Massively multiplayer online role-playing game
[5] Star Wars: The Old Republic, released in 2011, became the world's "fastest-growing subscription MMO in history" after gaining more than 1 million players within the first three days of its launch.
These include several common features: The majority of popular MMORPGs are based on traditional fantasy themes, often occurring in an in-game universe comparable to that of Dungeons & Dragons.
MMORPGs that use this model often glorify top ranked players by displaying their avatars on the game's website or posting their stats on a high score screen.
Instead of being awarded primarily with experience for completing quests and dungeons, the player's motivation to continue playing will be replaced with collecting money and equipment.
Player motivation to outperform others is fueled by acquiring such items and is a significant determining factor in their success or failure in combat-related situations.
Players will often complain about 'grind' (a slang term for any repetitive, time-consuming activity in an MMORPG), or talk about 'buffs' and 'nerfs' (respectively an upgrade or downgrade of a particular game mechanic).
By definition, "massively multiplayer" games are always online, and most require some sort of continuous revenue (such as monthly subscriptions and advertisements) for maintenance and development purposes.
Some games, such as Guild Wars, have disposed of the 'monthly fee' model entirely, and recover costs directly through sales of the software and associated expansion packs.
MMORPG is a term coined by Richard Garriott to refer to massive multiplayer online role-playing games and their social communities.
[19] The first fully graphical multi-user RPG was Neverwinter Nights, which was delivered through America Online in 1991 and was personally championed by AOL President Steve Case.
[20] Other early proprietary graphical online RPGs include three on The Sierra Network: The Shadow of Yserbius in 1992, The Fates of Twinion in 1993, and The Ruins of Cawdor in 1995.
Finally, MMORPGs as defined today began with Meridian 59 in 1996, innovative both in its scope and in offering first-person 3D graphics, with The Realm Online appearing nearly simultaneously.
[20] Ultima Online, released in 1997, is often credited with first popularizing the genre,[20] though more mainstream attention was garnered by 1999's EverQuest and Asheron's Call in the West[20] and 1996's Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds in South Korea.
This free-to-play model is particularly common in South Korea such as MapleStory, Rohan: Blood Feud, Atlantica Online and Lost Ark.
[22] These projects require multiple disciplines within game design and development such as 3D modeling, 2D art, animation, user interfaces, client/server engineering, database architecture, and network infrastructure.
The server must be able to handle and verify a large number of connections, prevent cheating, and apply changes (bug fixes or added content) to the game.
Peer-to-peer MMORPGs could theoretically work cheaply and efficiently in regulating server load, but practical issues such as asymmetrical network bandwidth, CPU-hungry rendering engines, unreliability of individual nodes, and inherent lack of security (opening fertile new grounds for cheating) can make them a difficult proposition.
As shown above, the average MMORPG development project requires enormous investments of time and money, and running the game can be a long-term commitment.
Some independent MMORPG projects are completely open source, while others feature proprietary content made with an open-source game engine.
The WorldForge project has been active since 1998 and formed a community of independent developers who are working on creating framework for a number of open-source MMORPGs.
[36] Nick Yee has surveyed more than 35,000 MMORPG players over the past several years, focusing on psychological and sociological aspects of these games.
It was also found that 57% of gamers had created a character of the opposite gender, and it is suggested that the online female persona has a number of positive social attributes.
[41] A German fMRT-study conducted by researchers of the Central Institute of Mental Health points towards impairments in social, emotional and physical aspects of the self-concept and a higher degree in avatar identification in addicted MMORPG players, compared to non-addicted and naive (nonexperienced) people.
[43] The high degree of avatar identification found by Leménager et al. in the addicted group of this study indicates that MMORPG playing may represent an attempt to compensate for impairments in self-concept.
Psychotherapeutic interventions should therefore focus on the development of coping strategies for real-life situations in which addicted players tend to experience themselves as incompetent and inferior.
[44] Based on Bartle and Yee's research, Jon Radoff has published an updated model of player motivation that focuses on immersion, competition, cooperation and achievement.
Many news agencies have criticized video games as promoting violent tendencies in its player base and encouraging anti-social behaviors.
However, due to Blizzard Entertainment's failure to keep statistical records of the event, the 2005 Corrupted Blood Outbreak ultimately failed to produce any results.
One of the early researchers of MMORPGs was Edward Castronova, who demonstrated that a supply-and-demand market exists for virtual items and that it crosses over with the real world.
If real-world wealth can be used to obtain greater, more immediate rewards than skillful gameplay, the incentive for strategic roleplay and real game involvement is diminished.
