A Life All Its Own

MMORPGs. Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. If you've spent any time playing video games, whether its been on the consoles or PC (Mac too), you've likely heard of this term. It now sits alongside other terms such as FPS (First Person Shooter) and RTS (Real Time Strategy).

A Second Life, A Second World

But just what are MMORPGs? You can infer much of what it is from the last three letters of its acronym: Role Playing Game. Like the old Dungeons & Dragons games, you create a character and play out a role. Though that role can be limited by game mechanics, you are often allowed to do what you want. You can roleplay (pretend to be your character in-game), you can "raid" (taking on hard dungeons with allies to get good loot), you can PvP (Player versus Player, where you and other human controlled characters combat one another), or you can just futz around for fun.

But you can do that in any offline RPG. The MMO, the massively multiplayer online portion, is just that. A massive multiplayer section. You will often find yourself playing alongside hundreds, if not thousands, of players on your server.

I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar

You can create just about any character in MMORPGs, though they are limited by game mechanics. For example, in Anarchy Online, you could create male and female avatars of three of the game's four races (the fourth race had one gender). In World of Warcraft, you can create male and female avatars of all 10 races, though specific races had certain unique things (Draenei had facial crests, horns, and tails; the Forsaken were undead humans sometimes literally falling apart, etc).

So, you could be anyone. Even someone of the opposite gender. Of course, this can cause some...problems...in game, but it also teaches players to try and keep an open mind.

Online Anarchy

From here on I will speak mostly in terms of the two MMORPGs with which I have experience. Anarchy Online, made by Funcom, was my "first" MMORPG. I had tried out both Ultima Online and Everquest before, but neither truly grabbed me.

Anarchy Online is one of the few science fiction MMOs (the genre is dominated mostly by Fantasy style games), though it did have some fantasical elements (a dragon lived in a castle in one town, I recall).

Anarchy Online, though extremely dated by today's standards, is still worth a look. One can even play for free, though doing so causes the game to have some ingame ads on billboards

You are Listening to Gridstream Productions

One of my favorite parts from Anarchy Online wasn't even officially a part of the game. At least for a time. Gridstream Productions was an ingame radio station of sorts. You had to use a radio client to listen in, but you could talk with the DJs in game and even request songs. They had a number of DJs, many of whom had specialties. Former CEO Lan "Tarryk" Kozar often played hard rock, another former CEO "Veldron" played even harder rock, former DJ Otori would play dance and house, and so on.

Tarryk stepped down some time after I stopped playing, handing the reins to Veldron. Veldron has since gone "missing," though clues from the bio for new CEO Ashval points to him just being Veldron under another name.

GSP became big. Very big. Part of that was likely due to Anarchy Online having only three servers: Rubi-ka 1 (now named Atlantean), Rubi-ka 2 (now named Rimor), and a German server whose name I can't seem to find. RK1/Atlantean was the most populated, but they had a speacial bot script on each server allowing them to take requests from them all.

They also held parties. Despite the game having three sides, two of which were at war (Omni-Tek and the Rebels), they had parties where all were invited, though sometimes it was difficult to get to the club they were at. Most parties were held at their unofficial HQ, Reet's Retreat. GSP also were hired by numerous Organizations (player run groups) to help with parties.



GSP is perhaps the one aspect I miss most. Though it seems to have changed, having the in-game radio was a great thing, and made leveling and playing all the more fun.

I just wish they had it in the MMO I play now.

Welcome to the World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft, also known as WoW, is "this" generation's Everquest. Everquest, for those that don't know, was the 700 lb. gorilla of the MMO market. WoW is the 2 ton gorilla.

WoW, at last report, had 11.5 million players worldwide, and it seems to continue to grow. They just recently released their latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, and though most would agree that WoW is starting to decline, it still has a number of years left in it, and at least one more expansion.

WoW is a sequel of sorts to Blizzard's Warcraft storyline. It continues from the events in Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, and offered players a chance to change from the traditional RTS to the MMORPG. Everyone, even Blizzard, was surprised with the results.

WoW is often thought of as being in the fantasy genre, but it tends to be more of a blend of fantasy and steampunk. Thanks to the Gnome and Goblin races, there exist robots and machines in WoW. There are even technological ways to teleport from place to place (though magical means still rules it all).

The Draw

So why do so many people play WoW? And after so long? (The game was released in November of 2004)

Your guess is as good as mine, really. I play because I love the world, and even if some of the story is silly at times, I enjoy it. Others came for that reason and stay for the community. And others still...again, your guess is as good as mine.

That's the same draw with most MMOs, I think. You come in for your varying reasons, but in the end most stay because of the community that they grow attached to.

MMOs have somewhat become the last domain of PC gaming. Though a few exist on consoles (Final Fantasy 11 and the Phantasy Star line of games, to my knowledge), most exist on the PC and Mac only. That may change as time passes and consoles become more like computers. We'll see.