What Is “MMO”?
The original term, as far as I know it, was MMORPG - Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. It spawned when the concept of the RPG game was taken live across the Internet and introduced to hundreds of thousands of players in a simultaneous world (I don’t know how the term MUD fits into this or even if had anything to do with the term MMORPG so feel free to shed some light on it if you know). Since then people have often shortened the term to simply MMO and used it to define RGP style games like World of Warcraft and Everquest.
The term has also been prefixed onto other classic gaming terms like FPS giving, you guessed it, MMOFPS. Tabula Rasa for instance was often called this (whether that was truly accurate or not) and now we’ve got the forthcoming Global Agenda which certainly fits the bill quite aptly.
Aside from being shortened to more conveniently describe MMORPG, you have to wonder if the term MMO isn’t actually a genre unto itself. Technically speaking there are lots of MMOs out there. Quake Live is a MMO and so are games played over Battle.net. They’re “massive”, they’re “multiplayer” and they’re “online”. So really we could define MMO as any game that involves a lot of players over the Internet, not necessary something that fits into the Ultima Online or original Everquest gameplay style.
Although this may all sound like pedantry waffle (and it probably is), it could have quite a big impact on the future of our gaming. If MMO really is a genre by itself, then the barriers that define games are going to start dropping and we’ll be seeing vast varieties of them going massive, multiplayer and online.
It also shakes up our traditional definition of MMORPG. Take Torchlight for example. Runic have stated that they will release a “MMO version” but, frankly, that could mean anything. It might end up being a vast world spanning multiple servers like World of Warcraft, a single world like EVE Online or something like a heavily instanced, arcade style world like Warrior Epic. Either way, it will be interesting to see.
So there you have my take on what “MMO” is. What does this really mean to me though? Well, not much other than I’m probably going to have to change the strap line for my blog. We Fly Spitfires - MMO Blog? Doesn’t quite roll of the tongue the way MMORPG does 
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You try to play as fast as humanly possible through the online world all alone, you join a guild to crawl with them in a few underground holes in said world in multiples of the games party size. If you have more than one party in the instance, you are in a raid hole and likely to gangbang a dragon!
MUD is a term for the original text games over the internet. The first one was co-developed by Dr. Richard Bartle, and he coined the term as an acronym for “Multi-User Dungeon”. Eventually some people count the “D” as meaning “Domain” to include games that aren’t about guys in dresses (sorry, robes) hiding behind guys with big swords in underground lairs.
As I’ve heard it, Raph Koster takes partial blame (or credit, perhaps) for coining the phrase “massively multiplayer”. This term was intended to excludes online games where the limit was 8-16 players on a single server, like most FPS games. Games like Meridian 59 counted as “massively multiplayer” because the servers could hold more than 16 players at once. (But, perspectives change and now that larger games host thousands of players at once, some people try to exclude smaller games from the MMO category; often these people try to show that the game they played first was the first “real” MMO.) Note that the first M is “Massively” not “massive”. “Massively” is a modifier to “Multiplayer”, indicating that there are a lot of people playing the game (with a cap higher than 16 or 32 or whatever). Size of the world has nothing to do with the definition.
You’re wrong that MMOs are a genre. Genre indicates either setting (fantasy) or gameplay (RPG). It might be better to think of MMOs as a medium, an alternative to “consoles” or “PC” or “handheld”. You could take a game concept and put it on different media, but the limitations and strengths of each one changes how the game would play. An RPG on the consoles (like popular Final Fantasy franchises) is different than one on a handheld system (consider the Final Fantasy Legend games on the Game Boy). An MMORPG is a different beast altogether, something people on here are probably familiar with.
Cheers for the info. And yeah, you’re right about MMO being a medium rather than a genre - never considered that!
Wikipedia is pretty good here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-User_Dungeon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_massively_multiplayer_online_role-playing_games
I remember New Gen Gamers did an extensive podcast on the history of MMO’s starting with muds. I believe they covered it all. Who first coined what phrase, when, why, and how.
But that is history, not really current perspectives like you give.
forgot to add.
I try to be careful in my terminology. I purposely try to always use MMORPG when talking about wow, rom, etc…
I use MMO and MMOG interchangeably for any online game that allows more than one person to play, but excluding MMORPG, MMOFPS, etc..
Usually if the games a bit ambiguous or doesn’t label itself anything.
I admit that I use the term MMO a lot when talking about MMORPGs. It’s just easier to type and read and mixes things up a little. Otherwise my articles would have about 30 references to “MMORPG”
[...] be seeing vast varieties of them going massive, multiplayer and online.” – Gordon, What is “MMO”, We Fly [...]
Kesmai was calling its games multiplayer online games (MPOGs). In 1997 they started using massively multiplayer when describing their games, such as, the Airwarrior series, Legends of Kesmai, Multiplayer Battletech and any new additional game in the Gamestorm service and AOL lineup.
Cool, thanks for the info!