What constitutes a MMO? This is a debate that goes all over the place as everyone seems to have their own criteria. Sometimes I think it’s easier to try and define what a MMO is *not* in order to come to a consensus.
I saw this screenshot (likely leaked, and subject to change I’m sure) of The War Z, and studied their FAQ a bit, and I’m bothered by what I found.
Will I be able to host or rent my own private server?
Yes, not only that – you’ll be able to rent a game server from inside the user interface without leaving the game. You will be able to choose server settings, configure things like public or private, password protection, allocate certain number of slots for your friends and clan members, etc.What is limit of players per server?
When renting a server you’ll be able to choose between a predefined number of player slots. The lowest amount of players per server is 70 and the maximum is 250.
The War Z’s official website calls it a MMO.  Can a game really be a MMO if you can rent servers, set a password, and even configure your own settings? Is that really massively multiplayer? Is it MMO to buy a 70 slot server? There will be servers provided by the developers for everyone to play on, and the option of a private server is optional, but is the very existence of such a feature contradictory?
There are “mmo elements” like talent trees, character persistence, etc., but those same features can be found in Call of Duty, Diablo, and even the very similar DayZ. What makes The War Z any more of an MMO than those games? Or are those games MMOs too?
The War Z violates too many of my criteria to be considered a MMO. So the hopes and dreams of a zombie survival sandbox MMO are out the window, but the hopes and dreams for a zombie survival sandbox multiplayer game are still very much alive.
What do you think? Can The War Z still be a called a MMO without being guilty of misleading marketing?
Well 70 ppl is not an mmo. Battlefield 3 can hold 64 ppl, which is pretty close to 70 and no1 would ever call that an MMO.
But 250 ppl I would call a kind of mmo. It bugs me too that you can password your server and change settings.
But I don’t care that much, what they call it, as long as its gonna be fun! And I still think it’s going to be.
Can’t have a discussion like this without an agreed definition of terms. The acronym stands for Massively Multiplayer Online. We can probably agree on Multiplayer as “two or more players”. It derives from before video games were online and is still used in that context. Online we obviously aren’t going to quibble over, so the issue is “Massively”.
It’s a vague adverb, not amenable to an exact definition. You can’t put a numerical limit on “massively”. You can’t meaningfully say, for example, “this crowd was of people isn’t massive but if one more person joins it then it will be”. Seventy people would be a massive number to try to fit in a phone booth but the same people wouldn’t make much of a massive crowd in a football stadium.
For a game to be an MMO I’d say it needs to be designed and intended for simultaneous use on a single server/shard by a number of players in excess of a thousand. That means an infrastructure capable of handling at least 1,000 players online at the same time. I wouldn’t call anything less than that “massive”.
So no, for me WarZ is nothing even approaching an MMO. It’s an MO. Or possibly an MMO where the first M stands for “Minorly”.
The criteria for an MMORPG is simple for me.
When I started playing a new gametype we now refer to as the MMO it had something not seen in any other game before it.
And that would be the first M in MMORPG: Massive…
Instead of a 12 vs 12 server that was normal at the time.
You could see hundreds of people playing in your vicinity and left you guessing how many people exactly where playing on the whole server, because the playing field was also huge. (a world)
Even recent games such as the starwars the old republic game fails to meet that simple definition. While playing you hardly encounter any other players. And in such it is not an MMO to me.
There are more criteria like a persistent world that changes even if your not online. Also.. I need actual players in an MMO. BOTS are a big no no.
Other then that those are the minimum requirements for an MMO for me. The RPG part at the end of MMORPG changed.. Just because the first few games where MMO’s that happened to be RPG’s does not mean other game genres can not pull the same thing off.
It’s definitely not an MMO. I agree with bhagpuss’s statement, but I also want to put forward that the “Online” segment of the acronym is also important. In the context of MMO it means that the world is always online and persists outside of a players involvement.
This means that a server capable of hosting 1,000 concurrent users isn’t classed as an MMO unless the world is also persistent. 1,000 players in a Battlefield 3 game wouldn’t make it an MMO – although it would be awesome.
Multiplayer, persistent world and 1,000~ concurrent users seem to be a pretty good list of criteria. It separates the WarZs from the WoWs, although for special cases I’d imagine you have to go into more depth on what exactly is meant by persistent and concurrent – people argue that Guild Wars is an MMO while it clearly isn’t and probably therefore requires more specific MMO criteria definitions to clarify exactly why.
WarZ to me is an Multiplayer Game (depending on how it ends up working it may get an Online chucked in) and DayZ would be more like a Multiplayer Online Game.
I think the problem these days is that when we first heard the term “MMO” it was connected to a very important set of characters, that of “RPG”. So the term first hit the scene as “MMORPG”. This is where I think many of of get baffled by the current use of the market.
MMO can describe literally anything, it has no real basis in fact besides being online and having more than one person. We think of MMO in its full context because that is how it started for us, MMO simply means MMORPG. I would never think of Battlefield 3 (or any others) as an MMO, because it lacks the RPG element even though it can still technically fit into the MMO phrasing, when taken literally.
Personally, I don’t think anything that allows you to maintain your character across multiple servers would qualify as an MMO. DayZ for example, has a persistent world, over multiple servers, but it also has a persistent character that you maintain even if you switch from say Seattle 28 to US 303. A true MMORPG would not allow you to “import” items and experience from one server to another (Barring paid transfers to move off a dying server or what have you).
Just my thoughts. So I wouldn’t call WarZ a true MMO, but that is because I think of it differently than most of the up and coming gamer crowd. MMO has always been linked to RPG for me, we simply shortened it to make it easier. I believe the newer generations have simply heard “MMO” by itself and so that is what sticks in their mind.
Sounds like this publisher is just using MMO as shorthand for ” Multiplayer, Online Game”.
70 people = not MMO. 250 people = MMO? There were nights when SWTOR didnt have 100 people on the entire server. So even they wouldnt qualify as an MMO on certain nights. (Part-time MMO?).
Since there is no numerical value for the qualification of the term Massively we need to disassociate it from the RPG acronym. To the majority of people MMO is short for MMORPG, and that means in the mold of EQ2. There are plenty of games that have MMO elements, and therefore techincally qualify as MMOs, but do not have the RPG factor that goes with the traditional term. Its all about the origins as we know it. If CounterStrike would have been called an MMO we would today label the Battlefields of the world MMOs too. 🙂
Massively compared to the days of old could be 50 players. Multiplayer only needs more than one person. Online speaks for itself. The phrase MMO needs to be re-imagined into a more modern concept. Some people referred to Guild Wars as an MMO even though the company itself said it was not many times. We should begin to think of MMO as the Genus with RPG, FPS, etc as the species.
dissapointed in this.
I only consider server structure set up by the developers and that can support thousands of players.
I do not see War Z being anything more than a survival game. I do not see it turning into a sandbox MMO with towns communities and guilds.
To me a true MMO must allow hundreds of people to share the same zones at the same time. 70 I call LMO – Large Multiplayer Online game by to me Massively part of MMO should be a few hundred at least. 250 is close by still cutting it pretty close.
1-5 = TMO = Tiny Multiplayer Online
5-49 = SMO = Small Multiplayer Online
50-299 = LMO = Large Multiplayer Online
299-999 = HMO = Huge Multiplayer Online
999+ = MMO = Massively Multiplayer Online
😉
@Neuronomad Let’s see where the numbers are in a decade!
@Skyve
Well if things don’t change soon (here’s hoping GW2 saves the day) the whole MMO scene may go the day of the dodo bird. 😉 Else I would say add 000 behind each number. 😉
I still use the original definition of MMO coined by the M59 devs, which simply meant to separate the genre from “normal” multiplayer. At the time, the most players any normal multiplayer game could host was 64 and most games half that or less. Over a decade later and 64 is pretty much still the hard cap, with only a handful of games able to exceed that. I think Joint Ops can take 150 max but that’s a single game. MAG on the PS3 can allegedly handle 256 and it’s not only marketed as an MMOFPS but 256 is 4 times what any “normal” multiplayer game can handle. I’ve yet to read CCP themselves saying DUST 514 will be an “MMO” they just call it an online shooter; it’s the “media” who tack the MMO acronym simply because CCP made EVE. So we’ll see how that one works out.
Now applying the M59 version of MMO to WarZ, sure, why isn’t it an MMO? Minimum of 70 players, that’s 6 more than 99.9% of normal multiplayer titles. 250 max? Now we’re talking! Not to mention, in the Static MMO of today, we just can’t get that real virual world feel anymore. In a smaller persistent world, we can. How many blog posts and forum threads have been written over the years about “why can’t we have a server with [blah blah] ruleset?” Well, now you can! Rent your own WarZ server and set your own rules and let ‘er rip.
I realize that the first M in MMORPG stands for Massive or Massively but I am not sure if the actual number of players these days defines an MMO. Let’s say that there can be 200ish players on a server…is that really all that different than the number of people in a zone of some of the heavily instanced MMOs? I remember walking around in SWTOR on Tatooine and barely seeing anyone in that zone. Many MMOs become “massive” once you get to some common gathering point (Stormwind etc.) but other than that, they may have large bumber of people per server but they often try thier best not to have these people in the same area. Since you can take your character to other servers in WarZ, for me, it may still fall within the definition of MMO.
In this specific case, a limit of 200 players may be totally necessary for gameplay and for the experience. You probably do not want to run into 20-30 people within your vicinity. If it is anything like DayZ, the game sort of requires a low population to increase the intensity and the excitement of running into another survivor. Considering that, the low population is even more excusable.
One point where I hesitate is “persistance.” I always viewed MMO as a persistent world. In WarZ I imagine your character will be “persistant” and maybe the server might be persistant to some degree but if people switch servers regularly then it feels much more like a shooter at that point (assuming that servers will not take on a life of their own and be unique etc.)
I still could see WarZ as a pseudo MMO but it certainly is borderline if I would end up calling it one.
Why is the theoretical possibility that the game have thousands of people interacting a requirement to be an MMO?
I mean whenever that actually happens, it’s a frigging lag fest. The reality is that it’s better to have less than 200 players on a server, since that is far more than you normally encounter in actual gameplay anyway (outside of a few hang out cities or whatever).
Having fewer players means the game can go beyond tab targeting hot key play, the same way that COD can. Without this really useless requirement that the game could hypothetically have all these thousands of players in the same place interacting, you could have an MMO that has legitimately fun and interesting gameplay.
Massively is a relative term. Accepting limits that will has very little realistic impact on the game while freeing it from the technical requirements that neuter gameplay seems like a no brainer to me.
I care about a consistent, persistent, contiguous world. If I know the same world I’m in exists for everyone else, but no one else is experiencing it alongside me, then I lose that sense of a virtual world. That’s why, for example, I was bothered by SWTOR’s single-player feel.
I’m someone that enjoys seeing other people, enjoys reading chat (despite how vile it often is), and enjoys the knowing that I am participating in shaping something that is being shaped by a consistent group of people. I don’t need to see all 5,000 people on my server to ‘feel’ how it affects me.
In the normal MMO world, everything is the same all the time. You have a bubble around you and once you are gone the world returns to its original state. Usually within minutes. You aren’t really shaping anything. The biggest contribution anyone really made was leaving a few corpses for someone to find if they showed up a few minutes late. At best you are throwing pebbles in a pond. While I don’t know much about this game, it would seem to me that the smaller server could actually allow for individual players to actually make permanent additions or subtractions to the world.
So I’m not super committed to what is in effect a double illusion; first of all its all fake anyway, but even within the context of the virtual world, any sense that you are making any difference is an illusion. I’m sure my old WoW server is exactly the same now as it would have been if I’d never logged in. I’d much rather have a fun world than one that is technically hamstrung trying to create this double illusion.
I don’t think you would miss chat and such in this War Z scenario. There will surely be servers with a fairly consistent player base. You could easily end up being friendly or recognizing a lot more people on a smaller server than a large one.
I mean, I can see your point, but on the whole I don’t see any truly debilitating reason why this couldn’t be considered an MMO. It may not appeal to you, and that is perfectly fine. But it’s an MMO. Of course I think COD and those other games are in the MMO vicinity anyway and have just found a way to create a hybrid to get around the programming problems that make a really interesting large world impossible to create.
At best it is a Multiplayer FPS with RPG elements. I see none of the characteristics of an MMO.
Something that is being overlooked as potentially awesome is the control that “good” server admins will have over the game world. I’m not an RP’er, but I would definitely consider it for this game if I knew it was going to be enforced. Not to mention having a douche free server.
Starting with Age of Conan (in my eyes) all of the post-WoW MMOs (and now WoW itself) are more single player games than they are some sort of world experience. You que up for personal instances and rarely interact with anyone. You don’t know the people on your server.
When I think mmo I think of the few games that defined the genre. Those would probably be UO, M59, and EQ. Two things defined those games at their heart. Massive amounts of players and a singular persistent world….the end.
250 people is NOT a massive amount. Being able to switch worlds on the fly is NOT a persistent world. Breaking the two rules that defined the genre = not a mmo k thnx bai.
Why are all MMOS the same cookie cutter clones? Why hasn’t the genre changed much in 15 years? I want innovation, dammit.
Hey wait— this isn’t exactly like all those cookie cutter clones! Therefore, it’s not an MMO.
You know why all cars look pretty similar these days? Because they have to meet the same crash and fuel economy standards. And there is generally one best way to do those things (darned laws of physics), so all cars end up looking pretty similar. It’s not that they aren’t creative, it’s just that there’s only so many ways to dress it up.
That’s why all MMOs look the same. To build a massive world that will actually work with thousands of people, sacrifices have to be made so that the computation necessary to model the world doesn’t get totally out of hand. IIRC each player exponentially increases the amount of computation. The compromises necessary to make it possible for hundreds of people to inhabit the same space are evident when you look for it. Why can’t you duel in cities in WoW? Any sizable pvp action in Ironforge and you get lag. Why do you always fight bosses in big open spaces? Tab targeting? All of them are compromises designed to ease simulation.
Step one if you want actual innovation is to cut them some slack and open your mind a bit. It’s a genre definition. They change.
@Toxic: Cookie cutter clone is how you sort games into categories/genres. We call shooting games FPS because it is a first person perspective shooting game. We call a platformer a platformer because there is platforming involved in the game play. We call RPG’s RPG’s because you are role playing in a game. We call MMORPG’s MMORPG’s because of what they originated as, persistent worlds with thousands of people. You can’t just change that. War Z doesn’t really fall directly into a category in my opinion. It may have concepts from a traditional mmo but it doesn’t have the core elements by any means.
Sure innovation is good but dropping your player limit and letting people hotswap servers is the direct opposite of how the genre was originated….which is devolution. So yea War Z is NOT an mmo and shouldn’t be categorized into it in any way.
WoW is an MMO. There are (illegal) private servers. It doesn’t stop WoW from being an MMO.
Honestly, this is much ado about nothing.
BTW, there are a lot of MMOs I’d rather play on a rented server with friends. As long as we could get back to the main servers with our stuff, the private server would be a far better place to play just because we wouldn’t have to deal with a ton of d-bags wrecking our enjoyment of the game on a daily basis.
@MosesZD: Someone taking it upon themselves to make a private server is completely different from a game being designed to be played on private servers akin to FPS games.
It’s not devolution, since the adaptation (massive servers) is holding the genre back. EQ style gameplay may not have been that bad back in 1999 compared to other RPGs, but now it looks like crap.
Eliminating maladaptions is not devolution. Developing a game that mixes the good parts of MMOs with genuine gameplay that isn’t stuck in the late 90s is not devolution. It also eliminates the problem that you have to drop 100 million to develop the game.
250 is barely “massive” but if that is just the Online limit, and say the server can save a few thousand characters then it would feel pretty massive as long as the maps arent the size of wow’s.
The real problem I have with this game is simple:
“There is a Zombie threat? I didn’t even notice.”
You are not trying to survive the zombie apoc, your trying to survive a bunch of fps players trolling with nightvision. It is not a survival game when the only real threat are the other fat bastards sitting in their tighty whiteys eatin cheetos, sniping with a 400yrd high powered rifle.
If they wanted to make survival there should be about 1000000000 more zombies.
This game is just a large-world fps action game… with a couple zombies thrown in for fun.
Planetside with some zombies.