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Perfect Ten: MMOs from the '90s
The course of MMO history and the developer pioneers who forged a path to online gaming have long fascinated me (so much so that I write an occasional column about it). While we often think of MMOs as modern entertainment barely out of its infancy, the truth is that you can trace the industry back decades to see a fringe group of devs and players striving to make these games a reality. While the number of MMOs in existence exploded in the early- and mid-2000s (and hasn't stopped growing since), the 1990s are often an overlooked decade that featured more than the one or two games that are usually mentioned in brief history overviews. There were actually far more titles than most assume, even if you dismiss text-based MUDs and the like. Today we're going to run down 10 MMOs that were born during the era of the dot-com revolution, dial-up modems, and the peak of the Simpsons (third through seventh seasons).
Yes, people still play Meridian 59
Meridian 59 may not enjoy the population numbers it did almost 20 years ago, but there are still a handful of dedicated players playing every day. A recent article at The New Yorker takes a more personal look at a few of these remaining players. "I've tried to leave the game many times over the years," admits Tim Trude, a 33-year-old player from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Tim first started playing the MMO at the age of 15. "But I always return. Some of these people I've grown up with. We have been enemies or friends forever." The article goes on to quote other players and document a brief history of the game's development, including the source code release in 2012. Meridian 59 is looking to launch on Steam sometime this year, and its current code-maintainer is looking forward to the possibility of bringing in new players once again.
The Game Archaeologist: The care and feeding of older MMOs
When an MMO has reached a certain age and dwindled to a certain player population, what do you do with it? Do you put it out to pasture, nurture it, or put it down? With some of our older graphical MMOs approaching their 20th anniversaries, the question of what studios should do with aging titles is becoming very important. It's not just important for the games in question but as a precedent to the population of games that will one day become just as old. Lately we've seen different studios act on this topic in a wide variety of ways, all of which I find fascinating. Some of these games have seen tragic ends, while others may be entering into the enjoyable golden years. If nothing else, it's shown me that there isn't just one set answer for this and that some devs are hoping to do the right thing by their companies and their players.
Talking the past and present of MMOs with Brian 'Psychochild' Green
If you've been MMO gaming for more than a few years, you might be familiar with Brian "Psychochild" Green. Approaching his 15th year professionally developing in the genre, Brian started out with Meridian 59 and most recently headed up the Storybricks team. But now that he's back to being a free agent, we jumped at the chance to sit down and talk shop. Follow along after the jump for Brian's thoughts on modern MMOs, how the genre may be enjoying a rebirth, and which game he'd save if given the chance.
Jukebox Heroes: Meridian 59's soundtrack
There's a lot of general distaste and dislike out there for video game music that comes in MIDI or chipset form. Many gamers have simply never really experienced eras when the sound for computers and consoles were limited in such ways, so to go back to listen to them seems downright painful. For MMO players, there are only a handful of games that came out during the MIDI era, and pretty much all of them have since updated to MP3 versions. Yet I have a fondness for older-style game music. I agree with what Ryan Shwayder once wrote when he said, "I think MIDI composers had to become masters of capturing the real core or heart of what made a song feel right. They had to take a minimalist approach to the song because they had a limited number of channels and potential sounds to work with. And it is my belief that some of the best creative works come out when an artist has to work within constraints." That said, most of Meridian 59's soundtrack out there is of the remastered variety, so that's what we'll be listening to today. By the way, the original soundtrack by Composer Gene M. Rozenberg is available on the official website for free!
The Game Archaeologist: Checking in with classic MMOs
What's this, you say as you rub your eyes in disbelief. Is it... The Game Archaeologist, long since thought lost in his expedition to Atlantis (and the trials therein)? It is indeed, my friends. TGA has been a long-running passion of mine on Massively, but I needed a break for a while to recouperate and refocus. However, as of late I've felt the call of neglected classic MMOs and wanted to make sure that they were getting some column love here on the site. So going forward, expect to see The Game Archaeologist pop out of his hidey hole once or twice a month to talk about our old favorites and perhaps pontificate more on the history of MMO development. Sound good? Did you miss me at all? You totally didn't, did you. If you've been out of touch with classic MMOs, I've done the legwork this week to provide you with the 10 important and relevant news items that are sweeping through this aging yet still vibrant community. Read on, McDuff!
The Game Archaeologist's top MMO stories of 2012
As another gaming year spins to a close, we here at the Institute for Digital Interactive Entertainment have been holding our archaeological department hostage with a trained buffy-tufted marmoset until it delivered a final report. After hours of begging and infected monkey bites, the head of that department, Prof. Justin Olivetti, Ph.D., handed us a scrap of urine-soaked paper with the following article inscribed. While the Institute strongly suggests that you ignore this report and instead work on your button-mashing exercises, the board of directors stated that all such papers must be posted for the public to see. This report is presented in the Yetbari typeface and contains a sequential series of items that number between 11 and 13.
Meridian 59 player teases 3-D client
Now that Meridian 59 is available to anyone to tinker with as an open source project, we've been curious what the playerbase might do with this granddaddy of MMOs. One enterprising soul has started the Meridian 59: Community Client Project to bring the title fully into the realm of 3-D. In a brief video, the possibility for a 3-D Meridian 59 is teased with some basic landscape rendering and strategically placed bushes and trees. While the author admits that it's still crude and in the beginning stages, it's tantalizing to think about this 2.5-D title finally breaking through to the third dimension. Of course, purists don't have to worry that their game is under attack, as the production servers for the classic Meridian 59 experience are still alive and kicking. You can check out the community project video after the jump. [Thanks to Dennis for the tip!]
Former Meridian 59 dev pens essay on community management
Have you ever been curious what, exactly, a community manager does from an insider perspective? Here to help you with that is Brian Green, who's developed for both Meridian 59 and Storybricks. Green wrote an essay on how community management is often misunderstood and how it can be both effectively and ineffectively handled. Green went through the daily process of a CM's job to provide information for both developers and players, citing the difficult balance in handling that two-way street. He said it's important to keep PR as divorced from community management as possible, otherwise it damages the communication "loop" between CMs, players, and developers. He finishes by examining the recent instance of ArenaNet's CM team using Reddit to discuss players' behavior and names. "The problem is that this was quite obviously a PR exercise and not really proper community management," he noted, going on to say that this might have set the wrong tone for the community's in-game behavior and caused a "toxic allowance" to build up for later on down the road.
Schubert to dissect Meridian 59 at GDC Online [Updated]
Those darn GDC organizers! They're still using the term postmortem for games that are very much alive. In this case it's Meridian 59, and former lead designer Damion Schubert will take the stage at GDC Online 2012 for a special Classic Game Postmortem lecture focused on the 1996 title. A GDC press release says that Meridian 59 was the first MMO to charge a monthly fee and use 3-D graphics and that it "began an era that set the stage for the MMORPG genre as we know it." Schubert went on to work on titles including Shadowbane, The Sims Online, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. [Source: GDC press release] [Update: Reader Scotty also tipped us off to the fact that M59 is slated to go open source.]
The Game Archaeologist and the Kesmai legacy
Most studios would be overjoyed to have pioneered one significant advancement in video game history, but then again, most studios aren't Kesmai. While it's not a household name today, it's reasonable to say that without the heavy lifting and backbreaking coding that this company shouldered in the '80s and '90s, the MMO genre would've turned out very different indeed. Last week we met two enterprising designers, Kelton Flinn and John Taylor, who recognized that multiplayer was the name of the future and put their careers on the line to see an idea through to completion. That idea was Island of Kesmai, an ancestor of the modern MMO that used crude ASCII graphics and CompuServe's network to provide an interactive, cooperative online roleplaying experience. It wasn't the first MMO, but it was the first one published commercially, and sometimes that makes all the difference. Flinn and Taylor's Kesmai didn't stop with being the first to bring MMOs to the big time, however. Flush with cash and success, Kesmai turned its attention to the next big multiplayer challenge: 3-D graphics and real-time combat. Unlike the fantasy land of Island of Kesmai, this title would take to the skies in aerial dogfighting and prove even more popular than the team's previous project.
The Daily Grind: What will your favorite MMO look like in 20 years?
Even though we've certainly seen some short-lived MMOs in our time, the average lifespan and half-life of a title is still up for grabs. Considering that titles like Ultima Online and Meridian 59 are creeping ever closer to the two-decade mark, I think it's conceivable that some of the very MMOs we play today might still be around in 20 years. So assuming that they don't go belly-up or invent free-free-to-play-supreme editions that sinks them for good, what do you think your current MMOs might look like in the year 2032? Will we be playing World of Warcraft in holodeck simulators, be teaching Star Wars: The Old Republic in grade-school classrooms, or be experiencing EVE Online's radical "walking in spaceships" feature? Cast your prognosticating abilities far into the future and tell us what we have to look forward to with our favorite games! Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Game Archaeologist seals up 2011
You know what I love about the end of each year? The lists. Man, but I'm a sucker for lists, especially when they come in "best of" varieties. In the lull between Christmas and New Year's, there typically isn't a lot happening in the world of entertainment, so it's a good time to look back before we head forward. And so it is for The Game Archaeologist. 2011 marks the second year I've been doing this column, and it's been one of my personal favorite series to write. Every week I'm learning more and more about the history of the MMO genre, and I'm encouraged to see just how much passion and interest there are for the titles that started it all and got us to where we are today. So before we head into 2012, let's take one last glimpse back at the road we've traveled. If you've missed out on any of these columns or want to revisit your favorite classic MMO, I've compiled a huge list of everything I talked about this year, from histories to interviews to player stories. There's also a special request for you (yes, you) at the end of this column, so do me a favor and hit that jump!
The Game Archaeologist crosses Meridian 59: A chat with Brian Green (part 2)
Welcome to the second part of our interview with former Meridian 59 developer Brian "Psychochild" Green as he reminisces about running one of the oldest graphical MMOs in history. If you missed the first part, I heartily recommend you catch up on it before continuing further. And now, for the exciting conclusion... The Game Archaeologist: What's one of your favorite stories from your experience running Meridian 59? Brian Green: One time I was at Dave & Busters restaurant one evening after a day at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC). I was chatting with Raph Koster about the conference, when from behind us someone says, "Oh my god, are you Psychochild?!?" Raph, who has always been more high profile than I am, gives a grin and leaves. Turns out they were fans of the game and bought me a drink as thanks.
The Game Archaeologist crosses Meridian 59: An interview with Brian Green (part 1)
Last week we began to examine one of the most significant MMOs in history: Meridian 59. While it never rose to the level of fame and subscriber numbers as its successors did, Meridian 59 was a daring pioneer that paved the way for all that followed. Its story is almost like a movie, with the title born from the fruits of two amateur programmers, surviving studio shutdowns and huge competition, and persevering from 1996 through today. As I'll recount over the next two episodes of The Game Archaeologist, I sat down with Brian Green, a blogger and game developer who oversaw the resurrection of Meridian 59 in the early 2000s and ran it for the better part of a decade. Green graciously agreed to participate, saying that he always loves talking about games -- and this one in particular. The Game Archaeologist: Hi! Please introduce yourself and your current position and project. Brian Green: I'm Brian "Psychochild" Green, a long-time MMO designer and programmer. I'm known for my professional blog and my work on Meridian 59. I'm currently working on the Storybricks project as the MMO Wizard. We're a startup, so that means I do whatever needs to be done at the moment.
The Game Archaeologist crosses Meridian 59: The highlights
A colony founded through a magical nexus, Meridian 59 had it all going on -- until, that is, the portal to the colony collapsed and it was left to fend for itself. Monsters swarmed over the land, politics split the community into factions, and adventurers were called to rise up and become the heroes that were desperately needed. And all it took was $10.95 a month and an internet connection. Welcome to 1996 and one of the very first -- if not the first (more on that later) -- graphical MMOs to hit the scene. Meridian 59 may not have been one of the biggest games in the genre, but it was arguably one of the most important, the John Adams to World of Warcraft's Abraham Lincoln. If you were wondering, Darkfall was Chester A. Arthur. It seems fitting to end 2011 by touching upon this significant title that, against all odds, continues to operate today. Meridian 59 weathered studio shutdowns, newbie developers in every sense of the word, and a world that wasn't quite sure what to make of these fancy-schmancy massively interactive roleplaying games. MIRGs! Oh, that would've been such a better acronym, but I digress. Let's set the wayback machine to 1978 to see how one amateur game led to another that led to the birth of an industry.
The Game Archaeologist plays with MUDs: The history
You know that sinking feeling when you get into something that's way, waaaay over your head and you have no choice but to swim furiously or drown? That's exactly how I felt when I started to do research for this month's series on MUDs -- Multi-User Dungeons -- and their descendants. At first I was thrilled, because I knew that along with Dungeons & Dragons and Bulletin Board Systems, the MUD was one of the key predecessors to the MMORPG as we know it today. It was, and still is, vital gaming history that helped to shape the genre. The only problem was that for various reasons -- mostly a lack of good internet access in college and general ignorance -- I'd missed out on MUDs back in the day. But it's not like that stopped me from covering any of the other games in this series that I never experienced first-hand way back when; after all, there are few among us who can honestly say they did everything. So the problem wasn't the lack of first-hand knowledge but the sheer, overwhelming scope of this subject. One game alone is a manageable subject -- MUDs are an entire genre unto themselves. It's intimidating, to say the least. It doesn't still my excitement, however, nor will it stop us from diving into this topic no matter how deep the waters get. This week we'll take a look at the brief history of the MUD/MUSH/MOO/et al. and then get into specific games later this month. So hold your breath and jump on in with me!
Free for All: An interview with Golemizer's lead (and only) developer
Ah, the life of the indie developer: long nights followed by more long days followed by long weekends, slugging through mountains of code to find tiny errors that break entire worlds... it would seem like a thankless job. It's ironic that many wanna-be designers and armchair developers often picture development as some kind of glamorous process, one that puts the developer in an office surrounded by character sketches, 3-D models, and walls of monitors. The truth is that design, at any level, is often tedious and heart-breaking. You will more than likely find a designer surrounded by lists of numbers and spilled coffee before you'd find him tweaking character models. Making games is hard, they say. It's true. So then why are we so fascinated by the process? Why do we daydream of one day making our own world to explore and share with friends? I decided to ask Dave Toulouse, lead-everything for Golemizer, what he thought about the whole process. Turns out Golemizer is pretty darn fun, complex and open... and it runs within your browser! Click past the cut and let's see what he has to say about the ever-so-glamorous world of game design.
BioWare's Rich Vogel talks gaming history, Ultima, and the first MMO
Quick, what was the first MMO? No, this isn't the global chat of your favorite game, and no the answer doesn't start with World and end with Warcraft. According to veteran designer (and current Star Wars: The Old Republic producer) Rich Vogel, Meridian 59 was the first MMO, as there were "a lot of firsts with that game, for sure. It was really the first 3D visual of a virtual world, if you want to say that." In a new interview at Gamasutra, Vogel talks about everything from M59, to Star Wars Galaxies, to Ultima Online (and how the PvP minority managed to ruin it for virtual world enthusiasts everywhere). "Frankly when you give people a simulator and the ability to do anything in the world you have to have limits, you have to have constraints that they understand," Vogel explains. UO's free-form PvP, coupled with the thieving mechanic and the ability to manipulate the game world to your advantage, was a recipe for griefing that caught the game's developers completely off guard. "It went through eight or nine iterations before we kind of found a balance of what really worked and what didn't. But it was certainly an experience and many people talk about their experiences in UO. The experience there, no one's ever been able to duplicate today," Vogel says.
The Game Archaeologist and the NeverEnding Quest: The vets
We just had to start 2011 in style, didn't we? I knew that by invoking the sacred name of EverQuest, I'd be opening the door for thousands of collective years' worth of memories, opinions, frustrations, nostalgia, gushing and blocky screenshots. But the Game Archaeologist fears not even the greatest mountain in MMO legend; it had to be climbed sooner or later. And of course, who better to guide you up the mountain than a few EQ Sherpas who know the way? Sure, they might try to steal the idol and not throw me the whip in the end, but that was a very real risk I was willing to take to get the full story. So today I'd like to introduce you to three EverQuest veterans who are all now world-famous bloggers. If you sense a connection between these two facts, I will only hint at the possibility of a secret society in SOE's headquarters that bestows great blessings upon its faithful fans. Hit the jump to meet this EQ trio and hear what they had to say about the MMO that profoundly affected their playing careers!
