Massively multiplayer online real-time strategy

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Shattered Galaxy

Massively multiplayer online real-time strategy (MMORTS) is a genre of online computer game that combines real-time strategy (RTS) with a large number of simultaneous players over the Internet. Players will often assume the role of a general, king or figurehead of some kind, leading an army into battle, while at the sametime maintaining the resources needed for such warfare. The titles are often based in a sci-fi or fantasy universe and are distingushed from single or small-scale multiplayer RTSs by the number of players and common use of a pesistent world, generally hosted by the game's publisher, which continues to evolve even when the player is not currently playing.

1 History
- 1.1 Current Problems
2 Popular MMORTS Titles
3 Announced MMORTS Titles
4 See also
5 External Links

[edit] History

Unlike MMORPGs, the MMORTS genre is still in its infancy with only a handful of active games, none of which have come from a large publisher. Vibes created the first MMORTS, Mankind, in 1998.

[edit] Current Problems

MMORTSs dealing with offline player's has proven very difficult, and can be credited as one of the major reasons that the genre has not progressed. Unlike MMORPGs which typically have a user's character disappear from the game world upon logout, the same idea can not apply to an MMORTS. Most MMORTS titles place the player as the leader of some sort of nation-state, and the disappearence of one would not make sense. Therefore when a player logs out the nation would be largely unguarded. Developers have been trying to compensate for this problem with advanced artificial intelligence to control a player's army, or restrictions on destrucutive acts against offline users.

MMORTSs must also deal with resource competition. In a single player real-time strategy, resources are limited. However, limited resources would quickly be used up by the number of players. Some developers have countered this by having very large amounts of quickly respawning resources or infinite resource spawns.