Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Which is the first ever MMO?
Takodan
Member UncommonPosts: 161
What comes into mind is M.U.D. (Multi-user Dungeon) but i guess there were other perpetual online games before that?
On a side note i can't help to think that kids today will never learn to appreciate the importance of the 70s-80s computer and video games. Sure, they know about Halo, the Wii and Mario, but long before this there were a vast amount of excellent games and machines laying the foundation. What wasn't that common i guess was online games - so which "MMOs" came before Ultima Online and the likes?
Comments
Bulletin Board System games.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system
edit: although not sure on time frame, so, maybe on the 'internet' of the time, there were already those type of game.
_________________
Senhores da Guerra
Chan We, a Kung Fu monk in 14th century China, played a game of sticks in the dirt with an invisible stranger who would later come by and reposition the sticks. A great silent drama was played out on the soil and after some time, the entire monastery would stop by to assess the progress of the unfolding drama.
This is the first example of roleplaying and a precursor to what is now the modern MMORPG.
Excerpt from Gygax's autobiography, "My Long Hard Journey Into Gaming."
It all depends on how you define "massive". If it is misused to simply refer to something which is persistent and graphical, then there were quite a few before UO, among them Sierra's "the Realm", Meridian 59, and Rubies of Eventide. If a graphic interface is not a requirement, then there are literally thousands of MUDs and MOOs and MUSHes to choose from, no idea which came first.
The only way one could argue that Ultima Online was first is if you attach an actual numerical value to the word massive. Of course, the problem with doing that would be that many games which are considered MMOs today would likely not meet that numerical threshold, at least not when you consider the North American market by itself.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Neverwinter Nights on AOL was the first graphical MMOG.
I guess The Realm Online. If not the first, atleast among the first successful mmo's made, with a graphical interface. There are still people playing it, believe it or not. Wikipage - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Realm_Online
Edit: After digging around a little, Neverwinter Nights for AOL(shudder) was the first one. Wikipage here.
---
Grammar nazi's. This one is for you.
The history of massively multiplayer online games spans over thirty years and hundreds of massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) titles.
MMOG's are the result of a combination of several concepts.
In 1973, Mazewar introduced the first graphic virtual world, providing a first-person perspective view of a maze in which players roamed around shooting at each other. This could be seen as a key progenitor not only of MMOGs but also of First Person Shooters. It was also the first networked game, in which players at different computers could visually interact in a virtual space. The initial implementation was over a serial cable, but when one of the authors began attending MIT in 1974, the game was enhanced so that it could be played across the ARPAnet, forerunner of the modern Internet.
Meanwhile, the PLATO computer system, an educational computer system based on mainframe computers with graphical terminals, was pioneering many areas of multiuser computer systems. By the middle of 1974, there were graphical multiplayer games such as Spasim, a space battle game which could support 32 users, and the Talkomatic multi-user chat system.
The game Dungeons and Dragons was published for the first time in 1974, starting a boom in role-playing games, which appealed to many college-aged computer programmers. Software development quickly followed; the first single-player graphical "dungeon crawl" was pedit5, written for the PLATO system in 1974, followed quickly by m199h and then by dnd, which was playable by the end of 1975. In dnd, there was a quest goal, to obtain the mystical Orb.
In 1976, William Crowther created the first Text Adventure game, Colossal Cave Adventure, in which a single player solved various puzzles. All interaction was through text; no graphics. The player typed simple commands such as "look north" and the computer replied with descriptions of what was happening.
Since PLATO had both multiplayer games and Dungeons and Dragons style role-playing/dungeon crawl games, both graphical, combining the two was inevitable, and on November 18, 1977, Oubliette was released.
Meanwhile, multiuser text-based (entirely non-graphical) MUDs were evolving, with the first being developed by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw in 1978. These games ran on private servers, usually at a university, and sometimes without the knowledge of the system's administrators. Players would typically connect to the games using a TELNET client, and gameplay was similar to role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons. By typing commands into a parser, players would enter a dungeon, fight monsters, gain experience, and acquire loot.
MUDs (and later their descendants such as MUSHes and MOOs) were sometimes wildly different from one another, but shared many basic interface elements. An example of this would be a player's means of navigating his or her character around the gameworld by typing in compass directions ("n", "se", etc.).
A text-based (or, more accurately, roguelike), game called MAD, would become the first global MUD, operating through the global network BITNET.
Many MUDs are still active and a number of influential MMOG designers, such as Brad McQuaid, Mark Jacobs, and Brian "Psychochild" Green, began as MUD developers and/or players.
I would say the first true MMORPG was Islands of Kesmai (depending on what you consider "massive"). The game was roguelike and became available to consumers in 1984 for $12.00 per hour via the CompuServe online service.
Read all about the history of MMOGs at Wikipedia.
I didn't play NWN, but I did play The Shadow of Yserbius by Sierra.
People think $15.00 a month is a lot. NWN and tSoY players had to pay by the hour. lol.
sheesh talk about making a mountain....
Rogue and rogue-like games (such as Nethack) are still some of the best games out there IMO! If you haven't tried them, do so.
I was too young when they were created but I have went back in time to experience some of the games that influenced what we now have today. Roguelike games are still being developed. Diablo, Diablo II, Hellgate: London, and Mythos are all considered roguelike for their randomly generated content. I guess the old blizzard north crew who founded flagship studios must've really liked roguelike games.
List of Roguelikes
This is pretty good:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gaming-evolution.ars/4
well MMO means Massively Multiplayer-Online. so those guys posting about 15th century china or like the middle ages is.. umm.. wrong cuz, there werent even electricity back then..
And just what role(s), may I ask, was being played?
I didn't play NWN, but I did play The Shadow of Yserbius by Sierra.
People think $15.00 a month is a lot. NWN and tSoY players had to pay by the hour. lol.
Bacteria existed on this planet far before we ever came along and coined the term "bacteria"... but that doesn't mean ANYONE on this planet would say they aren't bacteria, right?
He didn't say it was an MMO. He claimed it was a precursor to the first MMOs.
14th century stick-game = first example of roleplaying? Heh.
Roleplaying is, quite simply, playing a role. Right? Now technically everyone in the world plays a role in every second of every day. However, even if we aren't splitting hairs, I'd wager that an actor is a roleplayer (probably one of the very best examples of a RPer), and I'm reasonably sure that at least a couple people acted in plays or something well before this stick-game played out in Asia.
MMMM, now I miss Trade Wars
Never Winter Nights on AOL was the best for a long time, the graphics sucked compared to todays look, but the gameplay was fun. Then there was Dark Sun Online on the TEN Network.
Even though it's in the wiki list of roguelikes that Arbadacarba listed, I gotta make special mention of Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress. It takes roguelikes to a whole new level by adding city building to the mix, in addition to having one of the most detailed combat and wound system I've seen in a roguelike... and it's still being developed!
"By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous to man, man himself. So he must supply his own indispensable competition. He has no enemy to help him." -Lazarus Long
Umm I think the first successful MMO was Subspace. It was launched in 1995 under the name "Sniper" to test how different people would be able to connect to a server and interact within lag limits.
It was changed to "Continuum" when VIE (the developers) went out of business and the player "PriitK" developed a new client. It is now the largest player-run MMO. I've been playing since October of 1997, I believe. I play on the SSCU Trench Wars zone, the most popular one, and enjoy it greatly.
But yeah, I think Subspace was one of the first successful MMOs.
Well I'm not sure how most people define "mmo".
In 1985 I joined an online service called "Quantum Link" it was a commodore only service. Random fact would be that eventually in the 1990's this is what would become... America Online. This was part of why AOL had the weird limit on user names (length).
Anyway in 1986 or 1987 I was beta testing a game for them called "Habitat".
I'm not sure how far they got with it. You created an avatar.. and lived on an island. You had an apartment and other people were on the same island. I really don't know if there was ever any combat. I know there was a beach (even a nude one um lol yes seriously). If you wandered onto that by accident all your clothing vanished and you were an ugly (by todals standards) mass of flesh colored pixels.
There were also pirate caves under the island.
I have no idea how many people could be logged in at once.. but it was online, persistant, mult player and graphical.. even back then.
I left the service when it was still in beta (as I was going into college etc) so I don't know if it was ever launched as a "premium" service or not.
Those were the days of connecting through GTE Telnet.. getting an hour of premium services month for $9.99 and paying 6 cents a minute for premium services after that. QLink was also only open from like 7pm to 7am local time (because that was when the phone rates dropped..)
I had no local dial up so the toll charges on top of the service were pretty bad. Oh the good old days.. 300 baud.. dang 1200 was such an upgrade!! it seriously seemed like it at the time.
/endtimetravel
(edited for grammer I noticed... to try and make it make.. some sense)