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A persistent world is a virtual world (often in a fantasy setting) that is used as a setting for a role-playing game, often online. The world is always available and world events happen continually.

The persistency comes from maintaining and developing the state of the gaming world around the clock. Unlike with other games, a persistent world game's plots and events continue to develop even while some of the players are not playing their character. The comparison is to the real world where events occur that are not directly connected to a person, or continue to happen while a person sleeps, etc. Likewise, a player's character can also influence and change a persistent world. The degree to which a character can affect a world varies from game to game. (Since the game does not pause nor create player-accessible back-up files, a character's actions will have consequences that the player must deal with.)

Persistent worlds do also exist in offline games, such as Animal Crossing (and its DS counterpart Wild World). Even though technically nothing happens while the game is off, the illusion of persistency is created by advancing events as soon as the game is turned on and using the GameCube's clock as a guide for what should have happened, making it seem like events occurred while the game was off.

The term gained popularity with the growth in popularity of MMORPGs. It's also the term (frequently abbreviated as "PW") used by players of Neverwinter Nights to refer to MMORPG-like online environments created using the game's toolkit. The original AOL MMORPG of Neverwinter Nights was the first graphical persistent world RPG.

Persisten Worlds was also a UK based company (http://www.persistentworlds.co.uk) that was developing 9dragons (European version). They ceased Trading as of January 22nd 2007.

In the first type of persistent worlds, the player and all his attributes are still present in the world after player logoff, so other gamers still can interact with the player. This concept is the most widely used persistent world concept.

In the second type of persistent worlds, the player and some (or all) of his attributes are unavailable for interaction after player logoff. This is also known as Pseudo- Persistent World.

• MUD
• MMORPG

• Guild Wars 2
• World of Warcraft
• Animal Crossing
• Final Fantasy XI
• Neverwinter Nights
• Nintendogs