[MUD-Dev2] Bad Terminology: MMO, MMORPG vs. MUD

[Jon Mayo]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 9:11 AM, Adam Martin
<adam.m.s.martin at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 2008/9/16 Michael Hartman <mlist at thresholdrpg.com>:
>> Jean, Yannick wrote:
>>>
>>> Why not just "MOG" - Multiplayer Online Game ?
>>
>> The thing about POW is that the P and the W hit on the really
>> key elements.  Persistence and World.
>
> The thing about POW is that it isn't MMO.
>
> Here are 21 million (approx) reasons why you're all wrong:
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=mmo
>
> Sorry :(. Really, I am. If you're going to do a search/replace on
> every document and every webpage in existence, then ... awesome!
>
> Otherwise, it's too late for you to change this terminology now.

We had a name for Blacks that we didn't like, so we changed that. Andit
was far more established than the term MMO.

ah yes, I managed to equate role playing with the civil rightsmovement.
next I will try and rationalize the Nazis for rhetoricalreasons. Isn't
the internet grand?

But in all seriousness, if the industry decides a term is notmarketable
anymore. Like the term MMO becomes way too diluted thensomeone will pick
some new term or acryonym and push that newpseudo-brand. The term RPG is
on the verge of being diluted in themarket, they now call games like
Overlord an "Action RPG" even thoughmost of the game's elements are like
the GameCube game Pikman. (a sortof puzzle/problem solving game). It was
bad enough to call Diablo, aclick fest hack and slash that was a
rogue-like with pretty artwork,an RPG. But at least there were some
stats and things that remindedpeople of D&D.

Once a few more webgames start calling themselves "massivelymultiplayer"
I think we'll be able to declare victory and mark theterm MMO as
obsolete.

recently my friend pointed out his interesting definition of
massivelymultiplayer in response to my (arbitrary) requirement that to
bemassive you need 100s if not 1000s of players: "A game is not MMOuntil
it has more people than you can fit in your basement at a LANparty."