Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (
More info?)
"The Stare" <wat1@not.likely.frontiernet.net> once tried to test me
with:
> Is there a faq somewhere that will tell me the various meanings of the
> acronyms used to describe RPG's? The ones i am wondering about are the
> ones that prepend "RPG" as in xxxRPG.
If you mean MMORPG, that one means:
Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. This genre was bred from
the old text-based MUD's (Multi-User Domain/Dungeon) back in the 80's that
were very popular at universities (I wasted a lot of my lab time on it
).
There were some early graphical games that didn't actually call themselves
"MMO" because they weren't all that "massive" (maybe few hundred
simultaneous players tops, unlike the current games which allow THOUSANDS
of simultaneous players, tens of thousands actually). These early birds
were games like the old Neverwinter Nights on America Online (not the
recent game by Bioware), and Dark Sun Online on the Total Entertainment
Network, and Meridian 59. These games sold decently enough as far as
compter games went back in their day I guess but it wasn't until Ultima
Online came out that people put the word "Massively" in the title, which
could support thousands on one server at one time in a supposed "living and
breathing" game world. Then a little company no one ever heard of named
Verant created a little game called Everquest in 1999. And the world has
never been the same. After the first couple of hundred thousand monthly
paying subscribers they realized they hit a goldmine. Now everyone and
their dog tried to jump in on the bandwagon and a genre was truely born.
MMOG's of all sorts have come and gone now, and the current leading champs
in North America at least are World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, and
Everquest II. They all have websites so check them out.
The only other types of "xxxRPG" you might see aren't really acronyms.
Like "Action/RPG" means a game that requires player-skill as well as
character-skills to succeed, generally a hybrid of the action-game genre
with the RPG-genre. Like the upcomming Dungeon Lords is. Or the ever
popular Diablo games.
Or "Strat/RPG" means a game that involves a lot of strategic gameplay mixed
with RPG elements, like Warlords Battlecry series, or Etherlords, or from
what i've read Spellforce (haven't played it).
You might occasionally see someone refer to an RPG as a "CRPG". They mean
"computer RPG" as opposed to the original type of RPG, the pen & paper
kind, like the old but still very popular Dungeons & Dragons game. In this
newsgroup when someone says "RPG" we assume they are talking about computer
RPG's so we generally drop the "C". In fact we might talk about "P&P RPG"
if we actually mean the kind you play with books, pencils, and dice.
BTW, World of Warcraft is the best game ever created. Amen. Praise
Blizzard!
--
Knight37
The gene pool could use a little chlorine.