Beyond the issue of player names, MMORPGs pose a much broader question: how can people who speak different languages communicate at all within the game? Different games adopt different approaches. The most common one is to have no specific solution at all: in such cases, when a player speaks in German, everyone sees the German words, regardless of whether they speak German, or French, or some other language. This approach only permits communication between players to the extent that they share a common language. (Even this non-solution may require some extra coding. For instance, displaying Korean characters on an English computer sometimes requires special handling.) 

Many MMORPGs take things a step further, and actually try to facilitate communication between players who speak different languages. Some games, such as Electronic Arts' Ultima Online, provide users with in-game translation software. (In the case of Ultima Online, Systran provided the translation systems). When used, this feature automatically translates other languages into the player's native tongue, so that when a user types something in German, for example, French users see it in automatically-translated French. Such software is usually adequate to get general concepts across, but many users feel that it is not sufficiently advanced to convey complex concepts - when elaborate sentences are typed, the resulting translations are often comically inaccurate, and can lead to misunderstandings or hurt feelings. However, as translation software advances over time, this may become an increasingly adequate solution.

Another option is to provide menu-based communication systems. Games that provide this option let players build sentences by choosing basic sentence structures and then filling in the blanks with subjects. This option is especially convenient for console games, because consoles such as Sony's PlayStation 2 typically do not have keyboards attached to them. (Keyboards are sold separately.) When a game provides menus for communicating, players can navigate these menus using their regular game controller, and don't have to rely on a keyboard. Once a user has completely built a sentence using the menus, that sentence is then sent to the recipients, each of whom sees the sentence in his or her own native language. Menu-based talk trees provide very good translation, because only certain sentences are possible, and the designers can make certain that all possible combinations can be translated correctly for every language. However, the very thing that makes menus powerful - their limited choice of sentences - means that only simple concepts can be conveyed in this manner. Many users still feel the need to use a keyboard to type complicated sentences, which bypasses the automatic translation feature of the menus.

SEGA's popular home console video game, Phantasy Star Online, provides a menu-based communication system, which allows players to discuss many aspects of the game to a reasonable extent. It also goes a step further and lets players draw their own custom pictographs. The player can display these pictographs to other nearby players at any time. Some players draw iconic faces with this system, so that they can instantly convey sadness or happiness in a language-independent way. The only problem with this feature is a minor detail of the implementation:

the pictographs take up a large part of the screen for everybody who sees them, so players often ask their friends not to use too many pictographs, as it can distract from the game. This problem could be corrected in a more nuanced implementation of the idea.

Localization strategies must address not only communication between players, but also communication between the game and players. Such communication usually takes the form of printed text (as opposed to, say, audio or movies) because printed text requires little bandwidth when the developer wants to send new content to players. Generally speaking, this text is localized in an MMORPG as it would be in any other video game. However, there are a few considerations specific to MMORPGs.

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