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MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) is a genre of online computer role-playing games (RPGs) in which a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world. As in all RPGs, players assume the role of a fictional character (most commonly in a fantasy setting) and take control over many of that character's actions. MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player RPGs by the number of players, and by the game's persistent world, usually hosted by the game's publisher, which continues to exist and evolve while the player is away from the game.
MMORPGs are very popular throughout the world, with combined global memberships in subscription and non-subscription games exceeding 15 million as of 2006. Overall, revenues for MMORPGs exceeded half a billion dollars in 2005 and are expected to reach over a billion dollars by 2009.
Common features
Though MMORPGs have evolved considerably, many of them share some basic characteristics.
- Traditional Dungeons & Dragons style gameplay, including quests, monsters, killing monsters, and loot.
- A system for character development, usually involving levels and experience points.
- An economy, based on the trade of items such as weapons and armor, and a regular currency.
- Guilds or clans, which are organizations of players, whether or not the game actively supports them.
- Game Moderators or Game Masters (frequently abbreviated to GM), which are sometimes-compensated individuals in charge of supervising the world, though in most games they are unable to completely moderate the game.
- A client-server model, in which the "world" runs continuously on a server, and players connect to it via client software.
- Large communities of players, or social networks.
The majority of popular MMORPGs require players to either purchase the client software for a one-time fee or pay a monthly subscription to play. Most major MMORPGs require players to do both. By nature, "massively multiplayer" games are always online, and require some sort of continuous revenue (such as monthly subscriptions, advertisements) for maintenance and development. Games that feature massively-multiplayer functionality, but do not include roleplaying elements, are referred to as MMOGs.
History
The term "MMORPG" emerged in 1996 after Trip Hawkins frequently made use of the term "massively multiplayer" when explaining early graphical products to the media. Although MMORPGs as defined today have only existed since the early 1990s, their history begins as early as the late 1970s.
The first gameworlds
The beginning of the MMORPG genre can be traced to text-based (entirely non-graphical) MUDs, with the first being developed by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw in 1978. These games ran on private servers, usually at a university, and sometimes without the knowledge of the system's administrators. Players would typically connect to the games using a TELNET client, and gameplay was similar to role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons. By typing commands into a parser, players would enter a dungeon, fight monsters, gain experience, and acquire loot.
Similar games quickly surfaced during that period for the PLATO System. MUDs (and later their descendants such as MUSHes and MOOs) were sometimes wildly different from one another, but shared many basic interface elements. An example of this would be a player's means of navigating his or her character around the gameworld by typing in compass directions ("n", "se", etc.).
Many MUDs are still active and a number of influential MMORPG designers, such as Raph Koster, Brad McQuaid, Mark Jacobs, Brian "Psychochild" Green and Damion Schubert, began as MUD developers and/or players.
Early commercial development
The first commercial MMORPG (although what constitutes "massive" requires qualification when discussing mid-1980s mainframes) was Islands of Kesmai designed by Kelton Flinn and John Taylor. Still text-based (or, more accurately, roguelike), this game became available to consumers in 1984 for $12.00 per hour via the CompuServe online service.
The first graphical character-based interactive environment, though not actually an RPG, was Club Caribe. Although first released as Habitat in 1988, Club Caribe was introduced by LucasArts for Q-Link customers on their Commodore 64 computers. Users could interact with one another, chat and exchange items. Although very basic, its use of online avatars (already well established off-line by Ultima and other games) and combining chat and graphics was revolutionary.
The first graphical MMORPG was Neverwinter Nights by designer Don Daglow and programmer Cathryn Mataga. "Neverwinter Nights" went live on AOL for PC owners in 1991 and ran through 1997. This project was personally championed and green-lighted by AOL President Steve Case. Both Club Caribe and Neverwinter Nights cost $6.00 per hour to play.
During the early-1990s, commercial use of the internet was limited by NSFNET acceptable use policies. Consequently, early online games like Legends of Future Past, Neverwinter Nights, GemStone III, Dragon's Gate, and Federation II relied heavily on proprietary services such as CompuServe, America Online, and GEnie for distribution.
Following Neverwinter Nights was The Shadow of Yserbius, a MMORPG on The Sierra Network (TSN), which ran from 1992 through 1996. The game was produced by Joe Ybarra. The Shadow of Yserbius was an hourly service, although it also offered unlimited service for $119.99 per month, until AT&T acquired TSN and rendered it strictly an hourly service. The name was then changed from TSN to the ImagiNation Network.
Commercial MMORPGs on the Internet
As NSFNET restrictions were relaxed, traditional game companies and online services began deploying games on the internet. The first commercial text-based MMORPG to make this transition to the Internet from a proprietary network provider (CompuServe, in this case) was Legends of Future Past, designed by Jon Radoff and Angela Bull. The game utilized a staff of professional Game Masters who conducted online events, and was originally offered at $6.00 per hour in 1992.
Access to the Internet, forming a global playerbase, caused game companies to grow in popularity and accumulate truly massive numbers. With this global access to paying customers, there also came a surge in profitability for game companies.
Meridian 59, launched by 3DO in late 1996, was one of the first Internet MMORPGs. It was the first Internet game from a major publisher, the first to be covered in the major game magazines, and the first to introduce the flat monthly subscription fee. Most significantly, however, and another first for online RPGs, was its 3D engine, allowing players to experience the game world through the eyes of their characters. A cult following quickly grew for Meridian 59 that still exists today.
The Realm Online was another successful early Internet MMORPG, launched by Sierra Online. Although released just after Meridian 59, the beta was active several months before. The Realm Online had fully animated 2D graphics, both in and out of combat situations, which made it accessible to a wider audience compared to more text-based games or the graphical MUDs on which it was based. Also, its gameplay and interface were already familiar to those accustomed to the graphical adventure games earlier popularised by Sierra. Like many of its predecessors, The Realm Online only featured simple turn-based combat, however, it did feature a huge number (for the time) of visual character customization options. It, too, is still running.
Ultima Online, released in September 1997, is now credited with popularizing the genre. It featured 3D isometric/third-person graphics, and was set in the already popular Ultima universe. It was also a more involved, complex game than many of its predecessors.
Meanwhile, commercial online gaming was becoming extraordinarily popular in South Korea. Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds, designed by Jake Song, was commercially released in 1996 and eventually gained over one million subscribers. Song's next game, Lineage (1998), enjoyed even greater success gaining millions of subscribers in Korea and Taiwan. This helped to secure developer NCsoft's dominance in the global MMORPG market for several years.
EverQuest, launched in March 1999 by Verant Interactive (later acquired by Sony Online Entertainment), brought fantasy MMORPGs into the Western mainstream. It was the most commercially successful MMORPG in the United States for five years, and was the basis for 12 expansions (as of October 2006) and several derivative games. In 1999, following Ultima Online and EverQuest, was another hit, Asheron's Call. Together, these three games are sometimes referred to as the original "big three" of the late 1990s.
Second-generation Commercial MMORPGs
By the turn of the century, game companies were eager to capitalize on the new market. The concept of massively multiplayer online games expanded into new video game genres around this time, though RPGs, with their ability to "suck in" the player, were (and still are) the most financially promising.
The next generation of MMORPGs, following the "big three" of the previous decade, was to include the medieval PvP-oriented Dark Age of Camelot, the sci-fi Anarchy Online, and Ultima Online 2. Anarchy, released first in June 2001, was saddled with crippling technical problems upon its release, mostly due to an inability to handle the huge playerbase. Camelot launched smoothly four months later, introducing "Realm vs. Realm" PvP and other innovations, but still never attained the media attention or fame garnered by the previous "big three", which were still running strongly. Ultima Online 2 was cancelled by Electronic Arts in March 2001, as they had decided that the market was becoming saturated and that it would be more profitable to divert resources to the original Ultima Online.
Other producers thought otherwise, and dozens of new MMORPGs were developed in the new millenium.
In 2002, Final Fantasy XI was released, which hoped to bring in fans of the extremely popular (but mostly single-player) Final Fantasy series, which was particularly popular in Japan. Like the previous Final Fantasy games, this one was playable on a console, using a handheld controller, but bore little resemblance to gameplay in prior Final Fantasy titles. Though not the first MMORPG played on a console (which was Phantasy Star Online), it was the first to allow console and PC users to play together. It was also notable for randomly selecting servers for new player-characters (instead of letting players pick for themselves), a practice which was highly criticized, but resulted (intentionally) in game worlds in which players would regularly interact and play the game with both English and Japanese. Final Fantasy XI persists as one of the leading MMORPGs on the market to date.
Also released in 2002 was the sprite-based MMO Ragnarok Online, produced by Korean company Gravity Corp. Unknown to many Western players, the game took Asia by storm as Lineage had done. The publisher has claimed in excess of 25 million subscribers of the game, although this number is based upon a quantity of registered users (rather than active subscribers, as typically used by Western game publishers).
May 2003 saw the release of Eve Online, produced by Crowd Control Productions, which had players taking the role of spaceship pilots and had gameplay similar to the series Star Control. Though not the first space MMORPG (DarkSpace was released in 2001), Eve was able to achieve lasting success. One of the reasons for its success may have been the game's design, in which all subscribers play in one unshared universe as a result of (relatively) computationally un-intensive graphics.
The following month, Linden Lab opened up its "3-D virtual world" called Second Life to the public. This would quickly become the most popular non-combat-based-MMORPG, and the first to attain mainstream media attention, though again it wasn't the first - one could argue that Club Caribe was truly the first, and that Active Worlds was the first "massive" entry. These games were all technically MMORPGs, though Second Life's goal in particular was to realize the concept of the Metaverse from Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash. Instead of being based around combat, one could say that it was based around the creation of virtual objects, including models and scripts. Competitors in this relatively new subgenre (non-combat-based MMORPG) now include There, Entropia Universe and Dotsoul.
In October 2003, Lineage II (NCsoft's sequel to Lineage) became the latest MMORPG to achieve huge success across Asia. It received the Presidential Award at the 2003 Korean Game awards, and is now the second most popular MMORPG in the world. As of the first half of 2005 Lineage II counted over 2.25 million subscribers worldwide, with servers in Japan, China, North America, Taiwan, and Europe, once the popularity of the game had surged in the West.
In April 2004, NCSoft produced another significant title, City of Heroes. Though it introduced no major innovations in gameplay, it featured an extreme number of possible visual character appearances, and its comic-book superhero theme made it stand out.
Modern MMORPGs
The most recent generation of MMORPGs, based on arbitrary standards of graphics, gameplay, and popularity, is said to have launched in November 2004 with Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest II and Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft (WoW). At the time, Sony expected to dominate the market, based on the success of the first Everquest, and decided to offer a flat monthly rate to play all of their MMORPGs including EverQuest, EverQuest II, and Star Wars Galaxies, to keep from competing with itself. However, World of Warcraft immediately overtook all of these games upon release, and indeed became so popular that it dwarfed all previous monthly-fee MMORPGs. At present, WoW is one of the most played games in North America, and the most played MMORPG worldwide, with a total of over 8 million customers. With the release of these newer games, subscriptions began to decline for many older MMORPGs, even the year-old Lineage II, and in particular Everquest 1. The current MMORPG market has World of Warcraft in a position similar to the position of Dungeons & Dragons in the tabletop RPG market, with both games' market share being greater than 50% of the overall market.
In April 2005, ArenaNet (a subsidiary of NCSoft) successfully launched Guild Wars, introducing a new financial model which might have been partly responsible for the game's success. Though definitely an online RPG, and technically having a persistent world (despite most of the game's content being instanced), it required only a one-time purchasing fee. It was also designed to be "winnable", more or less, as developers wouldn't profit from customers' prolonged playtime. Other differences compared to traditional MMORPGs included strictly PvP-only areas, a relatively short playtime requirement to access end-game content, instant world travel, and strategic PvP. For these differences it was termed instead a "Competitive/Cooperative Online Role-Playing Game" (CORPG) by its developers, and is now seen by some as occupying a new niche in the MMORPG market. With two million players as of June 19, 2006, Guild Wars is still continuously profitable (due to several expansions) and can be seen as a serious competitor to WoW.
There has been significant competition (and potential for profit) among free MMORPGs. The most successful is Joymax's Silkroad Online. Silkroad constantly remained on Xfire's top 10 list of most played games. Silkroad is said to have so much players that their servers are constantly full. Another example is the popular Java-based online RPG RuneScape, developed by British developer Jagex. It allows for players to sign up for a member's account for extra content, in addition to the ad-supported free accounts.
Finally, foreign MMORPGs have also been very compedative in the genre. Some have been so successful that they've start to edge out domestic MMORPGs. A good example is the free Korean MMORPG MapleStory, a 2D side-scroller developed by Wizet, which features purchasable in-game "enhancements". Because it is free, the game is said to have more than 50 million players in all of its many versions, with the majority of them from East Asia. Other notable MMORPGs is the free chinese MMORPG Conquer Online and the Japanese anime-style MMORPG Phantasy Star Online.
Economics of MMORPGs
Many MMORPGs feature living economies, as virtual items and currency have to be gained through play and have definite value for players. Such a virtual economy can be analyzed (using data logged by the game) and has value in economic research; more significantly, these "virtual" economies can have an impact on the economies of the real world.
One of the early researchers of MMORPG was Edward Castronova, who demonstrated that a supply-and-demand market exists for virtual items and that it crosses over with the real world. This crossover has some requirements of the game:
- The ability for players to sell an item to each other for in-game (virtual) currency.
- Bartering for items between players for items of similar value.
- The purchase of in-game items for real-world currency.
- Exchanges of real-world currencies for virtual currencies.
The idea of attaching real-world value to "virtual" items has had a profound effect on players and the game industry, and even the courts. Castronova's first study in 2002 found that a highly liquid (if illegal) currency market existed, with the value of the in-game currency exceeding that of the Japanese yen. Some people even make a living by working these virtual economies; these people are often referred to as gold farmers.
Game publishers usually prohibit the exchange of real-world money for virtual goods. However, a number of products actively promote the idea of linking (and directly profiting from) an exchange. Some players of Second Life have generated revenues in excess of $100,000.
Some of the issues confronting online economies include:
- The use of "bots" or automated programs, that assist some players in accumulating in-game wealth to the disadvantage of other players.
- The use of unsanctioned auction sites, which has led publishers to seek legal remedies to prevent their use based on intellectual-property claims.
- The emergence of virtual crime, which can take the form of both fraud against the player or publisher of an online, and even real-life acts of violence stemming from in-game transactions.
Private servers
One reaction to the virtual economies has been the phenomena of "private servers," which are servers operated by individuals and groups who have reverse-engineered commercial MMORPG products. Anyone who sets up their own private server has complete control over the virtual world existing on that server. Typically, these servers operate in violation of publisher's end-user license agreements. In November 2006, NCSoft and the Federal Bureau of Investigation shutdown a prominent private Lineage II server that had claimed 50,000 active users.
Private servers are mostly run by volunteers, and most of them are free. However, some private servers may wish for people to donate money, sometimes in exchange for a bonus in the game. Private servers remain markedly less popular than the official servers, with player numbers usually in the hundreds, though popular private servers may reach up to one or two thousand online players and even up to ten thousand in terms of player registrations. EQEmu is a server emulator for EverQuest; others exist for World of Warcraft, Lineage II, Ultima Online, Ragnarok Online, and many other MMORPGs.
Some private servers are not stolen code, and are fresh programs created to mimick the official servers. The L2J project is just one of these. Their legality, however, is still a gray area.
Psychology of MMORPGs
Since the interactions between MMORPG players are real, even if the environments are not, psychologists and sociologists are also able to use MMORPGs as tools for academic research.
Sherry Turkle, a clinical psychologist, has conducted interviews with computer users including game-players. Turkle found that many people have expanded their emotional range by exploring the many different roles (including gender identities) that MMORPGs allow a person to explore.
Nick Yee, a Ph.D student, has surveyed more than 35,000 MMORPG players over the past few years, focusing on psychological and sociological aspects of these games. His research can be found at The Daedalus Project. Recent findings included that 15% of players become a guild-leader at one time or another, but most generally find the job tough and thankless; and that players spend a considerable amount of time (often a third of their total time investment) doing things that are directly-related to, but outside of the game itself.
Many players report that the emotions they feel while playing an MMORPG are very strong, to the extent that 8.7% of male and 23.2% of female players in a statistical study had had an online wedding.
Other researchers have found that the enjoyment of a game is directly related to the social organization of a game, ranging from brief encounters between players to highly organized play in structured groups.
Also, Richard Bartle has classified multiplayer RPG-players into four primary psychological groups. His classifications were then expanded upon by Erwin Andreasen, who developed the concept into the thirty-question Bartle Test that helps players determine which category they are associated with. With over 200,000 test responses as of 2006, this is perhaps the largest ongoing survey of multiplayer game players.
Developing MMORPGs
In general, the cost of developing a commercial MMORPG title exceeds ten million dollars. These projects require multiple disciplines within software engineering, art design and network infrastructure:
- The front-end (or client) component of a commercial, modern MMORPG features 3D graphics. As with other modern 3D games, the front-end requires expertise with implementing 3D engines, real-time shader techniques and physics simulation. The actual visual content (areas, creatures, characters, weapons, spaceships and so forth) is developed by artists who typically begin with two-dimensional concept art, and later convert these concepts into animated 3D scenes, models and texture maps.
- Developing an MMOG server requires expertise with client/server architecture, network protocols, security and relational database design. MMORPGs include reliable systems for a number of vital tasks. The server must be able to handle and verify a large number of connections; prevent cheating; and apply changes (bug fixes or added content) to the game. A system for recording the game's data at regular intervals, without stopping the game, is also important.
- Maintenance requires sufficient servers and bandwidth, and a dedicated support staff. Insufficient resources for maintenance lead to lag and frustration for the players, and can severely damage the reputation of a game, especially at launch. Care must also be taken to ensure that player population remains at an acceptable level by adding or removing servers ("shards"). Peer-to-peer MMORPGs could theoretically work cheaply and efficiently in regulating server load, but practical issues such as asymmetrical network bandwidth and CPU-hungry rendering engines make them a difficult proposition. Additionally, they would probably become vulnerable to other problems including new possibilities for cheating. The hosted infrastructure for a commercial-grade MMORPG requires the deployment of hundreds (or even thousands) of servers. Developing an affordable infrastructure for an online game requires developers to scale to large numbers of players with less hardware and network investment.
- In addition, the team will need to have expertise with the fundamentals of game design: world-building, lore and game mechanics, as well as what makes games fun.
Current trends in MMORPGs
As there are a number of wildly different titles within the genre, and since the genre develops so rapidly, it is difficult to definitively state that the genre is heading in one direction or another. Still, there are a few obvious developments.
One of these developments is the raid group quest, or "raid", which is an adventure designed for large groups of players (often twenty or more).
Another is the use of instance dungeons. These are game areas that are "copied" for individual groups, which keeps that group separated from the rest of the game world. This reduces competition, and also has the effect of reducing the amount of data that needs to be sent to and from the server, which reduces lag. World of Warcraft's "raids", mentioned above, are often instance dungeons, as are all of the combat areas in Guild Wars.
Increased amounts of "Player-created content" may be another trend. Some non-combat-based MMORPGs do already rely heavily on player-created content, including everything from simple animations to complete buildings using player-created textures and architecture. Examples of these games include Second Life and A Tale in the Desert. However, these games are very different from the far more popular "standard" MMORPGs revolving around combat and limited character tradeskills. Player-created content in these games would be in the form of areas to explore, monsters to kill, quests to carry out and specific in-game items to obtain. The Saga of Ryzom was the first of these "standard" MMORPG's to offer players the ability to create this type of content. Again, whether or not this becomes mainstream is anyone's guess.
The production of movie "tie-in" games, common in other video game genres, may also begin to appear more frequently in MMORPGs. The most recent example of this is The Matrix Online, based on the Matrix trilogy of films; the earliest possibly was Star Wars Galaxies. Neither of these titles was a great financial success, probably due to their divergence from the original property and poor gameplay. In addition to movie-license MMORPGs, there may be games produced on licenses from television; for example, Stargate Worlds, based on the popular Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis television series, is currently under development. The process is also apparently being applied in reverse, with James Cameron designing a MMORPG that will precede a film (Project 880) it is tied to.
Finally, some predict that a new rush of independent MMOG development, spurred on by easy-to-use software engines, will result in successful "mods" for MMORPGs, similar to what has happened with the FPS genre (see Counter-Strike).
Independent development
Many small teams of programmers and artists have tried to create their own MMORPGs. The average MMORPG project takes three to four years and large investments of money to create. Independent development, or game development not run by any company, usually takes longer due to lack of developer's time, manpower or money. Additionally, the long-term lack of funding required for running MMORPG servers may lead to the abandonment of the project.
However, many smaller developers are producing games with pay to play graphics, gameplay and features. Only time will tell if these games can afford to run.
Sometimes these independent games are free-to-play, but will confer in-game privileges to paying customers.
Some of the best-established independent projects are RuneScape, AWplanet, Crossfire, Daimonin, Endless Online, Star Wars Combine, Eternal Lands, Dream Blue Online and Planeshift. Some independent MMORPG projects are completely open source, such as Daimonin, while others like Planeshift feature proprietary content made with an open-source game engine. The developers of Endless Online have also released development information with details about their coding.
The WorldForge project has been active since 1998 and formed a community of independent developers who are working on creating framework for a number of open-source MMORPGs. The Multiverse Network is also creating a network and platform specifically for independent MMOG developers.
Browser-based MMORPGs
See also: List of text-based MMORPGs
With the success of the MMORPG genre in recent years, several multiplayer games played in web browsers have also begun using the MMORPG moniker. This browser game sub-genre developed from old BBS games and pre-dates the modern idea of an MMORPG. Browser-based MMORPGs are usually simpler games than their stand-alone counterparts, typically involving turn-based play and simple strategies (e.g. "build a large army, then attack other players for gold"), though there are many interesting variations on the popular themes to be found. Many browser-based MMORPGs are more like turn-based strategy games or wargames than role-playing games.
One of the earliest examples of a browser-based MMORPG is Archmage, which dates back to early 1999. More recently, faster computers and the Java programming language have allowed the introduction of graphical browser-based MMORPGs such as RuneScape, which are more similar to standalone MMORPGs. Macromedia's introduction of Shockwave 3D and the MUS Multiuser Server in 2001 makes it possible to create 3D browser-based MMORPGs based on the Shockwave plug-in.
Cheating in online games
Main article: Cheating in online gamesCheating is a major challenge for game developers and legitimate players. Cheating is not only limited to MMORPG, but to any major online games as well. Exploiting is a form of cheating involving the use of a flaw in the game mechanics to gain unfair advantages. Depending on the nature of the exploit, developers can address the exploits within a short time through patches and updates. Even when fixed, exploiting can still be an issue, as exploiters may still have the advantage or items they gained before the patch was released. Depending on the nature of the exploit, a rollback may be needed just to counter the effects. Twinking may also be seen as another form of cheating.
Third-party programs may be used to automate in-game actions, often with such efficiency that it gives users a huge advantage. Botting is a term for a player using a script that could automate progress through the game without them actually playing the game. Farmers, if they are unable to use exploits, will use such methods to harvest ingame currency or materials from the game world around the clock. They often sell the currency and items they earn via eBay or other commerce sites, thus possibly unbalancing the game's economy. This gives players a chance to make their way into the upper tiers of the system without following the logic originally intended by the designers.
Some third party programs are released with code in them to capture and relay account details back to the author, enabling them to steal virtual possessions from the account or impersonate the rightful owner to perpetrate confidence tricks and other scams. These are often packaged, trojan-like, with seemingly-innocuous software tools for easier distribution amongst unsuspecting users.
Even more subtle methods are known to be used to cheat; depending on the way the game handles certain aspects of gameplay the client can be modified, either on disk, directly in memory, or on the wire as data passes between the client and server. So far as the server does not verify the veracity of client data or, ideally, take care of important calculations server-side, this can be used to modify values such as character health or armor, speed up movement, or change other aspects of the game to the cheater's advantage. There are programs that have been designed to prevent external programs from running during a game, such as GameGuard. The integrity of client files can also be checked each time the game is loaded, although of course there are usually methods to disable these protection programs.
See also
- List of MMORPGs
- List of free MMORPGs
- List of text-based MMORPGs
- Comparison of MMORPGs
- MMORPG terms and acronyms
- MMOFPS
- MMORTS
- Computer addiction
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- Adam Carpenter (2003), Applying Risk-Based Analysis to Play Balance RPGs, Gamasutra, http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030611/carpenter_01.shtml
- Frank Luna (2006), "3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.0c, a Shader Approach," Worldware Publishing, ISBN 1-59822-016-0
- Jay Lee (2003), Gamasutra, Relational Database Guidelines for MMOGs, http://www.gamasutra.com/resource_guide/20030916/lee_01.shtml
- GDC Proceedings 2005, Online Game Architecture: Back-End Strategies, http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2005/features/20050310/esbensen_01.shtml
- Chris Crawford (2003), Chris Crawford on Game Design, New Riders Games, ISBN 0-13-146099-4
- Koster and Wright (2004), "A Theory of Fun for Game Design," Paraglyph Press, ISBN 1-932111-97-2
- http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/1028
- http://www.blogtimesherald.com/entertainment/index.php?ArticleID=40&ShowMore=NO
- James Cameron's Game Theory, Business Week (Feb. 13, 2006) http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_07/b3971073.htm
External links
- MMOGCHART.COM - Bruce Sterling Woodcock's tracking of MMOG subscription data.
- The Daedalus Project - Nick Yee's ongoing survey study of MMORPG players. Demographics, narratives and essays.
- Massively Multiplayer Online Games - A set of articles posted at Gamespy.com, concerning the past, present, and future of the genre.
- Evolution of MMORPGs - An article from Jiyan Wei on the role of the ordinary user in shaping MMORPGs.
- MMORPG News - All the latest news from the world of online gaming
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