Longtime MMO and MMORPG players have probably noticed that we do our best to flag games as MMORPG or as merely multiplayer – “not so massively” – and have been doing so for more than a decade now. When it comes to MOBAs and battle royales and squad shooters, this distinction is dead simple. But it gets a little muddier when it comes to massive OARPGs.
And thus we’ve had a bit of a conflict over how to bin MMOARPG Lost Ark. Our MMORPG fanatics have been more than happy to claim it as one of theirs, but so has our Not So Massively columnist. Personally, I’m not a stickler when it comes to hard player counts; I prefer to judge based on feel and scope and gameplay more than on how many players we can theoretically squeeze into a frame, map, or server. But maybe you disagree.
Is Lost Ark an MMO, MMORPG, or neither?