In this week’s Massively Overthinking, we have a very simple question on deck in honor of Dune Awakening’s headstart: What the heck is it? Funcom called it an MMO for years right up until it didn’t, invoking MMORPGs of olden times to prop it up, but then backtracked a bit as its gathering zones settled into that 300ish player band. Lately, it’s been trying to convince everyone it’s in a special in-between category all its own, not unlike a certain MMORPG that tried something similar last year. So let’s tackle it in a roundtable full of people who love MMORPGs, survival games, and everything in between. Is Dune Awakening an MMO, MMORPG, survivalbox, or something else? Where would you bin it in the grand catalogue of online games and why? Or does it defy binning?

Ben Griggs (@braxwolf): I almost didn’t answer this Overthinking because I’m just so fatigued by the question of whether a game fits the definition of an MMO. Considering that gamers’ idea of what that term means is influenced by what game/era they started playing, I’m not even sure how much it matters. The industry is ever-changing. Games are evolving and iterating. All I need to know is this: Is the game fun and interesting? Hopefully we’ll know soon!

Brianna Royce (@nbrianna.bsky.social, blog): I have written at length about the pointlessness of trying to create an MMORPG/MMO taxonomy, and I still agree with every word in that piece: Every time we do this, we’re revealing much more about ourselves than about the games, and some (though not all) folks are just deploying toxic gatekeeping that when taken to its logical conclusion would actually exclude the genre’s founding MMORPGs as well as hundreds of low-pop MMORPGs, MMORPGs with or without PvP, MMORPGs where you’re not a person, and so on. I have seen this happen – I have seen people make gatekeepy arguments about new games that would strip the MMORPG license from EVE Online, Ultima Online, Guild Wars 2, RuneScape, and so on – and it’s hilarious but tiresome.

Whether I agree or not, it’s still something MMO players are gonna debate, and so I’ll bring my two cents to bear too. Yeah, it’s an MMO. It is not a WoW-esque themepark MMORPG; it’s a sandbox MMORPG that throws it back to games like Ultima Online and Asheron’s Call with a modern twist (and frankly way more content). I understand why people (and even Funcom) are calling it a “survival MMO,” and I don’t really disagree, but most survival MMOs are just old-school sandbox MMORPGs, and I wish we (as a genre) had not ceded that space to survivalboxes.

I literally saw a Reddit comment last week complaining about how MMO game devs are trying to force sandbox mechanics into MMOs. No history, no context, no knowledge of where our genre started. A month or two ago, I had a game developer in my inbox mad because we identified his PvP/crafting MMO as a sandbox MMO, when he insisted to me it couldn’t be a sandbox because it didn’t have Minecraft-style building. That’s how much these terms along the themepark/sandbox spectrum have been mangled and stripped down.

The real thing we’re fighting over here with Dune is player pop, but this game is capable of putting significantly more bodies on the screen than the OG MMOs could dream of. This one last thing people are trying to hang the MMORPG hat on has become a meaningless distinction in an era of phasing and districting and world-hopping and unified auction halls anyway, but too many people are just clinging to an antique definition built around an antique server structure.

So if you want to know why “nobody is making MMORPGs/MMOs anymore” it’s because too many gamers have (erroneously) decided nothing is an MMORPG/MMO unless it’s basically a WoW clone. You’re defining MMOs out of existence because you won’t let them evolve.

Incidentally, it would help MMOs (and help MMORPG vets calm the hell down) if we could agree on a term for multiplayer games in the range between four-player couch co-op and 1000-person-server massively multiplayer. I firmly believe that the fact nobody can get “mediumly multiplayer” or “MOG” or whatever to stick is a big part of the terminology turf war.

Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes.bsky.social, blog): It’s an MMO. I don’t care if it isn’t housing thousands of players in a single shard across a vast open world that stretches thousands of digital kilometers.

This isn’t just me needling Funcom’s waffling, nor is it me hoping to piss off the contingent of fans who lose their minds over a game’s classification (seriously, get a hobby that involves touching something soft). It’s a question of near-enough scale in terms of player numbers and especially its suite of activities that it offers that are dependent on more than just a four-person fireteam to make function. Hell, it even has a weekly endgame activity!

It’s an MMO. Period end.

Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): Yeah it is. And that’s not because I want it to be, but simply the fact of its design. It’s much bigger in scope and concurrent population than Conan Exiles, and it’s oozing with MMORPG feel. I think this is simply Funcom doing what a lot of other studios have done in the past 10 years, which is to hedge on the terminology in order to bypass any stigma related to “MMO” and create a wide net for a launch catch. In other news, I’m going out for fish and chips today.

Sam Kash (@samkash@mastodon.social): I’ve been anticipating Dune for a while now, though with some hesitation. I’ve never met a game I didn’t think Funcom could screw up. With that I’ve read our coverage, but that’s the extent.

With that in my mind, it’s falling somewhere between an MMO and a survival game. I’ve played a few games in that niche like Myth of Empires too. Although that one plainly declares itself an MMO and not a survival game. So the water gets murky there.

So I think both terms are correct and apply. But thinking of it in my mind, it falls into the in-between, not full MMO like GW2 or Throne and Liberty but perhaps more than Valheim.

Tyler Edwards (blog): I have not played the game or followed it super closely, so take my views with a grain salt, but I would say it is an MMO, and possibly an RPG, but not an MMORPG.

My definition for “MMO” is fairly loose. If it’s persistent and multiplayer with a significant emphasis on group play and/or the possibility to run into other people in the open world, it’s an MMO.

However, the term “MMORPG” to me invokes the more traditional EverQuest/UO/WoW style of a huge open world shared with hundreds or thousands of players, and Dune seems a bit smaller scale than that. I’m not gonna get mad if someone calls it an MMORPG, but I’d be more inclined to label it an MMO survival game.

Every week, join the Massively OP staff for Massively Overthinking column, a multi-writer roundtable in which we discuss the MMO industry topics du jour – and then invite you to join the fray in the comments. Overthinking it is literally the whole point. Your turn!