Talk:Massively multiplayer online role-playing game

Please omit acronyms until after they are explained, and avoid them even then. This is good style simply because it makes the result more readable for people not familiar with the acronyms. Remember, you're writing this article for people who don't know what "massively multiplayer online role-playing games" are, not merely to sum up your own knowledge. --Larry Sanger 09:33, 29 March 2007 (CDT)

Hmm, that makes a lot of sense. I'll have to rephrase the parts with the acronyms then, thanks Larry. --Beano Lee

Alright, the foundation for the article is now pretty much set, with a gap in the history and evolution of MMORPGs that I leave open for now. While WP's take on this subject is much more extensive, I find the information there very jumbled in sections, with little coherence between the subtopics. It would be best to expand in a different direction than WP's version, and there is still a lot of MMORPG-related knowledge out there to put into the article.

Input on the history section is very much welcome! --Beano Lee 07:29, 30 March 2007

I don't think it's accurate to say that MUDs were the first MMORPGs. They were certainly their predecessors, but the first "M" ("massively") was, I believe, explicitly included in the acronym to separate MMORPGs from MUDs. --Peter Blake 18:52, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

MMORPG

create a redirect from a page with that name to make the acronym usable for those aware of it Robert Tito |  Talk  22:19, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

Workgroups

Sociology may apply, but, certainly, so does Computers. After all, the very title includes "online".

To make a MMORPG work, substantial technology is needed. At the level of the application, it is common to distributed simulation. The communications may involve multicast routing. Howard C. Berkowitz 00:22, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree, the Computers workgroup should be reinstated. --Chris Key 00:32, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I did not mean that computers have nothing to do with online gaming. But this page is not about the underlying computer technology, only about games and gaming.

Would you put a page about crime fiction into visual arts (because of typography) or computers (because of desktop publishing)?

But if you think I made a mistake: I will not object. (And say: sorry, no harm meant!) --Peter Schmitt 00:46, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Crime fiction could work with any typography, although some are better. MMORPG and closely related conferencing, training, and simulations require quite specific technology. Indeed, gaming has certainly pushed hardware technology. From personal experience, heavy multiplayer gaming can snarl networks not designed to handle it. If we are going to talk about this kind of gaming, I should add to multicasting and probably start multicast routing. Howard C. Berkowitz 01:17, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

According to the Computers workgroup main page the workgroup covers "articles related to computers and computer science". If this is correct then it does not seem to indicate that it is solely related to the underlying technology. Therefore I would suggest that an article about a type of computer game, and also articles about specific computer games, do indeed relate to computers and therefore fall under the computers workgroup. --Chris Key 01:20, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

First I want to stress once more that I do not want to exclude anybody, and I certainly do not want to deny anyone the right to act as an Editor. My motive was only technical, and thus I am still interested to explain my reasoning.

There is no doubt that online games heavily depend on computer technology in various ways, and that these connections have to be discussed. But I do not think that pages about a type of games or a specific game are the right place: Gamers are not interested in the technology -- they are interested in the game, its rules, its strategy, etc. Similar as someone watching TV is (usually) not interested in the technology behind it. (My example using crime fiction may have been not the best.)

I'll add Computers to the workgroups. (In the future, I hope that content classification, Editorial matters, and workgroup interest can be treated separately.) --Peter Schmitt 00:07, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Computer cheating

Since the game is played via networks, networks can be used to cheat. The computer science problem of bot detection is relevant, and I've added some text. --Howard C. Berkowitz 13:48, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Ok, you beat me and convinced me (for this page). I acknowledge "defeat". --Peter Schmitt 15:38, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Let's call it win-win; games don't need to be zero sum. Howard C. Berkowitz 01:48, 27 March 2010 (UTC)