Online and PC gaming are among the topmost multimillion dollar industries in the world. With such recognition, it’s no surprise that they keep introducing various games for both children and adults. These games can fall into different categories. Out of these, role playing games (RPG) and massive multiplayer (MMP) games are very popular. Role playing games are sub-divided as single player and multiplayer versions. The massive multiplayer games don’t have any single player versions at all.
A Role Playing Game, as the name points out, lets you become a fictitious character of some sort. Once you become that character, the storyline of the game changes according to your actions. Of course, every game has its set of rules that you have to follow, but within that framework, you will have the freedom to choose your actions. A certain amount of improvisation is allowed and expected.
Role Playing Games are a lot of fun and can even help people forget about winning and form teams, and work together, which makes them very different from arcades, puzzles and card games.
These Role Playing Games work like a series on TV - they are like episodes, or sessions, running from one to the next. You can either play against your computer, or you can play against other gamers in your network. Each session has to be played out, and can take a long time - weeks or even months, depending on which game you are playing and what your strategy is.
Again like a TV show, the plot as a whole will evolve over several sessions. There will be twists and turns along the way. As you advance through levels, you will find new characters being introduced, new angles - the works. Different Role Playing Games are different: ones like Dungeons & Dragons are very imaginative and creative, while others like Call of Duty are based on simulated versions of real life.
Even though you can choose who you would like to be in an RPG, you have a set of characters to choose from, each with characteristics and abilities that are predefined. Let us take X-Men, as an example - you can be any of the X-Men, but, just like in the comic, each character’s abilities are already decided and you cannot change them or invent new ones.
With Massive Multi-Player Games, you need more than hundred people to play, and the games, rules and plots are a lot more complicated. There are much bigger challenges to get through, and the levels and level of competition and interaction are much higher.
MMP is played in a much bigger scale than RPG. You have to be connected to the net to play it, and you can only play if you pay the monthly subscription. You also need a whole lot more people on your network to play it - take, for example, one of the most popular of MMP (also called MMORPG or Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games), EverQuest - it usually has up to thousands of players in its fantasy world, set in another universe.