Because it’s a long post…
Yes I am. By your definition Call of Duty, Halo, Gears of War, Warhawk, Starhawk, LittleBigPlanet, Minecraft and every other game with online multiplayer is an MMO.
"1. An online role-playing video game in which a very large number of people participate simultaneously.
Roles, check. Video game, check. People playing simultaneously, check - yay! =)"
Role-playing games are not “games where you have a role.” Again, by that definition every game is a role playing game. An RPG is where your character, and how you interact with the world and its narrative, are the focus of the game. You may assume the “role” of Master Chief in Halo, but the game isn’t really about him - it’s about shooting endless waves of bad guys.
Likewise, Star Conflict doesn’t give us a role to play. Our characters don’t even exist - we never see them, hear their voices or control them directly. They do not have names or backstories unless we decide they do, and even then the game has no way to acknowledge or recognise our internal head-canon. The player character isn’t even spoken to directly in game at any time, and their behaviour goes completely unacknowledged by the gaming world; if you believe the mechanics, the Empire will quite happily hire someone who has spent months flying as Jericho’s top fighter ace, and then once said ace has all their best tech they’ll let them jump ship to the Federation.
There is no role playing there, ergo it fails to meet that definition.
As stated earlier, the argument that lots of people can play the game at once is likewise false. I suspect that most big titles on release have more people playing at once than this game does, yet virtually none of them are considered an MMO.
To have an online multiplayer is not enough to be classed as an MMO. Nor, for that matter, is the lack of an offline or single player mode. Most matches in Star Conflict are 8 vs 8 in lower tiers, though I believe I’m right in saying 12 vs 12 is possible. Higher tiers, Realistic or PvE, the total number of players in a match may be as low as 2. This means at best you have 24 a-side. Again, the likes of Call of Duty match or exceed that. In fact, several games not only allow more players per side, but they typically also have a larger player base, and thus more matches taking place at once.
Thus, it is fair to conclude that having lots of distinct and unrelated matches going on at once is not enough to class a game as an MMO experience. Remember; that first M means “Massively.” Star Conflict’s matches, in size and numbers, are lucky to manage above-average.
2. A massively multiplayer online game (also called MMO and MMOG) is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting large numbers of players simultaneously.
I refer to the above once more, but with a second example; MAG.
Standing for Massive Action Game, MAG was a FPS title where players took part in huge matches - two teams of up to 128 players a side, giving us 256 players in a single match at once. Given, as I have mentioned, that 16-24 players in a match seems to be the norm for FPS games, and other online games typically have slightly less, it would be quite fair to call MAG a “MMOFPS”; it’s match size is massive compared to the norm, it is multi-player only and it is online only.
If MAG were simply another game of “8 vs 8 FPS”, then the MMO prefix would cease to apply no matter how many matches were going at once.
3. A massively multiplayer online game (also called MMO) is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and feature at least one persistent world. (Hmm, note the words By necessity, eh?)
And yet you utterly skip the part about a persistent world.
Nothing in Star Conflict is persistent. When a game ends everything that took place on that battlefield is forgotten. In fact, it is entirely possible for multiple battles to be taking place in a single region. So, if we assumed this game was a persistent world, how could I be fighting over the Pandora Anomaly in a T2 match whilst another group fought a T3 battle on the same map, at the same time, with no way to interact with my game or even be aware it is taking place?
The Sector Conflict mode does not count as a persistent world - it is effectively a spreadsheet; a high score table with a fancy display. If this was replaced by the open world a lot of player want, then you could make an argument for the MMO title, but as it stands the game is clearly based around instanced matches with no persistent element.
4. Players play the video game competing against and cooperating with other players connected to an online network.
This is another rather flimsy definition - again, by this definition every game with any kind of online aspect is an MMO. Would you say a game where only a maximum of two people can play in the same game should be called a “Massively” multiplayer game?
Just consider a few examples of MMOs that are unquestionably worth the title:
World of Warcraft:
I don’t know how many can play on a single Realm at once, but I believe the busier ones typically have 20K+ players on at a time. Twenty thousand people all playing on the same map? That sounds massive to me!
Runescape:
There are dozens of servers, each with a capacity of around 2-3,000 players. I believe the average server population is something like 500-1,000 players at a time. 500 players all sharing the same instance of a game? Yeah, I’d call that massive.
EVE:
From what I can tell there are 500,000 subscribers (if not more) currently signed up to EVE, and the game only has one gaming world. Whilst I doubt they can all play at once, it is clear that you can have several thousand people all playing at once. Again, thousands of people all in the same ‘match’ - not two dozen. This does not include Dust 514 by the way - a FPS that takes place within the EVE universe where EVE players can interact with the matches!
Frankly, to continue to claim Star Conflict is a MMO feels dishonest. It does not allow more players in a single world than most online games; it does not have a persistent world that people expect from a MMO game, and it has been made clear there is no intention for open world / persistent environment elements. Without those elements, the only way to truly earn that “MMO” title is to give us massive matches - maybe 64 vs 64 or 128 vs 128 - but given that Tier 3 and 4 seem to struggle to get 8 vs 8 I don’t see that happening…
