When someone asks what the best online RPG games are the thoughts of many a gamer turns to the almost genre-defining titles such as World of Warcraft and Guild Wars, claiming their detail and sheer scale to be the pinnacle of RPGs online. Indeed, they are two of the best selling RPGs around, their online communities numbering in the millions, but I ask you to think for a moment of some of the slightly older releases which created the market for RPGs that there is today.
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights was a truly revolutionary game for its time, seeing a massive influx of players to the RPG genre. A fully 3D world, with graphics that were state of the art for the year and an online community which was unrivalled enticed hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of people to buy it and venture online. So what made it so popular? Unlike MMOGs, where everyone plays with quite literally everyone, Neverwinter Nights allowed you to take your small party and travel through the story together, uninterrupted by others. This private element gave people one of their first real tastes of group-based role-playing which although in existence earlier wasn’t anywhere near as widespread. The next major appeal of Neverwinter Nights was that there were amateur developers creating their own dungeons to delve in, NPCs to haggle with, weapons to wield and quests to undertake that could be downloaded and suddenly you and your friends were off once more on another adventure.
The last part of that was the real defining aspect that made Neverwinter Nights such a long running game, as new content was being added all the time not by the developers, who only had to add the odd patch here or minor update there, but by the players themselves. By releasing the development kit (known as the Aurora toolset) which their own designers had used with the game BioWare ensured that people would be playing it for years to come. They could have left it like this, but instead went the extra mile and released not one but three commercial expansions, each one driving more gamers to join the RPG boom.
The game mentioned above is one that a fair few people will be familiar with, but interestingly one that was preceded by something far simpler and far more like what RPGs are like today. I’m talking about the original Neverwinter Nights, ran from 1991 to 1997 (at which point legal issues caused its closure). Unlike its modern counterpart, the original was designed as an MMO,
having initially 200 players on at once and expanding to 500 by the end of its running time. This far outstripped anything that any other game had accomplished at the time, and while it’s now retired to our memories it certainly deserves an honourable mention as the first true MMORPG.
Ultima Online
Nearing the end of the original Neverwinter Night’s reign there came a new addition to the world of MMORPGs: Ultima Online. Initially a 2D game through and through, it was quoted as being one of the first MMORPGs created and still holds a significant player base today. Ultima improved on the concept created by the original Neverwinter Nights by realising that one server just wasn’t enough, so the rise of a multi-server MMO came about to take full advantage of the RPG-craze. While held as one of the greatest RPGs in existence by some, there are mixed opinions on this title from the players themselves. Designed initially as an MMORPG that could be played on lower-end machines, some feel that the move to a 3D game client, which upped the minimum requirements substantially, was what has led to the steadily declining number of players, effectively pointing the blame at the developers. Either way, Ultima peaked early and has added its contribution to the online RPG world with multiple-server gaming. Despite this important concept, it has been far outstripped by modern games and compared to its former glory is now hanging on to the players it has left. This said it still is the longest running online RPG going and it only ever increases its reign as each day goes on.
World of Warcraft
In my search for the best online RPG games ever made I move forwards in time to the first title I mentioned: World of Warcraft. There are scant few MMOs which have hit the utter scale that World of Warcraft (affectionately known as “WoW”) has achieved, which is why almost anyone who’s a gamer, or even just knows a gamer, will have heard of it. With over twenty million players still going today, long after the initial release back in 2004/05, they can’t possibly all be wrong.
So what made WoW one of the top games of all time, never mind top RPG? It was the fact that the amount to do in-game is truly staggering. The amount that players get immersed in the quests, in levelling up their character, in seeking to rise to the top of the PvP (player versus player) table is what allows it to sit proudly as a champion among RPGs. Unlike Neverwinter Nights, the entire game world is created by the developers, with multiple updates, patches and content being constantly added to keep drawing more gamers in to partake in its seemingly endless quest for online RPG domination, holding them as one of the best RPGs around.
