Persistent World - An Abstract

First, let us take a small excursion to the defining aspect of the MMORPG: The Persistent World.

Historically, games would be finite. Think of Tetris, Super Mario, Counter-Strike or Chess. These games have a set objective, and one or multiple mechanics of inevitability - the game will per its design end, eventually and inevitably. Should you wish to continue playing, you would be starting anew from scratch and, most crucially your previous exploits would be all but forgotten - they have no bearing on the next game.
Sometimes, you would be playing multiple subgames or, innings (think of a best-of-three Chess match) but eventually, all (good) things must come to an end. Such is finality.

However, imagine a game that isn't finite. What if it had an infinite amount of innings? Enter the Persistent World.
Now, Wow is hardly the inventor or anything of the persistent world (indeed MUDs have existed for over a decade by then, amongst others) however I would definitely argue that it is likely the defining game of the genre. It made it mainstream and popular and, eventually to much everyone's sorrow others (fail to) imitate it and ultimatively ruin their games. But again, I digress and am getting ahead of myself.

Such a game however must be broken down into individual, finite innings - we must all sleep (amongst others) eventually, after all. This is where Wow's genius comes to bear - its instanced dungeon system. (Its critics would argue that it defeated the MMO part of the point. They wouldn't be [very] wrong.) It managed to detach its most critical, core part from the trappings of the Persistent World and have it play out much more like a traditional, cooperative multiplayer game. For the most part, dungeons would be rather short making them very palatable innings. (There would be also be raids, which are longer but more on that later.) They would, however encourage players to continue their greater quest within the infinite game (world) as their rewards (gear, reputation) usually serve to further your character's developement. But such a feature, however appealing it may be to some parts of the playerbase (whether voluntary or not) doesn't serve them - suffice to say, there's a reason why Wow's stuck to its anachronistic subscription model for this long.
Eventually this would become the game's most defining feature to the exclusion of all else (and consequently its invariable downfall), and we're finally once again getting ahead of ourselves. Stay tuned for when we shall finally get to that part!

Well then there's that. That brings this prelude to an end, I am quite afraid. Next ~~week~~ time, we shall venture to Vanilla ~~Madagascar~~ Azeroth together, at long last!

Addendum: There's probably one more thing I should add to all of this. Persistent World games are inherently (immensely) unfair. That's not to say that one should go out of the way to exacerbate the situation, but a (completely) level playing field's inherently impossible given the nature of such a game (and thus all but a fool's errand) and this is something that a lot of people fail to understand, including some if not all of Wow's creators. But, more on that topic later.