Re: Is blizzard to MMO based?
BigKevSexyMan, Diablo 3 is missing just one game feature to be considered a MMO. Diabo 3 will not offer a Persistent World to its players. Worlds are created when you leave the chat window and start a new game. Maximum number of players on each game will be limited to a predetermined number. Currently this is supposed to be four players. Less than the eight players in Diablo 2.
Diablo 3 is thus an Instanced World and doesn't fit, as such, in the MMO category of games.
A lot of people bring up the argument of persistence when debating if a game is an MMO or not. The term MMO is deceiving itself --- Massively Multiplayer Online doesn't really give expectations for the requirements a lot of people associate with them. I mean, if you look at these three words alone, games like Counterstrike could be construed as MMOs. It is an online multiplayer game, and massive! The persistence/# of simultaneously players is the issue.
From Wikipedia:
A massively multiplayer online game (also called MMOG or simply MMO) is a video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and feature at least one persistent world. They are, however, not necessarily games played on personal computers.
I think we all know what the word persistence means, but I think the issue here is how it's applied. WoW is an MMO, thats a fact, there's zero disputing it...but really, how persistent is WoW's world? I would say a WoW realm roughly as persistent as a D2 game created by a player. The main difference is here is size, and frequency.
Geography:
In both WoW and D2, the geographical world never changes. This is completely persistent. Orgrimmar will always be Ogrimmar, and Tristram will always be Tristram. You log in and out of WoW/D2, and they will always be there, waiting for you. The games are identical here.
Creatures/Dungeons:
There are some differences here, but for the most part I think both games are very similar. The main difference is respawns. In WoW, you go out into Durotar, kill all the boars. The boars are dead, but give them 15 minutes or whatever and they start to respawn. In D2, you go out to Stony Field, kill all the carvers, and they're gone until you recreate a game. Same mechanism, but one is automated while the other is forced via game creation. Dungeons/instances in WoW don't follow these rules. You clean out all the monsters and bosses, and they are cleaned out permanently until re-entered. The end-game dungeons have long respawn times, usually a week. You can apply the 'persistence' thing here in a few different angles.
Realm restart:
Both games operate the same way. You bring down a WoW realm for maintenance or what have you, and every monster, dungeon (mostly), etc is completely repopulated. Again with frequency, the world goes down much more often in D2 than WoW.
Characters/equipment:
I think both games here are identical except for the fact traditionally in D3 you always rejoin the game at the same exact spot (ex: an act beginning) where in WoW if you camp out in Sunwell Plateau, your character is sitting there waiting at that exact x,y coordinate until you come back. Equipment has the same persistence between the games except for the fact in most cases you go through it faster in Diablo.
Size:
This is where the games are most different. A WoW realm can support thousands of users simultaneously, 25/40 people per raid. D2 is 8 people max. There's a big numbers difference here, but I think you have to keep them in perspective. Sure in WoW there could be 2,000 people logged into your realm at the same time...but how many of these people are you actually interacting with? In many cases, none. You can only raid dungeons with 25 or 40 people. Sure, Orgrimmar and Stormwind can host hundreds of people because they're cities...but is this any different than a battle.net lobby? Technically sure, but they serve the exact same purpose. Trading, forming groups, or being social. They're obviously different, but I guess how different depends on interpretation.
So is D2 an MMO? Yes and no...
personally I say it's more an MMO than it isn't. You could argue the fact it has a single player component disqualifies it, but I will counter with the multiplayer aspect is mostly an MMO. You could also say its an action/arcade RPG, dungeon crawler, etc...I think it dances along all of these lines. At the least, I feel the definition of the term MMO needs revamping/clarification.
