For many years "Online RPG" games, which are essentially Role-Playing Games, such as TSR's Dungeons&Dragons (a.k.a D&D), played with other human players across the Internet, have been gaining in popularity. The popularity of these games, such as EverQuest(a.k.a EQ), Dark Ages of Camelot (a.k.a. DoC), World of Warcraft (a.k.a. WoW), Habbo Hotel (a social game more than an RPG), RuneScape (a Java-based RPG), Club Penguin (another social game, kid-friendly for parents that have children), Webkinz (RPG as stuffed animals, after Club Penguin), Gaia Online (a unique morph of MMO MMORPG and forum boards), Guild Wars (RPG like D&D) , Puzzle Pirates (MMO for pirate loving puzzle masters), Lineage I/II (was one of the first successful original MMOs), and of course Second Life. Some classics like Ultima Online, have been around for years.

Just to clarify, MMORPG = Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. MMO and MMOG = Massively Multiplayer Online (Games).

Widely accepted as highly engrossing, time demanding and even addictive, these Multiplayer Online Games come in two types: Free Online Games and Subscription Online Games. Needless to say, the subscription games are typically of a higher quality, and assured of future operation. It would be a shame to invest thousands of hours in promoting and elevating your characters, just to have them disappear. Pay for your gaming experience with subscriptions, and this won't happen to you. However, Free Online Games, namely Free Online RPG Games (Free MMORPG), are an economical and fun way to game for no cost. Free games are often in "beta phase" which means that they are still testing the gaming system and you get to play for free as a result.

"Items" that appear in these Online Virtual Reality worlds of Online RPG can sometimes be bought and sold at auction, such as ebay. This means that people pay real money for imaginary items, simply because these items are made to seem rare by the apparent scarcity of these non-real "items" in the fabricated worlds that these online games portray. Amazing! And it shows how involved one can get in these games.

Whether you have a PC or Apple / Mac personal computer, a Microsoft XBOX 360, Sony Playstation 3, Playstation Portable, Nintendo DS or Wii, all you need otherwise is a boradband Internet connection, and you too can play all the most popular online rpg games!