Geek Syndicate
Ever wondered what all those
geeks in the corner were talking
about? Sick of missing out of the
sly references and obscure injokes?
Never Fear! The Bluffers Guide is
here to help!
So, coming out tonight?
I can’t. I’ve got a Raid.
...a what?
A Raid. Me and a bunch of people I
hardly know are going to team up
online and kill a virtual monster in a
computer game for a small chance of
virtual loot.
Was that the best way you could phrase
that?
...Yes. Actually I don’t think there is
a way to describe MMOGs without
sounding a little weird.
I think you’re going to have to try!
OK. Well, MMOG stands for “Massively
Multiplayer Online Game” and they’re
a strange offshoot of regular online
gaming. Mostly when you play online,
in your Battlefields, and Call of Duties,
and so on, you’re with a relatively
small number of people on a server,
but MMOGs are all about getting as
many people in the same game world
as possible.
All shooting each other and trying to
drive the same tank?
Actually it’s pretty dominated by fantasy games.
All stabbing each other and trying to ride
the same horse?
Thats more like it. To start with the
most common type, you have the
MMORPG, or Massively Multiplayer
Online Role Playing Game. These are,
in fact, older than the Internet.
Dun-Dun-Deeerrrr!
6
Very
funny.
Some of the earliest multiplayer games were
know as MUDS
(Multi User Dungeons) and ran
on local university networks and
then over ARPANet, the modern
internet’s
precursor. They
were purely textbased,
usually
programmed by
an individual and
featured basic
gameplay: wander around dungeons
killing monsters, levelling up and interacting with other players in the
same world. They sound a long way
from modern games, but laid down
the foundation that the MMORPG
genre has struggled to break free
from.
They’re not still text based though, surely?
No, they’ve gotten a lot prettier,
that’s for sure. MUDs gained graphical interfaces through the nineties
as access to home PCs with internet connections spread. By the late
nineties games like Ultima Online
(1997) and Everquest (1999) were
bona fide mainstream hits. Mechanistically they’re the same though kill mobs (wandering monsters) for
loot and experience, so you can level
up to kill harder mobs for more loot
and experience. These games also
introduced world monsters you had
to team up with other people to kill,
and smaller “Instanced” dungeons
you could do with set teams.
But the 1990s were a long time ago.
It is.
And it’s not changed since then?
Well, yes and no. In 2004 World of
Warcraft launched. Blizzard Entertainment are often accused of not being
great innovators, but what they did
with WoW (as it’s known) was take all
the disparate strands that games before them had been playing with and
smooth them into one elegant whole.
It wasn’t a flawless game - its server
woes on launch would have disastrous consequences these days - but
it was a huge leap in accessibility and
polish. People that hadn’t the time or
energy to get onboard the involved,
long-grind games that came before
it flocked to WoW. Even now, almost
ten years after its release, the game
has around seven million subscribers.
Which sounds a hell of a lot, until you
realise it’s about half the number that
the game had at its peak.
Good god. I’m lost for even a snide remark.
I know, right? Thats a lot of virtual
nerds.
Ah you had one. Good.
World of Warcraft’s legacy is a bit of
a mixed one. Due to its massive and
unprecedented success it set off a
gold rush for MMORPGs, as it seemed
every developer wanted a piece of the
pie. But MMOs are lumbering, complex beasts and the head-start WoW
head meant that newcomers weren’t
competing against the game of 2004,
but the game with a couple of expansions under its belt and a user base
with years of investment in their
character and an online social net-