It’s a valid MMO definition anymore?
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008Speaking about Diablo 3, developers are eager to say it won’t be categorized as an MMO:
While Battle.net can certainly support that many players at one time, the lack of a persistent world and restrictions on how many players can be within each “world” (game) would keep Diablo III from being categorized as an MMO.
Now, let’s think about the last persistent online world you saw… Mmm none? That’s the myth of MMO worlds: they are persistent.
Aside for Ultima and a few other cases, most of today’s MMOs are barely persistent, unmodifiable worlds that acts as hubs for restricted instanced contents. Unless having a common marketplace it’s your idea of persistent world, of course! Cutting trees, modifying geography and landscapes, even leaving things on the ground are gameplay elements no longer considered during MMOG design. They were the expensive part of MMOs operation in 1997, wonder why in 2008 most MMOs are free? Yes, that’s because the world you see don’t even exist in the way you experience it on their servers, it’s just a glorified chatroom background, at some extent…
Now I’m sad and nostalgic!