Massively Multiplayer Online Games

Games which support hundreds or thousands of players to inhabit the same game world and interact with each others.

This pattern is a still a stub.

Examples

Depending on how one defines massively, text-based multiuser adventures such as DragonMud and Kingdoms are among the first Massively Multiplayer Online Games. These were however not explicitly designed and deployed to support concurrent players numbering in the thousands, examples of games that do this include Ultima Online, World of Warcraft, and Eve Online. While all these are Computer-based Roleplaying Games to a larger or smaller degree, other game genres are possible. World War II Online is a FPS-based example and Hattrick is one simulating Soccer Management.

See the category Massively Multiplayer Online Games for all examples on the wiki.

Using the pattern

Evolving Rule Sets

Drop-In/Drop-Out Multiplayer Games Late Arriving Players Persistent Game Worlds Invites Purchasable Game Advantages Construction Massively Single-Player Online Games

Instances

where several, sometimes even thousands, of players share the same Game World, which itself has an existence independent of the players themselves. The high level of Social Interaction that occurs in these games can over time give rise to both Social Statuses among the players and Social Organizations given some support through the game design.

For practical reasons, Massively Multiplayer Online Games are have computer programs as Dedicated Game Facilitators that mediate the gameplay and other interactions between players.

Some Live Action Roleplaying games do approach the same numbers of players as Massively Multiplayer Online Games but differ in many other ways and the two patterns have relatively little in common.

Relations

Can Be Instantiated By

Dedicated Game Facilitators

History

New pattern created in this wiki.

References

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Acknowledgements

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