I never quite know how much stock to put in Guinness World Records. I guess it’s somewhere between “for amusement value” and “stone cold authentication.” But these awards are always interesting and can highlight achievements in different areas of life.
Such as MMORPGs! Over the past few decades, several MMOs have racked up various Guinness records. I went combing through the official site’s archives to pull out 10 of the more interesting results that overlap with our field. So what MMOs set which amusing records? Let’s find out together!
EverQuest II: First videogame pizza delivery system
“The earliest video game pizza delivery system appeared in EverQuest ll. In February 2005, game developers added a pizza delivery system for its players. By typing /pizza, players would be linked directly to the Pizza Hut ordering site. This was the first time that an MMORPG could accept orders for real world items.”
EverQuest: Most belated video game ban
“EverQuest was originally released in 1999 but was banned in Brazil nine years later in January 2008, which gives it the honour of having the most belated video game ban. Brazilian officials were reportedly upset that the game allowed players to choose to be either ‘evil’ or ‘good’ fantastical creatures. Judge Carlos Alberto Simões stated that the game encouraged ‘the subversion of public order’ and was ‘an attack against the democratic state and the law and against public security.'”
Ultima Online: First player housing
“Ultima Online invented player housing so that players could build houses almost anywhere in the world, even turning them into shops with non-player characters acting as salesmen when the owner was offline. Soon after launch, the various worlds of Ultima were covered by rampant house-building schemes, with some players building just the walls of houses to claim the territory for themselves. The Age of Shadows expansion in 2003 allowed players to customize their homes in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colours.”
World of Warcraft: Oldest gamer to collect 850 pets
“The oldest World of Warcraft gamer to collect 850 unique pets is 86 years 198 days old, and was achieved by Donna Glee Reim, aka ‘GrannyGlee’ (USA) on 3 September 2017. She is also the oldest World of Warcraft gamer to earn 10,000 Achievement Points.”
Lord of the Rings Online: Longest-running MMORPG based on a book
“Tales of sword and sorcery have long been a staple ingredients of MMO and RPG videogames. Successful MMORPG franchises, such as Ultima Online, EverQuest, and World of Warcraft, have all borrowed liberally from literature – and especially the Middle-earth works of J.R.R. Tolkien – but Lord of the Rings Online (Turbine/Standing Stone Games, 2007–present), launched on 24 April 2007, was the first to directly adapt the literary source into an MMORPG – and the game is still going strong nearly a decade later.”
Elder Scrolls Online: Most readable books
For all of you bookworms, Elder Scrolls Online is calling. ZeniMax set a record for the most readable in-game books by cramming 2,235 tomes into the MMO — and that was as of 2014! The question is, has anyone ever read them all?
Final Fantasy XIV: Longest end credits in an MMO
If you think that the cutscenes in FFXIV take a good chunk out of your day, you should stay tuned for the end credits. Guinness reports that this title has the longest credit scroll of any MMO, clocking in at one hour and 38 minutes.
Star Wars: The Old Republic: All of that voice acting, egads
SWTOR set not one, not two, but three Guinness records for its voice acting work when it came out in 2011: the first MMORPG to have every line of dialogue voiced, the largest voice cast in an MMO (at 314 actors), and the largest voice-over project at the time in the entertainment industry (at over 200,000 lines of recorded dialogue). A chatty game, eh?
Star Trek Online: First MMO to launch with both space and ground gameplay
While other titles may have added one or the other after the fact, Guinness notes that Star Trek Online has the distinction of being the first MMO to launch with both space and ground gameplay systems. Boldly going where no one has gone before, indeed!
RuneScape: Most fish caught
This may go down as the smelliest record yet — if video games had olfactory spritzers, that is. RuneScape nabbed a record in 2012 for the most virtual fish caught in a video game at eight billion. “Jagex claims that, laid head to tail, these eight billion fish would encircle the circumference of the world 20 times.”
And for a bonus…
SOE: Biggest MMO Hack
“Following a huge online hack attack on Sony in April 2011, the firm revealed that user details from 24.6 million accounts in its massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming arm, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), may have been stolen. Games [a]ffected in this were Everquest I & II, Free Realms, Vanguard, Clone Wars Adventures, and DC Universe Online. Approximately 12,700 credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates, plus 10,700 direct debit records, could have been compromised as part of the hack, leading to SOE taking all of its MMOs offline for 12 days.”
Everyone likes a good list, and we are no different! Perfect Ten takes an MMO topic and divvies it up into 10 delicious, entertaining, and often informative segments for your snacking pleasure. Got a good idea for a list? Email us at justin@massivelyop.com or eliot@massivelyop.com with the subject line “Perfect Ten.”
