Earlier in June on the MOP Podcast, Justin and I took a stab at answering the age-old question of what, exactly, constitutes an MMO. If you’re hoping for a concrete answer, we didn’t really give it, and I am still of the opinion that anybody who can answer it easily is probably engaging in some light gatekeeping. But it’s still fun to try because just making the attempt shows how hard it is and how nebulous the genre has become.
I wanted to tackle one angle of it in this week’s Massively Overthinking: population. That was definitely something neither Justin nor I felt comfortable nailing down, and making people uncomfortable is what we do around here, so now I’m asking our writers and readers to come up with a minimum number of players on a server and in zones for a game to be considered a massively multiplayer online title. What’s the number, how did you pick it, and what mitigating factors would you consider for nudging the number up or down? Has that number changed over time? And finally, is zone size more important than server size?
Andy McAdams:Â Maybe the definition is in the eye of the beholder? I dunno, the definition has never mattered that much to me, though I get salty when people start calling battle royales an MMO. But that’s my own bias against the game style than any honest-to-goodness gatekeeping.
I think for me the criteria is 1) do I have the opportunity to meet people I wouldn’t meet otherwise (aka not just my friends), 2) can I engage and be social with those people to whatever degree I prefer, and 3) does the world feel immersive. I know we hate that word, but I don’t know a better one here.
I dunno, maybe that’s too broad a definition? I’m sure it catches lots of things that folks will not think should be there, but oh well. Why do we have to go with the labels? Can’t we all just get along as we are?
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): Personally, I think feel matters more than hard numbers, but I accept my challenge: I’d probably say 500+ concurrent for a server and 100+ for an individual zone – and the more people, the better. But I would absolutely make exceptions. Guild Wars 1, for example, allows 100(ish?) in hub district layers but only eight (except in raids/PvP) in adventure zones. Felt like an MMORPG to me, same as any other game with instanced dungeons smaller than cities. Marvel Heroes felt like an MMORPG for similar reasons; the open-world instancing still sent you in alongside randoms picked from the pool of everyone in the game, even if those instances held fewer people than an EverQuest zone. Maybe I’d even stress the online and persistent nature of the game more than the massive part; there’s no way I’d consider a game with just couch co-op to be in the true MMO realm.
In the end, I still stand by my old piece on video game taxonomy porn!
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog):Â I’d say that overall population size should probably be in the four or five-digit range at minimum, with zones housing around 100 to 200 people.
These figures, of course, are wholly arbitrary, but I also feel like they’re the closest to hitting that latent energy that I feel when I’m in a populated, humming, and active MMORPG; the activity that just happens in a place like Ul’dah in FFXIV now versus the silence of Thayd in WildStar near its end-of-life, as an example.
As for changes in these numbers, I’m certainly always open to their being adjusted, especially upwards. At least assuming the server tech can handle as much anyway; I’d rather have things be smooth and performative rather than absolutely jumbled – time in the slideshow that was a City of Heroes Hamidon raid taught me that (though obviously tech has advanced quite a bit since then).
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): In my head, “multiplayer” is “32 or fewer,” so “massively multiplayer” is higher than that. But I guess I’d need to see a server host at least 100 people to call it massively multiplayer without being laughed out of the room, and ideally I’d like to see the floor at 1,000 people per shard.
Sam Kash (@thesamkash): I’d draw the line somewhere around visually seeing other players around me. And it should not be only the same 100 that joined this particular server and are the only 100 I’ll likely ever encounter.
I think it should be dynamic. That’s why it feels kind of hard for me to call a specific server that I play on with a mostly locked set of players an MMO. Shards are totally fine when they are dynamic, but if I’m in a survival box with only the few dozen players that joined and that’s it, I don’t think I’d count that.
So I’m going to lean on the dynamic nature and how you might meet different people at any time running around and doing their own thing.
Even in HPMA there’s not really a persistent world in the traditional sense, but when I move to a zone, I never know whom I’ll see.
Tyler Edwards (blog): I feel like it’s nigh-impossible to come up with a definition that doesn’t include or exclude some games it shouldn’t. To me, if I can bump into other players in the world without first inviting them to my group, it’s an MMO.
Every week, join the Massively OP staff for Massively Overthinking column, a multi-writer roundtable in which we discuss the MMO industry topics du jour – and then invite you to join the fray in the comments. Overthinking it is literally the whole point. Your turn!
