The Advent Of Online Role Playing Games

Background

The genre of role playing video game history can be traced back to the mid-1970s. These were the results of early university mainframe text-based RPGs on Unix-based computers (such as pedit5, dnd, and Dungeon) and PDP-10. The 1980s paved way for the release of a very popular dungeon crawler, Rogue. A deep system of gameplay was observed in the settings, items, and monsters. Because of this, new genres of “roguelike” clones were made.

Dungeons and Dragons is the most influential among the role playing games made. Improvements were made since its release. In 1988, SSI formed a series of “Gold Box” Computer Role Playing Games with Pool of Radiance. These were based on the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rules and featured an overhead tactical display for combat and a first-person display for movement.

The initial role playing games presented only a single player experience for its players. However, with games such as Diablo, multiplayer modes of the games quickly became popular in the mid-1990s. These in turn, grew to massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) with the dawn of the internet. Everquest and many other games were fashioned into MMORPGs.

The game mechanics and the settings found in newer role playing games were derived from their traditional counterparts, most especially Dungeons and Dragons. Almost all game stories involve a party or a group of characters that join forces to complete a “quest” or a mission. Numerous enemies and challenges await the players. As the game progresses, these challenges become more and more difficult to overcome. Usually, these obstacles are dragons, monsters, or evil persons that are inspired by mythology, science fiction, and more commonly, fantasy.

Character Building

It is dependent on the players how they want their characters, or avatars, to look like and be like. They can also modify them based on their skills, attributes, equipment, special abilities, and personalities. More often than not, improvements can be given as gifts or prizes when the player or the party achieved a certain goal or completed a mission. In short, they have to earn these rewards in order to for their characters to become a better player in the next challenge.

There are different ways of rewarding the characters of the game for accomplishing the tasks and achieving their goals. These are based on: the training system (skill-based system), the skill point system (level-free system), and the experience system (level-based system).

Progress Charts

Characters possess a variety of features such as hit points. A status screen is traditionally displayed on the player’s monitor. However, unlike the usual video games, role playing games use numerical values to describe the character or the game’s status. They do not make use of the simpler abstract graphical representations such as bars and meters that video games utilize.

Interactive Fun

Online role playing games differ from it traditional RPG counterparts in the sense that it offers both a single and multi user experience. All online games allow you to chat with each player no matter where he or she is. Multiplayer games allow you to be part of a group as well, playing with or against each other in order to complete your quest or mission. However, if you choose to be a single player, you will still be part of a small group. Being an online player for sometime, you will find yourself being the leader or influential member of the group.

With revenues exceeding more than a billion dollars each year, it is then, with no doubt, that online gaming encompasses other role playing game genres.