and i think it’s a waste of time trying to come up with acronyms. they arent really important.

i play online games: WoW, Starcraft, Dota and W3, CS, Quake, and browser games.

i think Blizzard’s “world” will become synonimous to “mmorpg” just like “shooter” is to “fps”.

And you guys saying that RP shouldn’t be used for these games are way out of line. I’ll have you know that I dress up as whichever character I’m playing, whenever I’m playing. Even in Text based MUDs I wear a black jumpsuit adorned with random white blocks of text (some in color!).

So i don’t see the need to create a new artificial word for something, that’s already there.

I love your points on perception, intelligence, and charisma having a direct effect on conversation. They did that in Fallout and Fallout 2, and I’m really hoping they’ve kept it in Fallout 3, it made dialogue much more interesting, and created a more realistic feeling way to get through a conversation, and still let you insult someone if you wanted to… you just had a much wittier insult if you were smarter. In comparison, the little conversation mini-game from Oblivion was a decent idea, though it felt much less organic than Fallout’s method.

@Cambios
I definitely agree with you on the 2000 players soloing, there should be more opportunity for interaction. I remember dismounting to help another player having a problem with respawns as they’re trying to take down a quest monster, or having another player drop a single good heal on me when I was in a hairy situation. That really built a community among players going through the same content.

On the other hand, I really like having the option of instances, to limit interaction with people I really wish hadn’t bought the game. Open air “dungeons” are a great idea, as long as you’ve got a way to hang out with just your buddies to go do something. There’s nothing quite as aggravating as getting ambushed or otherwise thwarted by another player in the middle of a complicated encounter.

But then again I am sort of biased in that respect.

You’re absolutely bang on about what is classified as an “RPG” nowadays, but I’ll point out that when dialogue options are intelligently implemented you can still mostly talk your way through things if you choose appropriate responses. For example, Mass Effect for 360 specifically colors dialogue options that will provoke certain responses… I think it would have been interesting if they’d gone a step further to make some options available and as you skill up your conversational skills the options that will lead to “nice” or “naughty” consequences get highlighted to help guide you through, with maybe a few more options getting added in. There are ways to make it a real RPG, even with stats existing.

I totally LMAO for your last comment - I totally empathize on respawning. The things the game keeps as persistent are totally underwhelming, and it doesn’t even remember that I just killed something long enough for me to get through the area. Especially in an instance, where one would think it could remember that I’d killed these things, as it is an instance saved to me and my group. It’s not even a good game mechanic, as it drives groups to break up when the respawns pop up, even if they’ve already cleared to another area, as they’ll have to repeat everything over as things respawn in sequence.

@Cambios
I think Rithlyn has a point with “Prisoner of War”, which is baggage that comes with the acronym, but I still think you’re absolutely right with how unwieldy the word is. Ideally, an MMORPG that really had in it what those letters stand for would be awesome, and maybe it’s good for encouraging designers to strive towards that. Still sounds like you have a stutter when you say it, though. : (
There needs to be something better, most of the games out there are really only MOGs, Multi-player Online Games.