Mmorpg

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* MMORPG as an Information System

* Abstract
* Massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are a type of online game that can involve several thousand players in one online virtual environment at a time. Throughout its evolution, MMORPGs have become more than just a game. Players can learn to socialize, builddifferent sets of skills, and possibly learn the basics of graphic design and markup languages. Opportunities that MMORPGs have are many and can enhance both an organization and players alike.
Keywords: MMORPG, online game, history, information system, security, database

* Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games
* Massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs)are a type of online game that can involve several thousand players in one online virtual environment at a time. The role-playing portion of MMORPGs also has users who customize an avatar that represents the user, collect, and create virtual items, and travel to different lands within the game. MMORPGs are usually graphical games with virtual worlds and are typically 2-D and 3-D.
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*Different Aspects and Opportunities of MMORPGs
* Historical Development
* There are different genres within MMORPGs, such as fantasy, and science fiction (Meredith, Hussain, & Griffiths, 2009). Fantasy MMORPGs appear to be the most popular genre within the online gaming realm as seen in Table 1 with the top 20 MMORPGs of 2009 (Meredith, Hussain, & Griffiths, 2009). Beginning withthe highest population of MMORPGs, World of Warcraft (WoW) has the highest amount of users and market share of any MMORPG, followed by Lineage, and Lineage II.
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* Note. Guild Wars is a Fantasy RPG, not a Combat/FPS according to MMORPG.com (2012). This chart is from Meredith, Hussain, and Griffiths (2009) and is still a valuable source of information.
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* Before MMORPGs, gamersplayed Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) (Sanchez, 2009). MUDs began in 1979 (Sanchez, 2009; Peterson, 2010) and are text-based games are playable online. There are no graphics in these games and the story evolves as the user continues to play the MUD. MUDs involved connecting online through a protocol called TelNet (Sanchez, 2009). The TelNet server hosts the game data so that the user can experiencethe gameplay with other players through the Internet. The players would move around the game by typing a set of allowable commands, such as “/walk north” (Sanchez, 2009, p. 10). A popular MUD is still playable is the StarCraft MUD (Sanchez, 2009; Starcraftmud.com, 2003), however most MUDs were fantasy-based when they were introduced.
* After MUDs came TinyMUDs, which is a smaller version ofa MUD that allowed only about six to eight players and create objects that introduced the players to create their own objects and experiences (Sanchez, 2009). The TinyMUD server was developed by James Aspnes back in 1989 (Sanchez, 2009). Much of the TinyMUD was used not only for gameplay but also to communicate with other players as a social medium. The disadvantage of the TinyMUD is thatalthough a user could create an object, the user cannot use or give it to other players.
* Following TinyMUDs is Multi-User Dungeons Object-Oriented (MOOs) (Sanchez, 2009). MOOs were the first of online games to enable users to create objects that players could use. This opened the opportunity for MMORPGs development. MOOs are shortly dominated by the presence of MMORPGs and 3-D virtual worlds.Meridian 59 was developed in 1996 and was the first popular MMORPG to emerge (Sanchez, 2009). MMORPGs allow players to join a graphical interface online. Users can see the graphical representations of themselves and other players to communicate with them while also playing the game online. These graphical representations are also known as avatars.
* The game Ultima Online was the first...