massively multiplayer online role part of a series onroleplaying video games subgenres action rpg mud mmorpg roguelike tactical rpg topics social interaction in mmorpgs character creation dialog tree gns theory history of eastern rpgs history of mmorpgs history of western rpgs nonplayer character player character quest rpg terms statistics threefold model lists list of rpgs list of muds list of roguelikes chronology of trpgs list of free mmogs list of mmorpgs list of textbased mmorpgs vte massively multiplayer online roleplaying games mmorpgs are a combination of roleplaying video games and massively multiplayer online games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual world as in all rpgs the player assumes the role of a character often in a fantasy world or sciencefiction world and takes control over many of that characters actions mmorpgs are distinguished from singleplayer or small multiplayer online rpgs by the number of players able to interact together and by the games persistent world usually hosted by the games publisher which continues to exist and evolve while the player is offline and away from the game mmorpgs are played throughout the world worldwide revenues for mmorpgs exceeded half a billion dollars in 2005 world of warcraft a popular mmorpg has over 10 million subscribers as of november 2014 common features although modern mmorpgs sometimes differ dramatically from their predecessors many of them share the same basic characteristics these include several common features persistent game environment some form of level progression social interaction within the game ingame culture system architecture membership in a group and character customization themes the majority of popular mmorpgs are based on traditional fantasy themes often occurring in an ingame universe comparable to that of dungeons dragons some employ hybrid themes that either merge or replace fantasy elements with those of science fiction sword and sorcery or crime fiction still others draw thematic material from american comic books the occult and other genres often these elements are developed using similar tasks and scenarios involving quests monsters and loot progression in nearly all mmorpgs the development of the players character is the primary goal nearly all mmorpgs feature a character progression system in which players earn experience points for their actions and use those points to reach character levels which makes them better at whatever they do traditionally combat with monsters and completing quests for nonplayer characters either alone or in groups are the primary ways to earn experience points the accumulation of wealth including combatuseful items is also a way to progress in many mmorpgs this is traditionally best accomplished via combat the cycle produced by these conditions combat leading to new items allowing for more combat with no change in gameplay is sometimes pejoratively referred to as the level treadmill or grinding the roleplaying game progress quest was created as a parody of this trend eve online trains skills in real time rather than using experience points as a measure of progression in some mmorpgs there is no limit to a players level allowing the grinding experience to continue indefinitely mmorpgs that use this model often glorify top ranked players by displaying their avatars on the games website or posting their stats on a high score screen another common practice is to enforce a maximum reachable level for all players often referred to as a level cap once reached the definition of a players progression changes instead of being awarded primarily with experience for completing quests and dungeons the players motivation to continue playing will be replaced with collecting money and equipment often the widened range of equipment available at the maximum level will have increased aesthetic value to distinguish high ranking players in game between lower ranked players colloquially known as endgame gear this set of empowered weapons and armor adds a competitive edge to both scripted boss encounters as well as player vs player combat player motivation to outperform others is fueled by acquiring such items and is a significant determining factor in their success or failure in combatrelated situations social interaction social interaction via mmorpgs mmorpgs almost always have tools to facilitate communication between players many mmorpgs offer support for ingame guilds or clans though these will usually form whether the game supports them or not in addition most mmogs require some degree of teamwork in parts of the game these tasks usually require players to take on roles in the group such as protecting other players from damage called tanking healing damage done to other players or damaging enemies mmorpgs generally have game moderators or game masters frequently referred to as gms or mods who may be paid employees or unpaid volunteers who attempt to supervise the world some gms may have additional access to features and information related to the game that are not available to other players and roles relationships formed in mmorpgs can often be just as intense as relationships formed between friends or partners met outside the game and often involve elements of collaboration and trust between players roleplaying most mmorpgs provide different types of classes that players can choose among those classes a small portion of players choose to roleplay their characters and there are rules that provide functionality and content to those who do community resources such as forums and guides exist in support of this play style for example if a player wants to play a priest role in his mmorpg world he might buy a cope from a shop and learn priestly skills proceeding to speak act and interact with others as their character would this may or may not include pursuing other goals such as wealth or experience guilds or similar groups with a focus on roleplaying may develop extended indepth narratives using the setting and resources similar to those in the game world culture over time the mmorpg community has developed a subculture with its own slang and metaphor as well as an unwritten list of social rules and taboos players will often complain about grind a slang term for any repetitive timeconsuming activity in an mmorpg or talk about buffs and nerfs respectively an upgrade or downgrade of a particular game mechanic as with all such cultures social rules exist for such things as invitations to join an adventuring party the proper division of treasure and how a player is expected to behave while grouped with other players debate rages in various gaming media over the longterm effect of video game overuse the online gamers anonymous forums are filled with stories of players that have neglected social employment andor family responsibilities in favor of their virtual lives system architecture most mmorpgs are deployed using a clientserver system architecture the server software generates a persistent instance of the virtual world that runs continuously and players connect to it via a client software the client software may provide access to the entire playing world or further expansions may be required to be purchased to allow access to certain areas of the game everquest and guild wars are two examples of games that use such a format players generally must purchase the client software for a onetime fee although an increasing trend is for mmorpgs to work using preexisting thin clients such as a web browser some mmorpgs require payment or a monthly subscription to play 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 still others adopt a micropayment model where the core content is free but players are given the option to purchase additional content such as equipment aesthetic items or pets games that make use of this model often have originated in korea such as flyff and maplestory this business model is alternately called pay for perks or freemium and games using it often describe themselves with the term freetoplay depending on the number of players and the system architecture an mmorpg might actually be run on multiple separate servers each representing an independent world where players from one server cannot interact with those from another world of warcraft is a prominent example with each separate server housing several thousand players in many mmorpgs the number of players in one world is often limited to around a few thousand but a notable example of the opposite is eve online which accommodates several hundred thousand players on the same server with over 60000 playing simultaneously june 2010 history mud1 an early multiuser game history of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games mmorpg is a term coined by richard garriott to refer to massive multiplayer online roleplaying games and their social communities and 1996s nexus the kingdom of the winds in south korea the financial success of these early titles has ensured competition in the genre since that time mmorpg titles now exist on consoles and in new settings as of 2008 the market for mmorpgs has blizzard entertainments world of warcraft dominating as the largest mmorpg alongside other titles such as final fantasy xiv and guild wars 2 though an additional market exists for freetoplay mmorpgs which are supported by advertising and purchases of ingame items this freetoplay model is particularly common in south korea such as maplestory rohan blood feud and atlantica online also there are some freetoplay games such as runescape and tibia where the game is free but one would have to pay monthly to play the game with more features guild wars and its sequel avoid some degree of competition with other mmorpgs by only requiring the initial purchase of the game to play development the cost of developing a competitive commercial mmorpg title often exceeded 10 million in 2003 the frontend or client component of a commercial modern mmorpg features 3d graphics as with other modern 3d games the frontend requires expertise with implementing 3d engines realtime shader techniques and physics simulation the actual visual content areas creatures characters weapons spaceships and so forth is developed by artists who typically begin with twodimensional concept art and later convert these concepts into animated 3d scenes models and texture maps developing an mmog server requires expertise with clientserver architecture network protocols security and database design mmorpgs include reliable systems for a number of vital tasks 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 a system for recording the games data at regular intervals without stopping the game is also important maintenance requires sufficient servers and bandwidth and a dedicated support staff insufficient resources for maintenance lead to lag and frustration for the players and can severely damage the reputation of a game especially at launch care must also be taken to ensure that player population remains at an acceptable level by adding or removing servers peertopeer mmorpgs could theoretically work cheaply and efficiently in regulating server load but practical issues such as asymmetrical network bandwidth cpuhungry rendering engines unreliability of individual nodes and inherent lack of security opening fertile new grounds for cheating can make them a difficult proposition the hosted infrastructure for a commercialgrade mmorpg requires the deployment of hundreds or even thousands of servers developing an affordable infrastructure for an online game requires developers to scale large numbers of players with less hardware and network investment in addition the development team will need to have expertise with the fundamentals of game design worldbuilding lore and game mechanics noncorporate development screenshot of an event in the mmorpg ryzom an open source and free content game 2014 though the vast majority of mmorpgs are produced by companies many small teams of programmers and artists have contributed to the genre as shown above the average mmorpg development project requires enormous investments of time and money and running the game can be a longterm commitment as a result noncorporate or independent or indie development of mmorpgs is less common compared to other genres still many independent mmorpgs do exist representing a wide spectrum of genres gameplay types and revenue systems some independent mmorpg projects are completely open source while others feature proprietary content made with an opensource 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 opensource mmorpgs the multiverse foundation has also created a platform specifically for independent mmog developers trends as there are a number of wildly different titles within the genre and since the genre develops so rapidly it is difficult to definitively state that the genre is heading in one direction or another still there are a few obvious developments one of these developments is the raid group quest or raid which is an adventure designed for large groups of players often twenty or more instance dungeons instance dungeons sometimes shortened to instances are game areas that are copied for individual players or groups which keeps those in the instance separated from the rest of the game world this reduces competition and also reducing the amount of data that needs to be sent to and from the server reducing lag the realm online was the first mmorpg to begin to use a rudimentary form of this technique and anarchy online would develop it further using instances as a key element of gameplay since then instancing has become increasingly common the raids as mentioned above often involve instance dungeons examples of games which feature instances are world of warcraft the lord of the rings online everquest everquest ii aion final fantasy xiv guild wars rift runescape star trek online and dc universe online playercreated content increased amounts of playercreated content is another trend use of licenses the use of intellectual property licensing common in other video game genres has also appeared in mmorpgs 2007 saw the release of the lord of the rings online based on j r r tolkiens middleearth other licensed mmorpgs include the matrix online based on the matrix trilogy of films warhammer online age of reckoning based on games workshops table top game star wars galaxies star wars the old republic champions online and age of conan additionally several licenses from television have been optioned for mmorpgs for example star trek online and stargate worlds which was later canceled consolebased mmorpgs the first consolebased mmorpg was phantasy star online for the sega dreamcast the first consolebased openworld mmorpg was final fantasy xi for the playstation 2 everquest online adventures also on the playstation 2 was the first console mmorpg in north america although consolebased mmorpgs are considered more difficult to produce the platform is gaining more attention browserbased mmorpgs with the popularization of facebook and microtransactions has come a new wave of flash and html5 based mmorpgs that use the free to play model they require no download outside of a browser and usually have heavily integrated social media sharing features an example of a browserbased mmorpg is freewar smartphonebased mmorpgs smartphones with their gps capabilities amongst others enable augmented reality games such as ingress and pokmon go the games are enhanced by location and distance based tracking bench marking goals or facilitating trade between players in society and culture psychological effects since the interactions between mmorpg players are real even if the environments are virtual psychologists and sociologists are able to use mmorpgs as tools for academic research sherry turkle has found that many people have expanded their emotional range by exploring the many different roles including gender identities that mmorpgs allow a person to explore nick yee has surveyed more than 35000 mmorpg players over the past several years focusing on psychological and sociological aspects of these games recent findings included that 15 of players become a guildleader at one time or another but most generally find the job tough and thankless many players report that the emotions they feel while playing an mmorpg are very strong to the extent that 87 of male and 232 of female players in a statistical study have had an online wedding in a study by zaheer hussain and mark d griffiths it was found that just over one in five gamers 21 said they preferred socializing online to offline significantly more male gamers than female gamers said that they found it easier to converse online than offline 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 a german fmrtstudy conducted by researchers of the central institute of mental health points towards impairments in social emotional and physical aspects of the selfconcept and a higher degree in avatar identification in addicted mmorpg players compared to nonaddicted and naive nonexperienced people richard bartle author of designing virtual worlds classified multiplayer rpgplayers into four primary psychological groups his classifications were then expanded upon by erwin andreasen who developed the concept into the thirtyquestion bartle test that helps players determine which category they are associated with with over 650000 test responses as of 2011 this is perhaps the largest ongoing survey of multiplayer game players these elements may be found not only in mmorpgs but many other types of games and within the emerging field of gamification in world of warcraft a temporary design glitch attracted the attention of psychologists and epidemiologists across north america when the corrupted blood disease of a monster began to spread unintentionallyand uncontrollablyinto the wider game world the centers for disease control used the incident as a research model to chart both the progression of a disease and the potential human response to largescale epidemic infection economics see also virtual economy a user browsing the market for items in eve online many mmorpgs feature living economies virtual items and currency have to be gained through play and have definite value for players and has value in economic research more significantly these virtual economies can affect the economies of the real world one of the early researchers of mmorpgs was edward castronova who demonstrated that a supplyanddemand market exists for virtual items and that it crosses over with the real world this crossover has some requirements of the game the ability for players to sell an item to each other for ingame virtual currency bartering for items between players for items of similar value the purchase of ingame items for realworld currency exchanges of realworld currencies for virtual currencies the invention of usercreated metacurrencies such as dragon kill points to distribute ingame rewards the idea of attaching realworld value to virtual items has had a profound effect on players and the game industry and even the courts game publishers usually prohibit the exchange of realworld money for virtual goods but others actively promote the idea of linking and directly profiting from an exchange in second life and entropia universe the virtual economy and the realworld economy are directly linked this means that real money can be deposited for game money and vice versa realworld items have also been sold for game money in entropia and some players of second life have generated revenues in excess of 100000 bots spamming a communication channel in runescape to advertise illegitimate market websites some of the issues confronting online economies include the use of bots or automated programs that assist some players in accumulating ingame wealth to the disadvantage of other players the use of unsanctioned auction sites which has led publishers to seek legal remedies to prevent their use based on intellectualproperty claims the emergence of virtual crime which can take the form of both fraud against the player or publisher of an online game and even reallife acts of violence stemming from ingame transactions linking realworld and virtual economies is rare in mmorpgs as it is generally believed to be detrimental to gameplay if realworld wealth can be used to obtain greater more immediate rewards than skillful gameplay the incentive for strategic roleplay and real game involvement is diminished it could also easily lead to a skewed hierarchy where richer players gain better items allowing them to take on stronger opponents and level up more quickly than less wealthy but more committed players list of muds digital currency list of free massively multiplayer online games list of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games list of textbased mmorpgs server emulator virtual economy virtual goods virtual world jn a asbjrn 2010 the development of mmorpg culture and the guild australian folklore a yearly journal of folklore studies 25 97112 dyerwitheford nick de peuter greig 2009 games of empire global capitalism and video games university of minnesota press jenkins henry 2004 game design as narrative architecture first person new media as story performance and game mit press pp11830 tekinba katie salen zimmerman eric 2006 the game design reader a rules of play anthology mit press vtemultiplayer video gamesplayers cooperative gameplay multiplayer online game massively multiplayer online game mmorpg mud genres action arcade roleplaying simulation strategy history history of online games history of massively multiplayer online games list of massively multiplayer online strategy video games concepts virtual economy virtual tax social interaction in mmorpgs virtual world persistent world nonplayer character see also online game browser game social networking service vtevideo game genres listaction beat em up hack and slash fighting maze pacman clone platform shooter firstperson thirdperson light gun shoot em up tactical survival battle royale actionadventure grand theft auto clone immersive sim metroidvania stealth survival horror psychological horror adventure escape the room interactive fiction interactive movie visual novel mmo mmofps mmorpg mmorts mud roleplaying action roleplaying dungeon crawl roguelike tactical roleplaying simulation construction and management business city government life simulation dating sim digital pet god social simulation sports strategy 4x multiplayer online battle arena realtime strategy tower defense time management realtime tactics turnbased strategy turnbased tactics wargame vehicle simulation flight simulator amateur combat space racing kart racing sim racing submarine simulator train simulator vehicular combat other genres artillery breakout clone digital collectible card game eroge exergame incremental music rhythm nongame party programming puzzle sokoban tilematching related concepts aaa game advertising arcade game art game audio game casual game christian game crossover game educational game fmv gamification indie game multiplayer video game nonlinear gameplay open world nonviolent video game online game browser game multiplayer online game online gambling socialnetwork game pervasive game serious game toystolife twitch gameplay video game clone authority control gnd 76258798 