Classic MMORPG games like Ultima Online and Everquest had something that new MMORPGs today simply don’t have. When you were killed playing Ultima Online there was a strong sense of defeat and loss. You actually lost something when you died. You could lose all your possessions that you were carrying. This sort of game play made it so players didn’t always carry their best sword of their best set of armor with them, as there was always a chance that they could lose it. If a group of people saw you carrying a shiny sword of vanquishing, they would be inclined to kill you and take your gear. With an open PvP environment, where anyone can attack you anywhere in the game, except while you’re in town, it’s best to make allies quickly, or you’ll quickly lose your hard earned equipment.

In Everquest death was extremely annoying. If you died in Everquest, you would spawn back in town without any of your possessions, and in order to reclaim them, you would need to return to your corpse. If you didn’t return to your corpse within a week, your corpse would disappear, and your items lost forever. Don’t mistake this with a silly corpse run in World of War...

There's no denying that the MMO market is growing by leaps and bounds. Analysts have shown that the MMORPG market is growing at over 30% a year. It seems that almost every week several new games are either announced or enter public beta. With formerly poor Asian countries becoming wealthier, there are literally millions of Chinese, Filipino, and Vietnamese players entering the potential customer base every year. Even in America, broadband access is only now starting to spread rapidly.

But even with the growing demand, are the number of games being announced grounded in market realities or simply on hype? "Bubble" is an unofficial term commonly used in the financial world to indicate any asset or industry who's price rapidly inflates beyond fundamental justifications. Take for example the recent housing bubble that popped in America. For years it was too easy to borrow money which led to lots of people borrowing to buy homes, home prices went up and lending standards went down. It came to a point where someone could get a mortgage with no money down and no visible form of income. By the time the banks figured this out, things had begun to collapse. People who could not pa...

Most Asian single player RPGs are story driven while almost all Asian MMORPGs are completely void of any semblance of plot. I've never been able to fully understand this contradiction. Unlike Western MMORPGs, Asian ones are usually free to play and instead supported through cash item shops. This certainly goes some way in explaining this phenomena. "Lore" is regarded as a luxury that developers can do without. We gamers are expected to accept this compromise -- free game play but no lore.

To get into this matter a bit deeper, lets take a look at two very successful games with vastly different approaches to story. World of Warcraft has mountains of in game text. Each of the thousands of quests is attached to lengthy dialogue and players can go out of their way to read books placed throughout the world. Entire novels have been written set in the Warcraft universe. On the other end of the spectrum we have Maple Story. With something like 50 million users worldwide, there is no doubting Maple Story's success. Yet Maple Story doesn't even give players the pretense of a story.
 
Obviously there are many factors that go into making a good game, but I would really like to s...

Usually we lose money by playing a MMORPG. We either pay a monthly subscription fee or have the option to purchase special items through a cash shop. But there are many who make money playing these games by selling in game currency or items for money in the real world. Today there are literally dozens of websites which are willing to purchase in game currency from players in order to resell it. Obviously by selling to a retailer, the player gets a lower price than if he were to sell it directly to another player, but the fact that so many sites exists makes the virtual market place much more reliable and liquid. It also shows how large the market as grown.

The virtual market has become so profitable that virtual sweatshops have sprung up in places like China where dozens of people are payed simply to farm virtual items in today's most popular games such as World of Warcraft and Maple Story. Unfortunately, many of these "gold farmers", as they are styled, use bots and other third party programs to automate the process. The industrialization of the process has made it almost impossible for the average player to make any money playing the game legitimately.But while player...

There are two fundamental graphic styles in most MMORPG games and they are Realistic and Cartoony. Some of the most popular free to play games today are anime inspired and thus fit into the cartoony model. Games like Maple Story and Scions of Fate have millions of players worldwide and one of their most attractive features is their graphic style. Even popular Western pay to play games like World of Warcraft benefit from the cartoony style.

Realistic graphics are generally pursued by Western developers though they are becoming more common in Asia too. Voyage Century is a clear example of Asian developers taking an interest in realistic graphic styles. Published by IGG, Voyage Century has markedly different graphics than other more traditionally Asian IGG games such as Zu Online and Tales of Pirates.

The FPS genre has long been dominated by realistic styled games. Shooters are considered to be on the leading edge in terms of graphical capabilities and it often takes other genres years to catch up. Even in theMMO field, games like War Rock, Soldier Front, and GunZ are all realistic styled. Recently, however, many developers have seen the wisdom of trying something new. A good example ...

By now everyone has heard the phrase Web 2.0 to describe the new phenomenon of user generated content on the Internet. Web 2.0 has brought us diverse new sites like Wikipedia and YouTube which are now mainstays of everyone's internet experience. Yet most would be surprised to hear that the same principle is now being used in game development.

Users have always had a large effect on how a game shapes up. Most MMO games go through several stages of beta tests where players offer their feedback and thoughts. This information is then used by the developers to add or alter content in time for the next phase of the beta testing. But this is a very passive form of input. Could users one day actually participate in the direct development of a game? Could fans actually help run the game?

Today there is an ambitious new project by Acclaim, the folks that brought us Bots, Dance Online, 2Moons, and 9Dragons. Styled "Project TopSecret1" this name Acclaim project is intended to be racing MMO but the direct the game takes is to be dictated by the community. Over 34,000 people have signed up already to contribute design concepts and other material. Web 2.0 has shown that hundreds of thous...

The age of free online gaming is now upon us. It is remarkable how much progress has been made in the free online gaming market in the past five or so years. Earlier this decade when people heard "free game" horrible images of freeware games made by college kids in their spare time came to mind, games that looked like early 1980s PC RPG betas. No longer. Today there are literally dozens of free to play games in almost every genre. Maple Story alone, a free to play 2D MMORPG released in 2003, now boasts over 56 million accounts worldwide1. Just in case you're wondering, that blows World of Warcraft with its 10 million users out of the water. While MMORPGs are the most common genre of free gaming, there are free games in every field. Shot Online and Albatross18 are both free golfing games with a level of depth rarely found in the retail golfing market. Games like GunZ: The Duel, Wolf Team, War Rock, and Soldier Front offer FPS experiences ranging from frag fests to tactical team coordinated matches. Its difficult to think of a genre that isn't covered. There are several excellent free racing games such as the simple yet realistic racer Project Torque. If you want somethi

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Most MMORPGs, such as Maple Story, RF Online and many other others allow players to experience a fantasy world filled with Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, and many other exotic races. These games also allow players to choose which gender their avatars will assume. While Playing as non-human races is considered unremarkable, playing as the opposite gender (termed gender bending) has always been a divisive issue. Current surveys show that 85% of MMORPG players are male and that males are up to 5x more likely to gender bend than females. This means, on average, at least half of all female avatars in a virtual world are played by men.

There are some very practical reasons why a man would prefer to play a female character online. For instance, it is widely known that others players are much more generous with items and in game guidance to female characters. Females who play a male character give up this gender specific advantage, which likely explains the far lower female gender bending tendency. It has also been noted that in third person MMORPGS many men prefer to spend their game hours staring at the back of a slim female body rather than a bulky man's. Many do not accept these utilitarian rea

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