As MORPGs are all based on the same idea, there’s a lot of competition between them. To see which MORPG ( is played the most, we need to look at at least one of those stats: active accounts or number of players online. And as it turns out, it might not be as clear as you’d expect.
What is MORPG?
MORPG is an acronym for ‘massive online role-playing game’, which means that you play with lots of people at the same time. It used to mean that you created a character (or avatar) and controlled their actions, but nowadays it’s often more like a first-person shooter where you play against other players instead of AI enemies – https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/educational-gaming-avatars/19227
Gamepro lists 5 different ways in which MORPGs are played:
1) Local multiplayer; two or more gamers on one device, playing against each other (like Mario Party and Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance )
2) Online multiplayer; two or more gamers on separate devices, playing against each each other (like League of Legends and Dungeons & Dragons Online )
3) Local multiplayer with a single device; two or more gamers on separate devices, playing against each other, but sharing the same screen/device (like Mario Party and Yo Kai Watch )
4) Singleplayer; you play alone (like any Final Fantasy game)
5) Co-op; you play with others, but not competitively (like Borderlands 2)
Let’s start with some basics:
- According to research, there are about 50000 active MORPG accounts in total at this point (December 2021). It is hard to say if this number has been stable over time and whether it includes old and inactive accounts. Also, note that it was only looked at games actually having an accounting system; for example, RYL does not have this
- WoMg has the most accounts with about 29000 of them at this point, followed by X-Hero with 26000, then KOG/KOC with 19000 and RYL/KRM with 14000 respectively (you can see exact numbers below). This means that WoMg is played more than all other MORPGs combined. Additionally, there are about 10000 active players online at any given point. As you’ll see below, not much changes if we include inactive accounts or don’t just look at currently active ones.
It’s interesting how different MORPGs attract people in terms of gameplay style and business model. For example, we can very well understand why some games like GOW and RYL find more players than others: these games offer a high number of classes or characters and thus allow for many variations. KOG/KOC has kept this number rather low (only three, but later four) and WoMg offers just one character per server but provides several different servers to play on. X-Hero is somewhere in the middle with around ten playable heroes and villains at this point.
The interesting thing about MORPGs and their player base is that even the most played games don’t have all that many active accounts – not so many compared to other online multiplayer games like MOBAs for example, which typically attract millions of active players due to free-to-play business models. This might be explained by the fact that, unlike MOBAs, MORPGs do not offer in-game features like skins or voice chat.
MORPG games can even be casino games (https://www.nutz.ee/en/casino) such as live roulette, live poker, or other live table games.
The most important thing to note is that these numbers and statistics only tell part of the story: they don’t say anything about how active each MORPG is at any given time. So while WoMg might have many more accounts than every other MORPG combined, this does not mean it’s necessarily played more than other games.