What's in a name? If you built an MMORPG, probably not much

The English language is believed to have over 1,000,000 words in it. Nobody really knows for sure what the exact number is. When it comes time to name your MMORPG, it seems that not all 1,000,000 words are available. Instead, MMO developers seem to try to keep the names of MMO's as similar to eachother as the actual gameplay.

In my quest to grind my way through the MMO name game, I begin with the original quest, Everquest. When you've completed all the quests in Everquest, you can move on to Everquest II and Everquest Online Adventures. Each of the Everquest adventures, whether online or the offline Everquest Champions of Norrath, take place in the world of Norrath or the New World of Norrath after the original Norrath was Shattering or the world of Norrath before the time before The Shattering.

If you want to quest a little bit closer to home, you need to investigate StarQuest or Infinity: The Quest for Earth. While quest games are nothing new, I'm pretty sure sticking a Quest in your game started somewhere around the time of King's Quest. There's also Titans Quest, which you can call an MMORPG without the MxO.

Though they may not say so in their name, all MMORPG's have Quests. Not many MMORPG's are light, but plenty are Dark and one is both Dark and Light. Dark Solstice, DarkEden, Dark Ages, DarkSpace, Darkwind and Dark Ages of Camelot seem to give us all the darkness we need. It's time to come out of the Dark Ages and find new ages. Age of Conan, Age of Camelot, Age of Reckoning and Age of Armor provide us with a nice choice of ages to explore. You would think Age of Armor would be about tanks, but alas it's just another place to Quest.

There are many worlds to explore in the land of MMO's. The folks at SOE wanted to be different and call their world a planet in Planetside, while EarthRise and Fallen Earth just call it what it is. If you're looking for other worlds, you can land in Fantasy Worlds, FreeWorld, Irth Worlds, Oz World, Stargate Worlds, Sword of the New World, TerraWorld, World of Kung Fu, World of Pirates and yes of course, World of Warcraft.

In a genre filled with elves, orcs and fairies, I'm glad some publishers are bold enough to just tell us what races are in their game in the title. There's no second guessing what's inside Fairyland, Elf Online, Angels, Immortals, MagiKnights or Ogre Island. Unfortunately that leaves you scratching your head wondering just what Thang is all about. Perhaps orcs and trolls aren't your thang and you're looking for something more worldy like a swashbucking pirate on the high seas?

It's talk like a pirate day everyday in MMO land with Pirate King Online, Puzzle Pirates, Tales of Pirates, World of Pirates and Pirates of the Caribbean. If those pirate titles aren't hot enough for you, there's always Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Enough of this world, lets shoot for the stars. Star Sonata, Stargate Worlds, Starport, StarQuest, Phantasy Star and of course the stars we're most familiar with, Star Wars and Star Trek. Star MMORPG's are out of this world. Infact, they're out of this universe. Universe you say? While the Marvel Universe never quite made made it, we do have Universe Online, Entropia Universe and Phantasy Star Universe.

What would an MMORPG be with a war? We have War on Wheels, Godswar, Guild Wars, Star Wars, Kaos War, Myth War, Land at War, Twilight War, Merc Wars, Warhammer and what would any MMORPG article be without repeated mention of World of Warcraft.

While it seems most MMORPG developers stick to safe words we can all identify with, we do have the rebel sect of MMORPG publishers. As if making an MMORPG was a bad enough stigma, there are those who named their games things like Dofus, Flyff, GoonZu, Mabinogi, Mu, Zu, Thang and There.

If all this reading has made you hungry, you can check out Parfait Station or Pi Story. Maybe you prefer broaden your Horizons and Rise to the occasion with bizzare foods like Andrew Zimmerman. You can try Wurms. If you want something more traditional, you might just want some MapleStory on MMOCakes.

Maybe counting is your thing. There's Two Moons, 9Dragons, 2 Everquests, A3, World War II and not one, not two, but three Tales in the Desert. When counting MMORPG's you can go on until Infinity.

While the English language has millions of possible word combinations and Endless Online possibilities, it makes you wonder why MMORPG developers continually recycle the words. Perhaps there's some MMORPG naming standards that they all secretly adhere to?

I know I've missed a few here, feel free to continue playing the MMO name game.