MAY 2005 MA XIMUMPC
Maximum PC takes you behind the scenes of
massively multiplayer online networks to fi nd out
how the most ambitious games in PC history work!
right next door, but they could just as
easily hail from Borneo, Yugoslavia,
Kamchatka, or some other exotic locale.
The most successful MMO games are
role-playing games (RPGs), complete
with the conventions of the genre:
You kill monsters (aka “mobs”) to
gain experience and level up, and this
endows you with greater strength,
more powerful magic, or new abilities.
But the defi ning characteristic of MMO
games is their massive scale. Whereas
single-player RPGs are designed for a
single person to complete on his or her
own in a few dozen hours, MMORPGs
encourage people to work together,
without any ultimate end in sight. You
see, you never fi nish an MMORPG.
Until recently, MMO games were the
exclusive domain of people with far
too much free time. Getting a character
to the highest level in early MMO
games, such as EverQuest or Ultima
Online , could take thousands of hours.
Third-generation games—including
City of Heroes , World of Warcraft , and
EverQuest 2 —are infi nitely friendlier to
casual players: They’re more accessible,
easier to jump into, and they’ve never
been more fun.
We dig MMO games here at
Maximum PC , but what really bakes
our souffl é is the incredible hardware,
software, and sheer engineering skillthat enables thousands of people from
around the globe to interact in a vast
alternate universe. Unlike a traditional
multiplayer game—say, Counter-
Strike— where anyone can set up a
server using an old desktop rig with a
decent net connection, running an MMO
server requires multiple machines—
sometimes dozens—working in concert
and connected to a phenomenally
fast net connection. It takes serious
computational muscle to support 3,
players connected at once.
We sat down with the developers
of several high-profi le MMOs to bring
you this, the inside story of massively
multiplayer gaming.