Danny "Ralsu" Gourley is always searching for a quality free-to-play game. He reports his results each week in his Top Ten Free-to-Play Games. This week, Ralsu takes a hard look at the types of games he covers on the list and why:
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I spent some time mulling over the question posed by Ten Ton Hammer's Medeor: Is Warrior Epic a massively-multiplayer online game (MMOG)? In case you missed it, after spending several weeks in various spots on this Top Ten, I removed the game from the list after a gameplay trailer revealed a chat lobby where players got together to form games. You can view a still from the movie showcasing the lobby here.
lobbies don't matter to me and have always been there. i mean you may as well nit-pick the fact that they are not role playing games since half the time you have to perform actions by hitting buttons rather than the whole thing being menu driven (or for that matter the fact that 90% of players don't role play at all).
Phantasy Star Online was my first mmorpg and it said it right on the box, i believe sega (being an old school game maker) has more say in the situation than any single player. you could also eliminate guild wars since towns are just lobbies, same for Hellgate:London. as long as you can have people on your friends list are you not inhabiting the same world? when they come online do their names not light up?
the other thing you could use to destroy preconceived notions of the genre is the question of "is it multiplayer if people are soloing to level cap?". or go 1 step farther and ask "are they actually games or just fantasy simulators?".
i think its one of those threads nobody is supposed to pull for obvious reasons (like mmorpg being a completely retarded acronym to begin with).
can add alot o' games to that: vanguard, eq2, hellgate, lotro, phantasy star universe, tabula rasa. i mean obviously they are still mmorpg's but it does raise doubt.
:: pulls the thread a little more ::
arent all LAN parties pretty much mmorpg's in the fact that: ok, i am playing a soldier who's quest is to eliminate my enemies and keep the world safe for democracy? i mean the immersion level is higher and most of the time it is a LOT like true role playing, theres the alpha and theres grunts, some people take orders some give them. makes sense to me.
Well, at least for me, neither lobby games like Audition (which I'd still call MMO) nor roleplaying games with working networking like Diablo II (or StarCraft) would fit my criteria for a MMORPG.
How come? Does it boil down to just family resemblance?
For me, MUDs (see Lusternia for a semi-recent example, played this quite a while ago) are closer to the notion of an MMORPG than MMOs (i.e., lobby games) or Diablo II. There's several notions for it that you take as criteria:
* Vastness. Since everyone is playing in the same world, it has to be big enough that (a sizeable fraction of) all players must fit in the same world.
* Economy. People trading with each other means that, based on the economy some items will be in higher demand and some in not-so-high demand. So, if everyone is a knight, buying knight equipment from players will cost more and other equipment will cost less, providing incentives for people to play the other classes (if the game is well-balanced).
* Random Experiences seeing other players fooling around: Because the world is shared and everyone is in it, you get to see all those people doing stupid things, for the better or the worse. MMORPGs need GMs, MMOs do not because the kind of interaction in it is rather limited.
Yes, you can solo to the level cap, but you'll come across all the stoopid other people and see what they're up to.
Note that there are a few other things, such as faction-based PvP, that I'd say contribute to that experience, but aren't necessarily defining.
Top Ten Free-to-Play Games
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