Should 'persistent online' be its own thing?

Games like Diablo 3 and Bungie's Project Destiny, along with the rise of F2P genre experiments like Age of Empires Online are taking MMO conventions and modifying them, turning them into something that is not quite a traditional MMO but not necessarily the same as a traditional single player game. Even with heavily instanced games like the original Guild Wars or Crimecraft, it's debatable how Massive they are, and Diablo and this Bungie game can be argued how Multiplayer they are. They are definitely online, and they are definitely persistent. But neither are really described well by MMORPG.

With the focus on server-side persistence and online-only, should there be a better descriptor for games that have more to them than just Multiplayer Online but aren't quite Massive Role Playing Games?

PORPG?

I like how Jeff described it and it has always been my way of describing it, "This is Diablo, and Diablo was free, so fuck that shit."

The problem is differentiating PO games from games like Call of Duty that have persistent character classes and persistent online unlocks--they're effectively the same thing.

So far there aren't enough titles to warrant it. Back when Guild Wars came out there was no way to describe it well and people always referred to it as a single player MMORPG. That was fine because that was the only game that did it. Right now theres still only a hand full of games that do something similar. Diablo 3 is just an action RPG that has online CO-OP. Theres no persistence really to speak of. When people join your game they see you and what point of the game you're at - they don't see your jeweler or your mercs and theres no world or hub that "persists" for everyone. Free to Play games are already classified as F2P so thats taken care of.

@Dagbiker said:

PORPG?

I like how Jeff described it and it has always been my way of describing it, "This is Diablo, and Diablo was free, so fuck that shit."

POG - Persistent Online Game, since not all of these are RPGs.

I think we're talking about a couple different but related things here.

All that "Persistent Online" implies is that you have to be online at all times whether or not there is a grander (massive) multiplayer element or not. PO can simply be (and has been) a DRM device for a completely single player experience.

What to call online multiplayer games with persistent elements that aren't necessarily "Massively" multiplayer is another question. Diablo 3 has online multiplayer with persistent characters. Many multiplayer FPS games have different levels of character persistency as well. But Diablo 3 also has an auction house that is massive in that it has hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of players participating. Guild Wars also criss crosses the line from Online Multiplayer to Massively Online Multiplayer.

@Humanity: Well, singleplayer MMORPG doesn't suffice at all and is certainly not what Guild Wars was characterized as. Initially, it was labeled as a CORPG (Cooperative Online RPG) and eventually just got generalized into the MMORPG genre due to there being a significant lack of games to follow in it's style.

@Brodehouse: Okay, so you want a singular character identity between both multiplayer and singleplayer. That would add games like Terraria to the list. And if you figure in constant online connection to the genre's requirements then all of a sudden DRM technologies impact the genre of a game, like most of Ubisoft's always-on DRM games.

You people with your categories and acronyms...

It's human nature to categorize, it's how our brains work. Part of knowing a thing is to say it's like another thing.

you dont need to categorize everything.

@project343: I always heard it being described as a single player MMO which is true in a way but not super accurate.

The fact that theres so few games in this category is the reason why it has no label. On top of it a lot of those games are very unique and can't be grouped together so you'd have to come up with several categories. Terraria is a single player platformer RPG with online coop. Minecraft is a single player sandbox game with online coop. Diablo 3 is a single player action RPG with online coop WITH always online DRM. Thats it. Unless you want to make a category for games that have always-online DRM then that would make a lot more sense and would be a lot less confusing when comparing individually unique titles.

Call it a SCPOG? Single player cooperative online game?

I think all online games are headed this way anyway so such a designation is not really necessary. It should suffice to refer to them simply as online games.

As for what an mmo constitutes is up in the air. I consider Guild Wars an mmorpg. The world is massive, it is multiplayer and it is an online rpg. There are hubs where you meet with other players to form your parties and all the rest of the environments are instanced. I don't think an mmo prerequisite is having 20+ member raids.

@Brodehouse:

Dragon's Dogma is purely an offline game unless you want to use other people's pawns. It is also entirely single player.

@Brodehouse: Storing server side data and always on DRM are not interchangeable concepts. Call of Duty has server stored data but thats not the same thing as always on DRM. Guild Wars is just an online RPG. You can say Online RPG because there is no single player component, the entirety of the game is played online with other people - the fact that you can choose to not interact with those other people doesn't negate the fact that they are there whereas in a single player game they wouldn't be. Thats different from games which have online competitive/cooperative modes that get information stored server side, yet still retain individual single player modes that don't require an internet connection, and it's different than games which have always online DRM that fucks that entire concept up.