Massively multiplayer online role-playing games

While working on an assignement for our current module on collaborative virtual worlds, I think I started to understand what bugs me in both MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and sandbox games like Second Life. There are (as for now) two points:

Since we will have to program a multiplayer game this semester, this presentation (PDF) by Raph Koster could come in handy: Social Mechanics: The Engines Behind Everything Multiplayer.

He held the presentation at the GDC, and it collects different game mechanics present in multiplayer games. Guess we could inspire ourselves with that.

Jon Radoff created a beautiful visualisation of the history of social games, reminding us that those kind of games are not exactly a new invention. There have been social games before World of Warcraft and Farmville.

[via Jesper Juul]