Since the dawn of global gaming, which was really when the PlayStation first came out, military sims and tactical sims have been one of the most popular forms of gaming and have gathered up quite a fan base since their initial infancy stages when the simple soldier was all you had to play with. Since then of course, they have developed tenfold which basically means that you, the player has one hell of a lot more fun than you would have had in previous years.

By Dean Sherwin

In many cases, the developers have actually collaborated with real world militaries in order to replicate circumstances, weaponry and combat. Because of this collaboration and tedious amounts of research and life experience, we now have games, which are used to train militaries such as Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator and Bohemia Interactive's VBS series. Now the battlefield is really starting to creep into online play and is advancing quickly.

With online play in the MMO format, a new world of opportunities opens up in terms of gaming experience. This is due to the simple fact that the troop movement and status of the ongoing war is as realistic as it would be in real life. Let's say you have a map the size of RuneScape's with two armies made up of real people playing as soldiers. This gives a very realistic picture of war and helped by the inclusion of realistic weaponry, commanders and a changing political situation controlled by the developers.

The storyline behind any MMO is basically what makes it worthwhile to play. This gives the players the big picture to strive towards while still allowing them to get on with the short-term playing (normally trading and quests) which in this case would be small skirmishes in the middle of a map. Perhaps not big enough to turn the tide of the war but they would add up depending on the numbers of players involved in said battles. The storyline of military MMOs such as Armed Assault, would be that of a political situation, something that would give the players of these kind of MMOs something to motivate them.

The second and final part of this series will detail how realism in Military MMOs can make or break them and we'll take a quick look at how one MMO replicated World War II.