Online Gaming Popularity Contest – and The Winner is
When internet first arrived, people anticipated and thought we would find purposes in education and news, but the influence on our daily lives would be small, the opposite is the truth. Internet is a huge resource these days and not only in education and news but it has become extremely big in the world of entertainment. Online gaming is one of those extremely popular internet entertainment forms. If you are not familiar in the world of online gaming this article might give you a quick introduction to the world of online gaming.
Online gaming
Online games are games played over the Internet or an equivalent technology. Online games can range from simple text based games to games that incorporate complex graphics and virtual worlds populated by many players at the same time. Massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPG) are being played all around the world via the internet.
Many of these online games have online communities, which makes the online games also a social activity.
A game for every interest
In the world of online gaming there are so many different kind of games that it doesn’t matter what your personal interests are, there will always be a online game that you will like. If you like science fiction, there are too many games to be counted. With fantasy games it is the same thing, the amount is staggering. But there are community games, games for kids, puzzle games, adventures, gambling you name it and it exist. The most popular games from 2007 give a wide variety of online games to choose from.
Top 10 online games (2007)
1. World of Warcraft 8.5 million subscribers. WoW as the biggest MMO in the world.
2. Habbo Hotel 7.5 million active users. Social game MMO popular with teens and growing fast
3. RuneScape 5 million active users. MMORPG
4. Club Penguin 4 million active users. MMO for the kiddies social environments like Habbo Hotel.
5. Webkinz 3.8 million active users.
6. Gaia Online 2 million active users
7. Guild Wars 2 million active users. MMORPG
8. Puzzle Pirates 1.5 million active users
9. Lineage I/II 1 million subscribers MMO
10. Second Life 500,000 active users
Top 10 MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing games):
1. World of Warcraft
2. EVE online
3. Final Fantasy XI
4. City of Heroes / City of Villain
5. Dark Age of Camelot
6. Dungeons & Dragons
7. EverQuest
8. ROSE Online
9. Saga of Ryzom
10. Vanguard:Saga of Heroes
Create your own personality
The great popularity of some online games can be explained by the fact that players can create a character, a new persona for themselves with which they can play a role. Some people find this dangerous and are afraid that players lose control of reality and lose their own personality in the process. In fact role playing doesn’t create a variety of split personalities, it is just a very enjoyable distraction from day to day live. And yes, there are people who take online gaming too seriously and even can get addicted but their numbers are minuscule compared to the people who just have found a healthy and enjoyable hobby in playing these games.
Online gaming is extremely popular and will remain popular for a long time, because it has so much variety to it and it is also a way to meet people around the world. In the near future there will be no shortage of persons who enjoy spending time playing such games, and online gaming will continue to grow and grow in popularity.
Jenny Cumbersome plays online games as if here live depends on it. http://www.onlinegamesurvival.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jenny_Cumbersome
Internet Forums Are How Old?
Remember floppy disks? Beepers? Friendster? Most technology eventually goes to tech heaven as it is replaced by newer technology that better serves its customers. Forums, however, seem to have had remarkable staying power. Perhaps it’s their simplicity or maybe it’s the way we can connect and converse with peers rather than just talk to our audience. Whatever it is, forums have a long history.
The roots of forums are in the Bulletin Board System, a computer system running software that allows users to connect to the system – typically over an analog phone line – to perform various social and recreational tasks and communicate with others on the system. BBSes were a social technology and were used for meeting people and having discussions on message boards as well as for publishing articles, downloading software, playing games, and many more things using a single application.
While snowed in during the Great Blizzard of 1978 in Chicago, Wade Christensen along with fellow hobbyist Randy Suess, began preliminary work on the Computerized Bulletin Board System, or CBBS. CBBS went online on February 16, 1978.
According to the FidoNet Nodelist, BBSes reached their peak usage around 1996. This, of course, coincides with the rise of the World Wide Web. BBSes rapidly declined in popularity thereafter and were replaced by systems using the Internet for connectivity, called forums, message boards or bulletin boards. Web-based forums began to grow rapidly in popularity from 1996 onwards.
Almost all developed countries have Internet forums. Japan has the largest forums in terms of countable posts, with over two million posts per day on their largest forum, 2Channel. China also has many millions of posts on forums such as Tianya Club. The United States does not have any one large forum, but instead several hundred thousand smaller forums, the largest of which are 4Chan, Gaia Online, IGN and d2jsp. Out of the thousands of forums on the Internet CrowdGather’s General [M]ayhem ranks 31st in terms of number of posts of English-based sites.
Read the original thread on Crowdgather!
Read more about forums at: http://www.crowdgather.com/blog!
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joanna_Schneier
MMO Game Or MMO Grind?
Mmorpg games today require way too much grinding. This isn’t a new trend, as the leveling system has been with us since the dawn of the online games, but I’m surprised that developers haven’t found a new way to allow players to advance. The most enjoyable aspects of MMORPG games aren’t killing rabbits and snakes, but rather raiding with friends and participating in PvP. When was the last time you heard your friend tell you the time he killed orcs for six hours straight and had a blast? Not often I hope. Some games actually deal with the grind a lot better than other, as World of Warcraft actually had interesting quests which were also a great source of experience, but games like MapleStory were all out grind fest with nothing else to do but grind.
When I quested and grinded my way to level 60 in World of Warcraft [Pre Burning Crusade] it really didn’t feel like a chore, as I was constantly questing or instancing with friends. World of Warcraft actually handled the leveling system very well, as there were alternatives to grinding. I did however at times find myself grinding for hours at a time after I finished all the quests I could find. These weren’t fun times, but I kept telling myself that once I hit level 60, I’d be have more fun, and I did. The problem was getting to 60.
MapleStory, a free Korean Mmorpg, is the epitome of grind. The only way to level up is to grind, and unlike World of Warcraft where you can reach maximum level in a month or so of casual play, it’ll take well over six months of hard core playing to reach level 100, which is only half way to the game’s level cap. Another problem in MapleStory was that combat wasn’t at all interesting, but rather an absolute chore. It wasn’t time efficient to kill monsters in MapleStory that didn’t die in single hit, as you could get significantly more experience one hitting lower level monsters than two hitting higher level monsters. In order to level up once at level 60 or so, you’d have to slaughter 7,000 monsters, which can be extremely time consuming and definitely not fun, as it wouldn’t be at all challenging.
Games like Fly for Fun and Hero Online also have similar experience models where killing higher level monsters isn’t as efficient as slaughtering lower level monsters en masse. Another problem with these games are that the experience needed to level up increases exponentially as you level up, which makes the grinding even more of a chore. I’m hoping that one day developers find a new way for players to advance and spend more time actually playing the game, rather than grinding to a high enough level to be able to enjoy the game.
Learn more about Free MMORPG and Free MMO Games
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Omer_Altay