do you consider MMORPG's as a world of its own?

[soccerbud34]

writing a paper about whether or not MMORPG's can be claimed as a world, and i would like to hear some inputs from some of you more seaoned MMORPG players 🙂

For example, MMORPGs often claim to be worlds in themselves. EQ, for instance, tells its players ?You?re in our world now.?
Does Everquest, Ultima Online, Asheron?s Call, Dark Age of Camelot, or a similar MMORPG can really be consistitute as a world?

what do you guys think?

 

[Babbles]

Dunno, I am too busy playing EQ right now to answer your question.

 

[jobberd]

Give us the definition of the word 'world' that you will be working with

 

[soccerbud34]

here is from Merriam-Webster : "a division or generation of the inhabitants of the earth distinguished by living together at the same place or at the same time " and "human society "

 

[Spagina]

The closest MMORPG that ever came close to being a world, in my opinion, was UO, or atleast the older UO.

The game was incredibly fun back when it started and it was one of the few games where you weren't cornered into fighting or doing a certain thing in order to survive. If you wanted to hunt deer, you could hunt deer. If you wanted to mine, you could mine, chop wood, blacksmith, make potions, make scrolls, make arrows, fight Pker's, dungeoncrawl, thieve in town, etc. This one came closest to the world environment because it was a real online society. Players relied on eachother for services. NPC shopkeepers were a very small part of the economy, so there was a breathing player economy, there was a constant good vs. bad struggle in the early UO (PK'ers vs. Anti-Pker's). Players ran pubs, their own towns, sailed on boats, ran their shops, it was easily the closest to a world.

EQ and DAoC on the otherhand, they are fun, but they are more of a static dungeoncrawl. Players can't make their effect felt on the gameworld. There is no housing, no real player ran economy, trade skills are lacking, but they are extremely fun in their own right. Of course, people have their own opinion on which constitutes a world, but from my viewpoint and my experience, the Older UO definitely fit the bill as an online world. You could literally play that game all day, everyday for years and never get bored, that is until EA took over. Regardless, there's my opinion.

 

[ThaGrandCow]

<< You could literally play that game all day, everyday for years and never get bored, that is until EA took over. Regardless, there's my opinion. >>



I only played it before EA took over. What happened with them?