2 of 11

Write now Article Tools

Page 2 of 3

in the game environs.

As I said, D&D was the first major Role-playing game, but it was quickly followed by several other tabletop games, with a wide variety of themes. There were games in the world of Middleearth from Tolkien's books, Star Wars games, Star Trek, Dr. Who, and just about any other genre and theme you could imagine. Basically, people who previously escaped into reading books now had the ability to enter their favorite books, as the stars! Now, since the first tabletop roleplaying games came on the market, their popularity has waxed and waned, mostly because of an inconsistant exposure to new players. Then came the advent of Computer Roleplaying games. These gave players a chance to escape into a world by one's self, where they still have control of the story. The first of these were more text based adventures such as Adventure Land, where you typed in commands to say what your character did, and then read the responses given by the game engine. As technology has improved, so has the rendering of the various computer RPGs (abbreviation for Role-Playing Games) into games like Baldur's Gate, and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion that have full 3D rendered graphics.

During this evolution of the RPG, a new subset of the games arose, called MMORPGs or Massive Multi-Player Role Playing Games. The undenied father of this genre of games was of course Ultima Online, where players interacted with thousands of other players on an online server, with graphic support, and explored the game world, doing predesigned quests, training various skills, both combat, and mundane, and turning the computer Role Playing game into a social activity similar to it's roots. Now, Ultima wasn't the first shared world experience in the roleplaying genre, merely the first of the graphical family. Even before Ultima there were applets on Bulletin Board Systems(BBS's) known as MUDs, which stands for Multi-User Dungeons. These were text based applets that were interactive and could often handle a hundred or so simultaneous players in their hayday. Popular games of this timeperiod were Tele-arena, Tradewars, and MajorMud. Now, Ultima has nearly gone the way of the dinosaur as the new generation of MMORPGs has come to the fore, most notably leading the pack being World of Warcraft(WoW) and SecondLife.

These new MMORPGs and interactive avatar chat based realms have the ultimate attraction for the escapist and also those with self-esteem issues, or just wanting to be someone else for awhile.

• << previous page
• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about The appeal and addiction of role playing games?
We want to hear your view. Write now!