Weekly Topics - Week 3: How MMOs influenced the gaming industry

Source: Dav, 2018, https://eastsidegamers.net/2018/a-brief-history-of-the-mmorpgs/

The blogging task for this week is to write about a short blog analysis about a new media component and how it has influenced its area. I am going to write about the Gaming Industry, in particular, how MMOs have influecned the gaming industry.

MMO stands for massive multiplayer online games. The earliest version of a MMO started decades ago in form of text based Multiplayer User Dungeons (MUDs). A popular game was Colossal Cave Adventure, which was released in 1975 [1]. It was highly influenced by the tabletop fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) [2]. Even though MMOs have been around for a long time, they didn’t gain that much popularity until the internet has risen to fame. But games in general have been around for very long time! Did you know, that the very first board game was invented 3500 before Christ? This game was invented in predynastic and first dynast burials in Egypt [3].

But back to MMOs: Most famous among early MMO culture was the game Everquest. It was released in 1999 by John Smedley. The game offers a fantasy world in 3D-graphics and quickly became the most popular MMO in the 90’s [4]. The game featured 16 different races and classes and let the players decide whether they want to be a necromances, a shaman, etc.

Everquest (source: Messner, 2017, https://www.pcgamer.com/a-brief-history-of-mmo-games/)

“Many of Everquest’s ideas, like grouping with dozens of players to kill tough raid bosses, would become archetypes of the genre." [5].

However, the most popular MMO of all time remains World of Warcraft (WoW). Published in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment, the real-time strategy game had risen to fame like no game before. WoW made the genre accessible for everyone. Player could easily log in, run as many dungeons as they want, play PVP (player vs player) or explore the world.

WoW (source: https://www.pouted.com/mmo-influence-is-changing-gaming/)

Since the online aspect became more important in the gaming industry, many non-traditional MMO related genres tried to win a piece from the MMO popularity [1].  The believe was, that the community aspect of MMO was, what made them so popular. There were attempts for MMOFPS (first-person shooters), MMORTS (real-time strategy) and MMO racing games. The MMOFPS Destiny was successful and even raised the bar again for what is possible in the gaming industry. However, MMO racing games struggled with their success. For example, the Need for Speed World attempted a MMO approach and failed. The current popular racing games even moved away from the MMO style and have a more traditional online infrastructure.

“The future is increasingly multiplayer, whatever form that might take." [1]

In conclusion: MMOs had a massive influence in the Gaming Industry. Many games, that initially weren’t MMOs, tried to get a piece of cake from the MMO success. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. However, the trend of online multiplayer games isn’t going away so soon.

 

Sources:

[1] https://www.pouted.com/mmo-influence-is-changing-gaming/

[2] https://ragezone.com/2018/01/04/decades-in-the-making-the-short-history-of-mmorpgs/

[3] https://www.imageholders.com/insights/how-technology-has-influenced-the-gaming-industry/

[4] https://eastsidegamers.net/2018/a-brief-history-of-the-mmorpgs/

[5] https://www.pcgamer.com/a-brief-history-of-mmo-games/

 

 

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