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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Asmor" data-source="post: 3719576" data-attributes="member: 1154">PSO is... an interesting game. I've never played it online, but I played the one for the Gamecube multiplayer with just 4 people sitting around a TV. Was fun.My understanding of it is that PSO's online functionality was that the cities functioned like "hubs," but when you went out into the actual wilderness/dungeons, you had your own instance with your party. If that's the case, then it's no more an MMORPG than Diablo II (though to be fair some do consider Diablo II an MMO... I am not one of them, personally).Actually, this made me think of something... Guild Wars is almost exactly like Diablo II and PSO... Actually, sort of a cross between the two. Diablo II's hub was an chatroom, while both GW and PSO had an in-game hub. However, like D2, GW has no subscription fee. Where all three are identical, however, is that the actual gameplay is instanced with a small party.Now that I think about it, I no longer consider GW an MMO.In any case, this is irrelevant. There are always corner cases and things which just don't quite fit the mold. It's impossible to make a definition which perfectly describes everything.That said, here's what I'd give as a definition for a MMORPG:1: A persistent world. The server and content don't "disappear" when you're not there. Note that instances, which are quite popular now, explicitly violate this rule. Dungeons in WoW, for example. However, as long as the bulk of the game exists in a persistent world, the game overall shall pass this rule.2: Everyone that plays, plays together, subject to hardware and software limitations and preference (i.e. theoretically, if the hardware was capable, the code robust enough, and people didn't mind the crowding, every WoW player on Earth could play on the same server). In other words, the hard limit on the amount of players who can coexist simultaneously is well in excess of the limits of how many people could sanely and enjoyably play together. Note that I say play together for the last part of that; I can sanely exist in Stormwind with 500 other random people; cooperating with more than a few dozen on the other hand quickly gets insane (yet it's still possible).3: The above two rules define what an MMO is; in order to be an MMORPG, of course, the game must be an RPG! I won't bother trying to define what an RPG is and is not, however, as that's a much touchier subject and ultimately irrelevant to the discussion at hand.Did I miss anything important? Note that I didn't say anything about subscription fees or graphics. For example, a MUD is, by these definitions, an MMORPG, and I think that is as it should be. On the other hand, Guild Wars, Phantasy Star Online and Diablo II all are not MMORPGs, because the actual gameplay in all of them takes place entirely within instances.EDIT: I think it's worth mentioning that the first rule I give doesn't directly have anything to do with being massively multiplayer... However, it's clearly a requirement of the second rule. In order for all those people to coexist and play together, it is necessary for the world to be persistent.</blockquote>

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