Video Games Encyclopedia

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPG, emerged in the mid to late 1990s as a commercial, graphical variant of text-based MUDs, which had existed since 1978. By and large, MMORPG feature the usual RPG objectives of completing quests and strengthening one’s player character, but involve up to hundreds of players interacting with each other on the same persistent world in real-time. The massively multiplayer concept was quickly combined with other genres. Sci-fi MMORPG hold a smaller part of the market.