stuff like that so it was great with a bit of explanation.

 

[Valiance]

Honestly, I consider Diablo and Guild Wars to be MMOs in their own right, but saying that they aren't because of the instancing/personal-ness means that WoW is barely an MMO compared to, say, EVE with 300,000 people on one server.

The sense of community is probably the most overrated thing I've ever heard about an MMO anyway, because leveling up and seeing the same people around really isn't as 'amazing' as people make it out to be, building rivalries can be nice, but it's not that great when you can't talk to or message the person because they're an opposing faction (though I understand why they did this with the chat system... :/), mob mentality is terrible enough in a raid, let alone general, trade, BGs and LFG, etc, etc...

I know it all comes down to personal preference, I just think that people should give a game like GW a shot because being able to only have 2 people in your party and replace the other 8 with NPCs is a GODSEND to me because I hate working with bads.

 

[Fearzone]

Honestly, I consider Diablo and Guild Wars to be MMOs in their own right, but saying that they aren't because of the instancing/personal-ness means that WoW is barely an MMO compared to, say, EVE with 300,000 people on one server.

LOL, touche. BUT... isn't each star system its own instance? And each star base?

The sense of community is probably the most overrated thing I've ever heard about an MMO anyway,

Sounds like we have an EVE fan in the house.

It isn't the presence or lack of instances, because all MMOs and MOs are heavily instanced, including WoW, where each region on each server is its own instance, and I bet there is rarely more than 50 in an area at a time outside the beginner areas excepting coordinated guild activities. It's whether the player base in instances is consistent or not.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Lol.

What's with the stool/ chair question?

You'd think none of you have heard of Fuzzy Logic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic].

(which is, essentially, a mathematical definition of something everyone knows anyway, if they bother to think about it. You cannot draw an exact line between two concepts without it being arbitrary at least some of the time.)

 

[John Funk]

Honestly, I consider Diablo and Guild Wars to be MMOs in their own right, but saying that they aren't because of the instancing/personal-ness means that WoW is barely an MMO compared to, say, EVE with 300,000 people on one server.

LOL, touche. BUT... isn't each star system its own instance? And each star base?

The sense of community is probably the most overrated thing I've ever heard about an MMO anyway,

Sounds like we have an EVE fan in the house.

It isn't the presence or lack of instances, because all MMOs and MOs are heavily instanced, including WoW, where each region on each server is its own instance, and I bet there is rarely more than 50 in an area at a time outside the beginner areas excepting coordinated guild activities. It's whether the player base in instances is consistent or not.

Bingo, that's it right on the money.

The issue isn't the lack of a persistent world now that I think about it, it's the lack of a persistent community and playerbase.

 

[Fearzone]

^^I pwn!

 

[Zand88]

Key word is "Massively" in Massively Multiplayer Online Game.

 

[Valiance]

Sounds like we have an EVE fan in the house.

It isn't the presence or lack of instances, because all MMOs and MOs are heavily instanced, including WoW, where each region on each server is its own instance, and I bet there is rarely more than 50 in an area at a time outside the beginner areas excepting coordinated guild activities. It's whether the player base in instances is consistent or not.

I still play WoW pretty much daily, my warrior has 37k unbuffed health after an upgrade from ToC last night, and no, I'm not much of a fan of EVE. MMOs tend to have truly unbearable combat systems. I'm just saying it's the type of thing I could never get into alone. I would have to play with friends anyway, and a lot of WoW came down to me and 1 or 2 IRL friends three-manning instances because everyone else is too fucking terrible to rely on, or too terrible to trust in an important role, etc...

My point is the sense of "community" you get from a guild, or a group of friends on a sever, could be better supplied somewhere else, and a game should not be focusing its selling point on "well uhh, you'll be playing with a lot of cool people" when it should be "You'll be doing (action X) with a lot of cool people, fighting Y with people, etc..."

Thisw is starting to sound like a ramble with no coherent point, and all I really meant is that people say "OMG SO MANY PEOPLE ON MY SERVER ^_^" when there's only like 150 in Dalaran at any point in time assuming a shit ton of people are on, all raids are 25 man or less, all PvP is 40 man or less (aside from WG which is just a huge lagfest and clusterfuck 90% of the time anyway, unless you divide the people into small groups to work together, in which case, yes, it may as well be TF2.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~

To put this in perspective, I've met infinitely more people that I can relate to, talk to, enjoy the company of, etc, playing Starcraft than WoW or my 2 trial accounts in EVE. If I wasn't playing with real friends, WoW would be more dry than I'd care to admit, even though my guildies have sort of been growing on me since I've become the main tank for our ToC progression raids.

And honestly, IRC channels and xfire, steam, etc, create a persistent community for -any- game, even Quake Live.

 

[Fearzone]

^^I'll agree that what need we have for a community or tribe is better fulfilled in RL, and associations in MMOs or on the Internet in general have a fleeting quality, unless backed up by RL encounters. Still, what "communities" there are add a dimension absent in single player games or even small multiplayer games.

One last thought on the matter: a difference between Champions Online and WoW is that WoW successfully disguises its instanced nature, whereas Champions wears it on its sleeve. Imagine every time you go to a flightmaster or cross into a different region you get a list to choose from of what server you want to go to, and the number of players there, and what servers you have friends in (but without listing their names). Furthermore, imagine if people on your friends list are not listed by their character name but by their login name. Well, that's Champions. Hell, why not display pings while you are at it?

It would better serve the immersion factor if they worked toward being more discrete.