Anarchy Online
Anarchy Online is a science fiction MMORPG released in June 2001 by Funcom. It stands out as being one of the few popular MMORPGs that makes use of a science fiction setting as opposed to the more common fantasy setting. The game is set in the years following June 29475, predominantly on the harsh desert world of Rubi-Ka (planet set in a fictional binary star system) and its extra-dimensional twin, the Shadowlands.The story of Anarchy Online revolves primarily around two factions, the hypercorporation Omni-Tek and the rebel worker caste, the Clans. These two factions are fighting for control of the distant desert planet Rubi-Ka. In addition to these two factions there is a third faction of Neutrals, people who have decided to take no side in the conflict. Unfortunately, this conflict has been waged on and off for centuries in addition to larger conflicts between the hypercorporations over the control of Rubi-Ka.Rubi-Ka, the seemingly useless desert planet that led to so many wars, is of such tremendous importance because it is the only known source of notum, an economically precious mineral, in the universe. Omni-Tek, having been granted exclusive ownership rights to the planet, controlled the notum for many years, and benefitted tremendously when it was discovered that notum would revolutionize, and eventually become the key component of, nanotechnology. Eventually, this mineral leads the way to the development of technologies that seem very like magic, including programs that create, among other things, fire and ice, programs that can heal injury, shield a person from harm, affect their physical body, and even resurrection. Notum even makes its way into the very genetic makeup of some sub-breeds of humans.Because Omni-Tek had managed to get unfettered control of Rubi-Ka, they were, mostly, free to do as they wished with their colonists and the planet. For most of the early years, Omni-Tek did its best to treat its people well, even to the point of receiving commendations for its treatment of workers. However, over the centuries, Omni-Tek's policies began to degrade, until, finally, approximately 500 years after the planet was first settled, a significant number of the colonists opted to rebel against Omni-Tek following poor treatment and conditions, and began to secretly trade stolen notum to a rival corporation. This led to a series of wars between Omni-Tek and the colonists, and between Omni-Tek and rival hypercorporations.

Asheron's Call
Asheron's Call (AC) is a fantasy MMORPG for Microsoft Windows-based PCs released in late 1999. It features a vast, near-seamless 3D world occupied by thousands of players and strange creatures.Gameplay involves earning experience points through a variety of activities, including engaging monsters in combat and fulfilling quests. The earned experience can be invested to improve the character's abilities by spending it in such areas as 'Unarmed Combat', 'War Magic' and 'Melee Defense', among many others. Besides experience points, questing and combat also yield equipment such as armor, weapons, health potions and spell scrolls. Many types of loot can be improved or imbued with special spells and effects via Asheron's Call's crafting system, known as tinkering.Unlike most other games of this type, Asheron's Call rarely uses typical fantasy fiction to draw ideas from and creates its own creatures instead of elves and goblins — a large majority of the monsters in Asheron's Call are unique to the series. Examples include insect-like Olthoi, the cat-like humanoid Drudges and reptilian Sclavus. The in-game story is advanced by monthly updates, which introduce new quests and gameplay dynamics as part of the subscription package.

Dark Age of Camelot
Dark Age Dark Age of Camelot is a 3D medieval fantasy MMORPG that revolves around the war between three realms at the end of King Arthur's rule: Great Britain's Albion, Scandinavia's Midgard and Ireland's Hibernia. The game was developed by Mythic Entertainment and released on October 10, 2001.Dark Age of Camelot screenshotFor the majority of players, the most interesting part of the game is realm vs. realm combat (RvR). On normal servers, players cannot harm other members of their realm. They can travel to special areas called Frontiers and fight players from other realms. Most of the DAoC population focuses on RvR, mainly because PvE (player versus environment) can be rather unstimulating or too challenging on many classes (there are, however, some classes who excel at PvE combat, such as the necromancer). There are three role-playing servers, which act as normal servers except you must follow proper role-playing guidelines, a player versus player server, in which everyone is free to attack anyone at any time, and a co-op server, in which there is no RvR. Each server can support up to 3500 online players at the same time. Recently, Mythic Entertainment has introduced "server clustering" - where certain locations (Frontiers, Capital cities) from multiple servers essentially become one location, and players can interact with players from and travel to other servers.On the North American version, a new server type has been released. These servers, called Classic servers, are similar to standard servers except no content from the Trials of Atlantis expansion is available and all stat-enhancement spells (buffs) can only be cast on players with whom you are grouped and within a certain distance. This new server type was launched after extensive player feedback and irritation with the ToA expansion and the issue of buffbots. As of September 21st, 2005 there are 22 North American servers, six of which are outside of a cluster, and the rest are spread out among four clusters.

Diablo
Diablo is a point and click action computer role-playing game released by Blizzard Entertainment and developed by Blizzard North, released on November 30, 1996. In this hack and slash game, players fight against evil demons attempting to conquer the world. The central goal in Diablo is to slay the demons in a sixteen-level dungeon underneath the small town of Tristram, and ultimately confront Diablo himself. Diablo has an amazing amount of replayability, however - all of the dungeon levels are randomly generated, populated randomly with monsters that drop random items imbued with random magical properties.Each new edition of the game extends the gameplay through additions such as new character classes, monsters, and items. The latest installment, the expansion pack for Diablo II, Diablo II Lord of Destruction has a huge online gaming community, complete with a primitive economy. Diablo in many ways resembles roguelike games, the main differences being the vastly more realistic graphics (utilizing DirectX) and the fact the game is in real time, rather than being turn based.

Diablo II
Diablo II, sequel to the popular Diablo, is an action-oriented adventure with role-playing game elements in a hack and slash style. It was released for both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS in 2000 by Blizzard Entertainment. It was developed by Blizzard North, and designed by Stieg Hedlund.By 2001, Diablo II had become one of the most popular online games ever. Major factors that contributed to Diablo II's success include what fans found to be addictive hack and slash gameplay and free access to Battle.net. Diablo II may be played as a single player game, multi-player via a LAN or serverless TCP/IP, or multi-player via Battle.net.An expansion to Diablo II has been released called Diablo II: Lord of Destruction.

EVE Online
EVE Online is a persistent world multiplayer online game set in space. It was developed by CCP Games and published by Simon & Schuster Interactive in 2003 (Simon & Schuster Interactive no longer publishes the game and CCP now offers the game client for download from their website). Players are spaceship pilots in craft of varied style and purpose.EVE Online is set in a far away galaxy, governed by a hyper capitalistic economy. Like most MMORPGs, the game is open-ended, and new players can behave as they choose. EVE's economic design encourages new players to seek wealth as a source of both status and utility.EVE takes place in a cluster of stars far from mankind’s original habitat, planet Earth. How far away, and whether or not that cradle of civilization still exists, is a mystery. Humans arrived through a natural wormhole and, gazing up upon an alien sky they had never seen, were completely unable to determine where this new world was located. From the New Eden solar system, where the gate of EVE once led to the old world, humans expanded in all directions at a furious pace, exploring and colonizing rapidly.December 17, 2002 for Microsoft Windows.

The Sims Online
A massively multiplayer online game, allowing thousands of players to play together simultaneously. Players are in complete control of a Sim. This variation allows a player to create up to seven Sims, each on different servers, but control only one at a time, with the exception to Betaville, where you can play up to four Sims at one time. Because the other characters are played by real people, TSO is less a game and more a social environment than the original Sims. While often called a role-playing game (making it an MMORPG), it has as much in common with socially-oriented virtual worlds. After buying the game, players pay a monthly fee to play online.With The Sims and its numerous expansion packs being the best selling computer game of all time, many experts predicted that TSO would become the most popular massively multiplayer game. As of early 2005 this is not the case; TSO has seen only a fraction of the subscription numbers aimed for by the game's publisher, Electronic Arts. The reason for this poor performance may be that the players fail to cooperate as the beta testers of the game did; another reason may be that one of the major attractions, for some players, of The Sims was creating and using custom objects, which is not possible in The Sims Online. As a result, many reviewers described the online game as dull and was more like the world's largest chat room instead of a vibrant MMORPG.

Ultima Online
Released on September 30, 1997, by Origin Systems, Ultima Online (UO) is often considered the first popular massively multiplayer online game. The game is played online, in a fantasy setting similar to that of the other Ultima games that preceded it.The success of Ultima Online (UO) opened the door for the creation of many exciting new massively multiplayer games that have or are about to hit the market. UO is a third-person/isometric fantasy role-playing game set in the Ultima universe. It is online-only and played by thousands of simultaneous users (who pay a monthly fee) on various game servers, also known as "shards." It is also known for its extensive timing-based player versus player combat system. There have been millions of subscribers. To maintain order in the online community, there are Game Masters who resolve player disputes, police the shard for terms of service violations, and correct glitches in the game.