The Daily Grind: Is MAG an MMO?
by Seraphina Brennan 
Sep 15th 2009 at 8:00AM
Filed under: At a glance, New titles, Opinion, The Daily Grind, MMOFPS
It sports 256 players on a map. 8 man squads, 32 man plattoons, and 128 men on one side in their company. It has a "shadow war" online mode where companies compete to win battles, pushing active warzones back and forth on the map, meaning that each battle has an effect on the online gameplay structure. Winning battles means securing contracts for your group, who works for one of the 3 in-game factions that are struggling for dominance.
MAG is, without a doubt, one heck of a first-person shooter. It's players per map rivals PlanetSide's 300 players per continent, coming only 44 players short of the popular MMOFPS's battles. However, with multiple objectives per map and the 256 players being squeezed into smaller battlefields than PlanetSide's continents, one could say that the game is going to be much more chaotic and interesting.
With all of this in mind, we ask you for your opinion on the following: Is Sony's MAG an MMO? It certainly sports the necessary components of persistence, character development, team mechanics, and player count, but we want to hear from you, the readers. Drop your thoughts into the comment box below, and let the discussion begin.
MAG is, without a doubt, one heck of a first-person shooter. It's players per map rivals PlanetSide's 300 players per continent, coming only 44 players short of the popular MMOFPS's battles. However, with multiple objectives per map and the 256 players being squeezed into smaller battlefields than PlanetSide's continents, one could say that the game is going to be much more chaotic and interesting.
With all of this in mind, we ask you for your opinion on the following: Is Sony's MAG an MMO? It certainly sports the necessary components of persistence, character development, team mechanics, and player count, but we want to hear from you, the readers. Drop your thoughts into the comment box below, and let the discussion begin.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Vaale said on 8:04AM 9-15-2009
Of course it is. It looks good to, but too bad its a PS3 exclusive.
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Hypester said on 8:11AM 9-15-2009
Technically, yes.
But not in such a way that it would be interesting or familiar to an MMO player since it lacks many of the RPG trappings associated with most MMOs.
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Bryan said on 8:23AM 9-15-2009
Just like Guild Wars, technically I suppose it is. Do I think it is an MMO? Never. Unless I can log in and go explore a "world" for the night or go craft or collect pets, or set up a house etc. then NO.
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Macabre said on 9:50AM 9-15-2009
The question wasn't "Is MAG an MMO*RPG*?" it just asked if it was an MMO...
Just because most MMO's to date have been RPG's (they lend themselves very well to the concept, for obvious reasons), doesn't mean you have to be an RPG to be considered an MMO.
I believe all that is really necessary to qualify is:
-Is it online
-Would it be considered *massively* multiplayer compared to *just* multiplayer.
When considering the second point, I would compare it not to what else is available in the industry as a whole, but rather what is available in its corresponding genre.
Considering MAG, most multiplayer FPS games range from 8 to 64 players in a given "room". If MAG is offering 256 in one space, I would consider that pretty "massively" relative to its kin.
Maybe not as massively as WoW or EQ, but that's comparing apples to oranges.
Suffice to say, the definition of MMO is evolving, whether some like it or not, and it will continue to evolve for the forseeable future, as technology advances. One day soon, we will be playing games that have such large and seamless worlds, the likes of what some consider "true MMO" will seem quite paltry in comparison, with their sharded servers or sectored universes.
Anonymous said on 8:41AM 9-15-2009
BF2 was capable of 256 players, but no one had the server or the computer to handle it :P
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Tom said on 8:45AM 9-15-2009
MMO, definitely.
MMORPG, no.
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Archipelagos said on 10:18AM 9-15-2009
This.
Icon said on 11:46AM 9-15-2009
Two words: persistent world. This is not an example of a persistent world. Lets use WoW as an example here. That is an MMO. If no one is logged into the game the world of Azeroth is still moving. NPCs are moving back and forth. One person can log in, see and NPC, log out next to said NPC for 10 minutes, come back and the NPC is gone, moved to a different spot (assuming it is a moving NPC of course). Mobs move the same way. In FPS games the matches are not going on when no one is playing them. In fact the instance of a zone is created by the first person and other people join. CoD4 is not an MMO, it is an FPS with one hell of a great multiplayer aspect because the world is not persistent. If there was a lobby where people could run around and interact with people a la Second Life and players walk into the instance load zone then you would have an MMO without a world that is persistent there is no MMO.
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Firebreak said on 12:06PM 9-15-2009
In order to be an MMO you need three things. It needs to be Massive, multiplayer and Online. MAG has the three necessary components and is therefore an MMO. Is it different then any other MMO we have seen, yes but that does not take away the MMO tag from it. MMOs can and need to change to become better, now this one might end up sucking but then we learn more from failure then we do from success.
mercutio22x7 said on 8:51AM 9-15-2009
definately MMO, some zones in MMORPGs can only support 200 or so active players before beginning to lag.
If Huxley is defined as an MMOFPS then MAG ought to fall into the same category.
Or maybe an MMO is just a marketing scheme and we've all fallen for it...
love to see the lines between MMO and FPS blurred even further, hopefully huxley and MAG are the direction of the future.
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TommyB said on 8:51AM 9-15-2009
Yeah, it's definitely an MMOG.
Sucks that it's only for the PS3, it does look interesting. :/
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lordwuss said on 9:00AM 9-15-2009
Dose it have Elfs?
Because if not i don't think its a MMO.
:P
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Mosi13 said on 9:13AM 9-15-2009
If you consider Planetside an MMO, how could you not consider this an MMO?
Yes I consider this an MMO game.
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koehler83 said on 9:14AM 9-15-2009
My definition of an MMO includes a persistent online world. By that definition, no MAG isn't an MMO.
The world is only pseudo-persistent since the persistent online aspects are really only stat based.
So I guess it's a pseudo-MMO.
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LaughingTarget said on 3:46PM 9-15-2009
If persistence beyond stats makes an MMO, we have few MMOs on the market. WoW is hardly persistent beyond stats since you can't impact the world. It's static, only your character stats change and persist.
We don't have some line we can draw that separates the MMO from a run of the mill multiplayer game. It's all subjective judgement.
Organi said on 1:00AM 9-17-2009
I'd argue that MAG is more persistent than most MMOGs on the market, due to the Shadow War component. When your company wins a battle, you secure contracts and that territory (presumably, I'm going off of hearsay) for your side, which remains persistent until someone takes it back.
In contrast, no matter how many AV or WSG battles your side wins in WoW, or no matter how many times you kill Illidan, they're always contested still and he's always alive the next week.
Persistence goes to MAG on this one.
Venekor said on 9:19AM 9-15-2009
No it's not and everyone is all split up you'll never seen 256 people on the screen at once.
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onetrueping said on 3:26PM 9-15-2009
...because there's 256 people allowed total. Which means that, as a player, the most you'd ever see is 255 players at once.
Pingles said on 9:46AM 9-15-2009
By literal definition I suppose it is.
But I am curious as to how DEEP an MMO it could be.
Can you level your character and add abilities?
Are there any side stories (quests) besides "Get out there and kill!"?
Is there anything to do in the world besides hunting other players?
It sounds like an interesting update to Counter-Strike.
I'd also take those player numbers with a grain of alt until we see how the infrastructure holds up to that many players on a close-quarters battlefield.
After all, MAG rhymes with LAG.
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Joshua said on 9:49AM 9-15-2009
I don't understand why everyone seems to think this is not an MMO? the question was is MAG and MMO game not an MMORPG or other genre of MMO game. The obvious answer is yes this is a "Massively Multiplayer Online" game without a doubt.
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