MMO

Presentation of the MMO

MMO is the abbreviation of MMORPG which stands for “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game”. In French, this translates into “massively multiplayer online game”. It is a genre of video games that combines the role-playing aspect with the massively multiplayer online game aspect. The MMO is a game that requires a continuous connection to the web.

The MMO, which can be defined as an online game, has a persistent digital world, which means that it continues to evolve at its own pace, regardless of what the gamer does. Indeed, even when the gamer turns off the PC or disconnects, the game world continues to be effective. In an MMO, the gamer usually has to design his own avatar from among various classes. Each sub-class characterises distinct appearances and properties. By means of his avatar, the gamer is invited to progress in a fictional environment inspired by various styles: fantasy, science fiction or even superheroes.

World Of Warcraft

The specificities of the MMO

The MMO is also based on mass groupality in the design of a video game activity. Indeed, this type of game requires collaboration between gamers who often do not know each other and have never even met. The MMO requires the design of various shared rules governing the relationship between gamers.

Thus, the MMO and its community of players, called guilds, are controlled by precise rules of organisation and operation called the “Guild Charter”. This notion of guild is really specific to the MMO genre.

In many of these games, the main objective is to advance your character. There are various ways to do this. Communication with MMOs is usually mainly via text in the form of chat. Different communication concepts exist in different games. Some MMOs even go so far as to include a chat thread for characters who are geographically close in real life, for gamers on the same server, and belonging to the same guild. These features clearly show the social dimension of MMOs. See also our definition of mmorpg.

On the technical side, many free MMORPGs work via a client/server architecture and a communication device between different computers within a network. This offers the possibility of an exchange of information between the “clients” and the server. The virtual world software runs continuously on a server and gamers can connect to it using the game software on their own machine.

See also >> Glossary

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