Redefining MMOs: Terminology, part 2

Changing terminology:
It is because developers have explored these areas of the market so fully that we can say that all games within each of these groupings offers similar gameplay and content. Descriptive terminology like this has begun to surface in everyday conversations about MMOs as we recognise the need to communicate details on game style. But old habits die hard and it's often coupled with traditional acronyms to produce more precise phrases like "Space MMORTS" or "Super Hero MMORPG". Perhaps it's futile to try to fundamentally change the language people have long since anchored themselves on. Clunky, long-winded acronyms may be around for years to come, with change coming only slowly as the genre grows and adapts.

Whatever happens, it's clear that in a market becoming saturated with games, a descriptor indicating the game style and content you'll encounter has become more important to us than the specific genre of game. Oftentimes the "RPG" suffix is simply implied if details of the game's genre are absent as RPGs of one type or another currently dominate the MMO scene. Nevertheless, the growing trend of hybrid divisional terms like "Fantasy MMORPG" and "Space MMO" is evidence of the language we use to refer to online games evolving and the way we think about them changing. Perhaps this is the first step toward a greater switch in terminology to something more elegant than our traditional six-letter acronyms.

What exactly IS an MMO?:
Another issue that circulates widely in online debate is the question of what exactly can be called an MMO. The debate over whether or not a game is an MMO often comes down to the meaning of the word "massively" in the context of the phrase "massively multiplayer online game". While the word hasn't evolved in the past few years, the meaning commonly held in this context has. The defining characteristic of an MMO is now most often seen to be the presence of a persistent universe or space in which our characters or avatars reside.

One sticking point with this is that some games we class as MMOs, such as the Guild Wars series, fall into a grey area. Is it still a persistent online universe if everything is so heavily sharded and instanced and is it still a massively multiplayer game if each instance can only handle a few players? Or is it just an online lobby where we arrange small matches and game sessions, like a 3D version of Diablo II's lobby or even the friends network on Steam? With fully instanced/sharded MMOs becoming more common, persistence is an increasingly blurry line to try and define the genre by. Nevertheless, it may remain the best indicator we have.

More to come:
This article was the first in a new weekly series here at Massively on redefining MMOs for the next generation of online games. In this series, we at Massively are pooling our collective experience to more thoroughly examine how the MMO genre has evolved over the years and where it might be headed in the future. Stay tuned on Thursdays for more from this series and don't forget to let us know your thoughts on this week's topic.