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MMORPG reviews get better with time
Whereas the first generation of massively multiplayer online
roleplaying games (MMORPGs) included games such as Everquest and
Ultima Online, we are now in the second or the third generation,
where games such as World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI will
dominate and set new standards that force the older outfits to
adapt. Many changes are being made to MMORPGs, which we will
discuss later, that are not only making them more user-friendly,
but bringing in unforeseen numbers of players to the genre.
Although MMORPGs were popular before, they are now huge. The
list of upcoming MMORPGs is enormous. And World of Warcraft's
role in this is significant, it's almost certain that people
will look back on it and say 'this game changed MMORPGs
forever.' The wheel has started turning, and companies that try
to deviate will probably not make it. Now, you may think that
this is overly dramatic. However, given the rising production
costs of an MMORPG--and oddly the increasing saturation of ones
slated for launch--it probably is not. Things are changing for
MMORPGs, and World of Warcraft is behind them.
With that said and given that World of Warcraft is bringing in
tons of new players, it is worth going over what an MMORPG is,
although certainly even a rough outline will defy one paragraph.
Believe me if the the first M in the enormous MMORPG acronym
could be absolved it would have been. An MMORPG is what it
stands for; but though that is easy to say and justify, people
that try to imagine such a series of transformations for the
RPG--from single player, to multiplayer, to online, to
massive--won't get far. For conciseness' sake I'll assume people
know what an RPG is--a game where someone plays the role of a
character, usually in a fantasy world, and kills monsters for
experience till he is strong and can defeat the bad guys. An
online game is not hard to imagine either, but the massive and
multiplayer parts switch things some. With the number of players
that play this game, it is divided into servers, each of which
can easily have a ten thousand or higher population of players.
Players on servers do not interact with players on other
servers, but only with those on their server, cutting down on
online slowdown (lag) and other things. But what happens then is
interesting.
As RPGs have traditionally been single player, not of course
counting the change that happened 20 years ago where the
programmers actually learned how to give you multiple
characters, the roles and objectives have naturally got to
change. A large distinction between an MMORPG and an RPG is that
you cannot beat an MMORPG. An MMORPG goes on interminably,
usually in one person's case till he gets bored with it, or the
developers make a very disagreeable change to the game--which
can happen with so many different personalities' and people's
intermixing in one world. At least in the context of the
original Everquest, the second popular graphical MMORPG to be
released many years ago, MMORPGs are about interacting with
other players. This is still largely true in World of Warcraft,
although indeed there are some shades of player interaction's
fading into the background a bit behind each player's having
their own safe and efficient world to play in (as I mentioned in
the introduction, MMORPGs are becoming more 'user-friendly', as
the term has been used). Players interact in various ways, but
as with single players RPGs, getting to the maximum level is
important in MMORPGs, and the most popular forms of interaction,
such as raiding dungeons in groups of 5, 10, 20, or even 40
players, do not come till then, though there are intermediary 5
man raids all the way till the current maximum level of 60 (in
the upcoming expansion the maximum level will be 70), which
offer lesser rewards.
So people try to power-up their characters and raise levels in
MMORPGs; this has not changed much from a single player RPG. But
along the way, rather than a story to follow, players can
collect quests in various areas of the world. Thankfully,
although the game is named that, the world is not actually
called Warcraft. It is divided into two continents---the Eastern
Kingdoms and Kalimdor, in which there are many segmented areas,
each containing monsters within roughly 10 levels of each
other--with a few nasty exceptions.Usually there are settlements
in these areas, where non-player characters (NPCs) may stand
around with yellow punctuation hovering over their heads. Speak
with them, and you get a quest. As an example of the quest you
might get, the usual parody is the sort of outlandish request of
some NPC to collect 15 buzzard gizzards, a couple of beetle
brains, a few bat snouts--and oh, look, all of these creatures
happen to be right next to camp and within my level range!--for
an experience or gold reward. Parodized NPCs are also usually
indecisive, too, and can't decide whether they want bird wings
or turtle shells, allowing for the occasional follow-up quest.
But World of Warcraft being a second generation MMORPG is a bit
more sophisticated, allowing for unique and sometimes logical
sorts of quests.
Leveling-up, though, is frankly filler--and I say that not in a
bad way. The real difference between an MMORPG and RPG lies at
the end game, where you don't win, but you strive for character
improvement. Here new content is added over time, such as new
raid dungeons, with tougher encounters and better equipment that
drops from them. You can do other such things as fight players
(prove whose gear and skill--and sometimes class selection--is
the best), kill monsters for money and buy new equipment, and
also participate in high-level quests and even
player-versus-player battlegrounds, where the the two opposing
factions in the game, horde and alliance (you can play as
either) fight each other in an objective-based scenario. It's
all a bit overwhelming once you reach the maximum level,
especially for players that jump into the game now or worse,
when the expansion is released, because the developers are
constantly adding new content to the game. In summary you can do
a lot of stuff once you reach the end-game of an MMORPG. In a
regular RPG it is over.... .
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