Most significant online/multiplayer games? - Page 3

r_leeds2003 · #21 12-19-2007, 02:27 AM

Most significant to me are:

SWG - First MMO i ever played, the game was unbelievably fantastic, everyone on every world was different, from skills to equipment, to style, to personality. It was truely the endless and open ended game i was looking for, and it was huge, before the days of shuttles and speeders you had to run (lucky for most jedi's while perma-death was active), beautiful landscapes, and real music helped a lot too. It didn't even matter that it was just grinding sessions with no real quests, because there were thousands of people and a real community who stuck together.

Wow - Ofcourse it has to be here, I do love wow, it is incredibly life threatening, and a bit rigid these days, talents do help, but generally everyone is the same specs anyway. pvp is fun but relatively repetative. Wow's redeeming factor is the amount of quests and solo play, the storylines are great, the music isn't annoying, and it's just easy to play your life away.

SL - I don't particularly rate it as a game, but in essence it is a game. It's a cross between a lavish beautiful virtual world, and london city. Too much porn, too many clubs and casino's.. but a hell of a lot of amazing things to be seen and done, plus i think RMT (real money trading) is a great idea. I'm pretty sure it will help shape the gaming industry in some form for years to come.

Most other games are basically the same thing just wrapped and packaged differently, i love LOTRO but i can't say it's very significant, it has many aspects of pre-NGE SWG, and WoW, and various others.

Vorbis · #22 12-19-2007, 06:44 AM

Hmm it's actually pretty hard to make a list of the 10 most 'significant' online games as lot of games I loved were never really had as much impact as they should have had (such as Total Annihilation) yet there are still far more than 10 games that could be considered significant...

While Doom did precede Quake in a lot of things it was QuakeWorld that really launched online FPS with competitive rankings and many mods

I would say Half Life and not Counter Strike is the significant thing in the online gaming world. Counter Strike is obviously the most popular mod by far and it even helped sell copies of HL but there are other popular mods for HL and without the technology and user base of HL it would have been much harder for the CS team to become successful.

I've never played Linage but it was the most popular mmo for over 4 years and is still supposedly the 2nd largest mmo (between WoW and Linage2...).

I don't really have that much experience with them but browser based games should get some sort of mention. RuneScape for example is very big and Planetside was once quite popular.

GW and EvE are very significant in that not only are they both successful but they both challenge the EQ model which for a long time seemed the only profitable mmo model.

andrewjay · #23 12-21-2007, 01:16 AM

1.Madden Football (Not really a multiplayer but a lot of shit talkin goes on!!!)
2.Unreal tournament
3.Counterstrike
4.WoW
5.COD4

Arkane · #24 01-12-2008, 02:35 AM

Everyone left out Final Fantasy XI, which was and still is the most group oriented MMO to date. You basically need a group from level 10-75 except for two or three classes. They also had a way of overcoming the Japanese and English language barriers but having the auto translator and such. The only thing it lacked was real PvP.

Zedar · #25 02-06-2008, 10:27 AM

Significance?? That's tough! I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out, but with the options out there no one person can play 'em all -- though I've tried!

1. Ultima Online (The original MMO)
2. Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic (Millions and millions still play!)
2. World of Warcraft (10 mill subs?? Hello!) <tie for 2nd place>
3. Lineage (huge Asian following!)
4. Anarchy Online (One of the first MMO's in true 3D world, afaik)
5. Star Wars Galaxies (NGE -- Pioneering the field of what NOT to do!)
6. ImagiNation and The Sierra Network (Shadow of Yserbius anyone?)
7. Wolfenstein 3D (Luftwaffe!)
8. Final Fantasy XI (for the translator if nothing else)
9. Everquest (Never played but very popular and similar to UO)
10. Guild Wars (Free MMO, sorta..)

Oh and...

1,397. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

vel · #26 02-29-2008, 12:46 AM

The most significant online games list:

1. Diablo/ Diablo II
2. Starcraft
3. Warcraft III
4. World of Warcraft
5. Everquest
6. Dark Age of Camelot
7. Anarchy Online
8. Counterstrike
9. Half Life/ Half Life 2
10. Guild Wars

h4ngedm4n · #27 03-24-2008, 01:23 AM

1. there really should be one or two historical games most of us don't know about, for the sake of completeness. Meridian 59, Everquest, Neverwinter Nights 1, whatever. A text based MUD would be nice too. LambdaMOO?

2. Quake series of games - no proof of this, but I've always thought these kinds of games were the ones that brought internet gaming into the mainstream.

3. World of Warcraft - pretty obvious. Significantly raised the bar as far as MMOs are concerned and a huge commercial success.

4. Battlefield series of games - very impressed by the team play dynamics. I have not tried Team Fortress (yet!) so maybe just use one of them?

5. Guild Wars - For being successful with a different marketing model than the usual monthly fee. For being attractive to a large range of gamer types from casual to hardcore.

6. one of the browser-based games, planetarion, earth, utopia etc. or maybe runescape. Connect to your game world even when at a public internet terminal! This might be less of a big deal now that internet cafes are rather common.

7. Second Life - yeah so its a worldly game instead of a gamey world. I've never played but I am amazed by the impact this game has on peoples' lives. From bringing people together or tearing them apart, providing ways to explore alternate identities or even a new source of income! Lots of press about this game.

8. EVE Online - single unsharded server, where your identity/reputation matters. Best economic system ever. Complex character interaction. Breathtaking graphics.

9. Hello Kitty Online - for the lulz

Regarding battle.net (diablo/starcraft):
Many people are suggesting these types of games. These are not "MMO" any more than playing Yahtzee! or Chess on Yahoo! Games is. If we expand the definition to include "online communities where people gather to play instanced games in a small group", that is opening a huge can of worms. I see no fundamental difference in playing Diablo/Starcraft over battle.net than playing Scrabble, Acrophobia, Mahjjong, or whatever over their respective communities. Let's draw a distinction between games that are played together by many people vs finding a few people to play a game with.

Syldra · #28 03-24-2008, 01:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by h4ngedm4n

Regarding battle.net (diablo/starcraft):
Many people are suggesting these types of games. These are not "MMO" any more than playing Yahtzee! or Chess on Yahoo! Games is. If we expand the definition to include "online communities where people gather to play instanced games in a small group", that is opening a huge can of worms. I see no fundamental difference in playing Diablo/Starcraft over battle.net than playing Scrabble, Acrophobia, Mahjjong, or whatever over their respective communities. Let's draw a distinction between games that are played together by many people vs finding a few people to play a game with.

guildwars falls in the same category, really.
except it's lobby is more graphical, and has better guild support.

h4ngedm4n · #29 03-24-2008, 02:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Syldra

guildwars falls in the same category, really.
except it's lobby is more graphical, and has better guild support.

I agree it is not so clear cut. However, here are some key differences of between Guild Wars and the battle.net games:

1 - Guild Wars allows at most 24 people to play at a given time (12v12 in Alliance Battle), which is comparable in number to a typical battlefield or quake game. In contrast, Starcraft/Diablo only allowed up to 8 players, which is comparable to the number of people that can play Diplomacy over email.

2 - In Guild Wars, there is a form of indirect RvR where player alliances can "own" specific outposts and towns. Additionally, the winning faction "advances" into the enemy faction's area as shown in the map (found via google images search):
http://theancientalliance.tripod.com...antha20map.gif
In the lower right area, the line divides the luxon (red) and kurzick (blue) factions' areas of control. The logos seen on some of the areas denote which player group is in control of that town/outpost. This creates a form of world persistence.

Once again, it is not so clear cut, and I am sure many people might consider 24 people to be insufficiently "massive" for MMO.
To me, the battlefield and quake games, as well as guild wars provide a MMO feel. There's obviously no universally-agreed upon number, but lowering it to 8 would force the inclusion of the many 8-ish player games playable over internet (Total Annihilation, Mechwarrior, etc).

MikesterBrau · #30 03-26-2008, 07:46 PM

Here goes.... I am going somewhat chronologically not in order of influence.

1) Operation Overkill (BBS door) - Both online and multiplayer though obviously not massive in time terms but in scope a lot of future developers and gamers played this one and where influenced by it. The game even had a custom terminal program that allowed 32 colors overcoming the usual ansi 16 color scheme. Heck I liked it so much I loaded a PC emulator on my Amiga just to run the terminal program.

2) Legend of the Red Dragon (bbs door) - again this is one lots of developers have admitted to playing and enjoying back in the bbs prime time.

3) Ultima Online - too much has been said and this one seems a given.

4) Shadowbane - This game had features that still have not been matched in any other game in terms of the ability to have truly large scale PVP and sieges.

5) Everquest - This one basically inherited the mantle so proudly carried by UO for a long time.

6) WOW - Not my cup of tea yet 10 million happy subscribers just can't be ignored.

7) Guild Wars - for proving a no monthly fee MMO could be viable.

8) Doom - for clogging bbs and campus bandwith with frenzied downloads and setting the stage for a shareware revolution and enabling ID to go on to create so much more.

9) Age of Conan - for already making other companies take pause and consider where the bar stands.

10) EQ2 - Hey I had to I love this game and think that despite it not being the most popular game they way it continues to evolve and holds it's ground and that it has given a few other projects the courage to try and make it a WOW dominated market.

Honorable mention to LOTRO for showning that a licensed product could turn out nicely.