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The Best MMORPGs of All Time
A brief remmeberance of some of the industries all time favorite MMORPGs
The Rise of the MMORPG Genre
During the last decade or so MMORPG's, or 'massive multiplayer online role playing games', have grown from a small ultra-niche market to an appropriately massive chunk of the modern gaming industry.
MMORPG's have become such a part of the gaming culture, and gaming culture so intwined with mainstream. that by now just about everyone has either played, or at the very least heard about one of the more popular MMORPGs.
While some MMOs have become well known enough to be spoofed in modern culture ( Make Love Not Warcraft is a great example) some other great titles have come and gone with little critical success.
Neverwinter Nights
Dubbed the first graphical MMORPG, Neverwinter Nights, not to be confused with the later Neverwinter Nights from Bioware was introduced in 1994. Exclusive to AOL, players ponied up an incredible $6 per hour to play. Despite the rather loose definition of 'graphical', Neverwinter helped pave the way to modern MMOs with all the visual effect bells & whistles.
Everquest
Introduced in 1999 by Verant Interactive (later picked up by Sony Online Entertainment), Everquest was the first commercially successful MMO. With 18 expansions (as of Nov 2011) the incredible success of Everquest sealed the MMORPG category forever into the grand scheme of the mammoth gaming revenue machine.
Dark Age of Camelot
On the heels of Everquest's incredible success another fantasy-oriented MMO hit the scene introducing the player verses player concept in a huge realm versus realm environment where players had to defend themselves against 2 independant player factions. DAOC gave new dimension to 'massive' with incredible battles where hundreds of players could converge in epic PVP skirmishes.
City of Heroes
A departure from the typical sword and shield brand of role playing, City of Heroes introduced a whole new cast of characters for players to embody. In fact players were incredibly free to create their very own character, costume, backstory and play style. A distant seperate from the typical options of mage, healer or warrior, players of City of Heroes could craft and play their very own superheroe character including the type and source of their super human powers.
World of Warcraft
WoW, arguably the favorite among MMO fans, currently boasts over 10 million active subscriptions. Since it's first release in 2004 Blizzard has introduced 3 major expansions, and has recently announced a fourth. With each new expansion WoW re-establishes itself as the king of MMORPGs capturing thousands of new subscriptions and luring back thousands of players who have drifted away from the game.
This doesn't include Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, Star Trek Online or the much loved, but short-lived Tabula Rasa to name a few. The MMORPG genre emerged two decades ago and shows no sign of slowing down. If you dig WoW but you're looking for a little different gaming experience there are plenty of options.