During lunch, you rocket into the stars and join your corporate comrades to defend a manufacturing facility under attack by a rival organization. During the battle, you destroy a pair of enemy ships and scoop up their floating cargo while the pilots helplessly float in escape pods. Afterward, you celebrate by popping open a bottle of Quafe.

In the afternoon, you travel to the island of Tortuga and meet with Captain Jack Sparrow and his first mate, Joshamee Gibbs, who tasks you with sinking a Royal Navy ship and defeating four of the navy’s soldiers. You decide to take your sloop to Port Royal, completing the first assignment along the way and finishing the second one while wandering the island.

EVE Online: Yes, the game looks this beautiful even when you’re simply traveling between solar systems.

Just another day spent playing World of Warcraft, EVE Online, and Pirates of the Caribbean Online. They’re a few of the many massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) available on the Mac. (While some gamers differentiate between MMORPGs and MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games) that don’t feature role-playing in the traditional sense, we’re avoiding that distinction for simplicity’s sake. In addition, there’s nothing stopping you from role-playing in a MMOG like Second Life, so it could easily be considered an MMORPG.)

MMORPGs 101

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games let you play with and against hundreds or even thousands of other players over the Internet, engaging in activities that even a solo, offline experience can’t match, since live human beings are more unpredictable than computer-controlled characters. And, as our introduction demonstrates, MMORPGs take place in a wide variety of settings, enabling you to participate no matter what type of game world interests you.

Pirates of the Caribbean Online: Jolly Roger makes his entrance, much to the dismay of this character.

A typical MMORPG requires you to set up an account and create a character. Usually you can maintain multiple characters, enabling you to log off one character and then log onto another so you can play for an opposing faction or simply experience a different part of the game world.

As you play a MMORPG, you build your character’s vital statistics in various ways, making it stronger as you undertake various missions, which are typically referred to as quests in fantasy-themed games like World of Warcraft. Eventually, you become more powerful, earning greater stature among your peers. Depending on the game, your character may also amass material wealth that can be used to purchase more powerful weapons and armor, as well as various modes of transportation.

MMORPG Graduate School

Most MMORPGs also feature organizations, usually called clans, factions, or guilds, that you can join, enabling you and your fellow adventurers to pool your resources and share the spoils of your journeys.

Signing up with such a group also makes it easier to form parties for quests or missions that you can’t tackle by yourself. And if you’re playing a game where there’s plenty of player-versus-player (PvP) activity, it’s handy to have others watching your back.

Depending on the game you’re playing and the server where your character lives, role-playing may also enter into the picture. While most MMORPG gamers chat with each other online the way they normally talk offline, some enjoy getting into a character’s skin, whether their digital alter ego is a high-level Human paladin clearing the Hillsbrad Foothills of Undead enemies or a nervous recruit from Kansas who just entered the European battlefields of World War II.

Wow, it’s WoW

World of Warcraft (WoW) is set in Azeroth, the fantasy world popularized in Blizzard Entertainment’s real-time strategy (RTS) series Warcraft. However, rather than direct armies of Humans, Undead, Dwarves, Orcs, Gnomes, Trolls, Tauren, and Night Elves, you control a single foot soldier belonging to one of those races, which are divided into the opposing Alliance and Horde armies.

World of Warcraft: High-level characters earn the opportunity to purchase mounts and stop walking.

You select one of the eight races and then choose from one of nine classes (not every class is available to each race). Once you’ve done that, named your character, and given him an overall look, you enter the game in a newbie area protected by high-level guards who discourage players on the other side from attacking. A few basic quests earn you enough experience points that you can reach fourth or fifth level in just an afternoon, at which point you should be ready to venture into the wider world.

With the release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack, your characters can reach level 80 as they explore Northrend, where Arthas the Lich King sits on his Frozen Throne and commands the Scourge to do his bidding. Whether you fight for the Horde or the Alliance, you’ll need to set aside your animosity to prevent your mutual destruction. Many new quests and raids await you, along with various tweaks to the gameplay and an achievement system that lets you show off all the cool stuff you’ve done.

By the time you’ve attained the highest level possible (trust us, it will take a while), you will have learned much about the World of Warcraft storyline, which picks up where the plot in the RTS game Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne left off. Not only do the Horde and Alliance continue to battle, but each side has problems of its own that you must help solve.