MMOs from Back In The Day!

[Tawmis]

How many of these have you ever heard of?

How many have you played?

[AndreaDraco]

I've heard of almost everyone (except for Air Warrior and Habitat), but I never played any of them.

[gumby]

My first exposure to MMOs was 'Snipes' (created in 1983) - while not technically being 'on-line', it was a multi-user game in a networked environment.

You can check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipes

[DeadPoolX]

I've played Meridian 59, Ultima Online, EverQuest and Air Warrior. I briefly tried AOL's earlier version NWN, but it bored me.

I've got TONS of UO stories about what my brother and I did on it years ago. Maia's heard some of them and I truly believe she wishes she hadn't.

My brother and I played AW for a little while, but like most online games at the time, it charged by the hour, so we never really did well. BTW, if the caption on AW is right ("$10 per hour in 1986"), that roughly translated into $20 per hour, in 2010, when adjusted for inflation.

I noticed you didn't include Asheron's Call. AC was released in 1999 and somewhat unsuccessfully took on both UO and EQ. I said "somewhat" because it didn't flop, but it never reached the same numbers or publicity that the other two did.

There was ONE thing that AC did better than any other MMO I've seen since and that's co-operation. Yeah, I know people can form guilds and so forth in current MMOs, but in AC, the game itself rewarded you for co-operating and helping others, using something called the "Alliegence" system.

Here's Wikipedia's description of AC's "Allegiance" system:

"Asheron's Call features a unique allegiance and fealty system that creates formal links between players and rewards cooperative play. A player of a lower level can swear allegiance to a player of a higher level, becoming a vassal of a patron. The patron earns a small percentage of the experience the vassal makes, while the vassal is motivated to seek a patron exchange for money, items, or protection. In the words of one reviewer: "At worst, the allegiance system is a multilevel marketing scheme, whereby greedy, uncaring Patrons enlist as many Vassals as possible in order to gain large amounts of bonus experience. But at best, the allegiance system can provide a tightly knit companionship for players genuinely interested in helping others and developing an organized assembly." Players may also join together in fellowships, temporarily splitting the experience they gain amongst themselves."

[audiodane]

Back in the mid 90's I would dialup to the local university, use some hacked accounts to get in and telnet to a MUD somewhere either in the northeast or the west coast, I can't recall.. It was a MUD that allowed you to script your own items and actions, so I worked a while on a star trek holodeck based room ... got a few things working, but plenty of other things took my time away from mud'ing... About that same time I was also re-porting my brother's and my recreation of Metroid from DOS to BeOS. So many projects started... so few completed...

ahh, what fond memories..

..dane

[Tawmis]

I've heard of almost everyone (except for Air Warrior and Habitat), but I never played any of them.

Amazing! I haven't heard of: MAZE WAR, AIR WARRIOR, HABITAT or MERIDIAN 59!

My first exposure to MMOs was 'Snipes' (created in 1983) - while not technically being 'on-line', it was a multi-user game in a networked environment.
You can check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipes

Pretty cool. Amazing what they could do even back in 1983.

I remember how excited I was when we got several BBS's back in the day to actually share messages by Net packages. I even had my own that I made called WolfNet.

I briefly tried AOL's earlier version NWN, but it bored me.

No doubt because it used D&D Rules! (I am not kidding, it did!)

I've got TONS of UO stories about what my brother and I did on it years ago. Maia's heard some of them and I truly believe she wishes she hadn't.

Ah, so now something becomes more clear... Did you enjoy UO? Because I despised it. I bought it day 1 it came out, because I loved ULTIMA (the regular games, especially the last few VII, Serpent Isle, etc). But UO was a huge disappointment to me. It was cumbersome. It wasn't very clear. No one was helpful. Everyone I encountered was a jerkoff. My favorite UO memory? Dying and opting to take up the ghost form and going into the bank, and attempting to move people's items off the counter, behind the bank's table (which people could not jump behind to get again). Yeah, one good turn deserved another.

I believe I lasted 2 months on UO before I dropped it.

I noticed you didn't include Asheron's Call. AC was released in 1999 and somewhat unsuccessfully took on both UO and EQ. I said "somewhat" because it didn't flop, but it never reached the same numbers or publicity that the other two did.

There was ONE thing that AC did better than any other MMO I've seen since and that's co-operation. Yeah, I know people can form guilds and so forth in current MMOs, but in AC, the game itself rewarded you for co-operating and helping others, using something called the "Alliegence" system.

Here's Wikipedia's description of AC's "Allegiance" system:

"Asheron's Call features a unique allegiance and fealty system that creates formal links between players and rewards cooperative play. A player of a lower level can swear allegiance to a player of a higher level, becoming a vassal of a patron. The patron earns a small percentage of the experience the vassal makes, while the vassal is motivated to seek a patron exchange for money, items, or protection. In the words of one reviewer: "At worst, the allegiance system is a multilevel marketing scheme, whereby greedy, uncaring Patrons enlist as many Vassals as possible in order to gain large amounts of bonus experience. But at best, the allegiance system can provide a tightly knit companionship for players genuinely interested in helping others and developing an organized assembly." Players may also join together in fellowships, temporarily splitting the experience they gain amongst themselves."

To be clear, I didn't pull this list myself. Found it on a site, and found it interesting enough to post over here.

There were several other MMOs out there, along the lines of Asheron's Call. Anarchy Online, Matrix Online, Lineage, Dark Age of Camelot (which a lot of people who played EverQuest briefly jumped to), EVE Online, - er, actually - Google gave me a Wiki Site with a massive list! (A ton of which I have NEVER heard of!)

Back in the mid 90's I would dialup to the local university, use some hacked accounts to get in and telnet to a MUD somewhere either in the northeast or the west coast, I can't recall.. It was a MUD that allowed you to script your own items and actions, so I worked a while on a star trek holodeck based room ... got a few things working, but plenty of other things took my time away from mud'ing... About that same time I was also re-porting my brother's and my recreation of Metroid from DOS to BeOS. So many projects started... so few completed...
ahh, what fond memories..
..dane

I used to play in an ElfQuest MUSH/MUD back in the day, myself...

[DeadPoolX]

I've heard of almost everyone (except for Air Warrior and Habitat), but I never played any of them.

Amazing! I haven't heard of: MAZE WAR, AIR WARRIOR, HABITAT or MERIDIAN 59!

I don't remember HOW we got Meridian 59, but I very distinctly remember Air Warrior on GEnie. GEnie was around during the Prodigy/CompuServe/AOL days. Out of all of them, I think GEnie was the least visually-based, which made AW an odd duck on its servers.

I think you all know I'm a die-hard Flight Sim gamer. I've played the toughest, most complex Flight Sims available (I actually thought Falcon 3.0 and Falcon 4.0 were easy!) and I felt AW was way too complicated. I think AW was developed that way so it'd take hours upon hours to learn thereby spending a ton of cash in the process.

I briefly tried AOL's earlier version NWN, but it bored me.

No doubt because it used D&D Rules! (I am not kidding, it did!)

Actually, it was simply the visual style.

I've got TONS of UO stories about what my brother and I did on it years ago. Maia's heard some of them and I truly believe she wishes she hadn't.

Ah, so now something becomes more clear... Did you enjoy UO? Because I despised it. I bought it day 1 it came out, because I loved ULTIMA (the regular games, especially the last few VII, Serpent Isle, etc). But UO was a huge disappointment to me. It was cumbersome. It wasn't very clear. No one was helpful. Everyone I encountered was a jerkoff. My favorite UO memory? Dying and opting to take up the ghost form and going into the bank, and attempting to move people's items off the counter, behind the bank's table (which people could not jump behind to get again). Yeah, one good turn deserved another.

I believe I lasted 2 months on UO before I dropped it.

I think your mistake was to play UO like a decent human being.

You don't play UO to be a hero or an adventurer or anything remotely normal. No, you play UO to be a criminal and like the rest of your misanthropic peers, do the absolute worst things possible to others.

My brother and I joined in on this after dying several times trying to play the game "the right way." Looking back, the most fun we ever had was being criminally insane on there.

As I said before, I have LOTS of stories, ranging from cannibalism to selling human organs on the black market to cross-dressing hookers. Ah, good times.

[Tawmis]

As I said before, I have LOTS of stories, ranging from cannibalism to selling human organs on the black market to cross-dressing hookers. Ah, good times.

Is it weird that the Cross Dressing Hookers was the most disturbing part for me?

[DeadPoolX]

As I said before, I have LOTS of stories, ranging from cannibalism to selling human organs on the black market to cross-dressing hookers. Ah, good times.

Is it weird that the Cross Dressing Hookers was the most disturbing part for me?

Well, they tasted the same as everyone else after cooking them.

[Omni]

All this talk of early MMOs and the Sierra MMO is looked over? Sad Sad Day...

[DeadPoolX]

All this talk of early MMOs and the Sierra MMO is looked over? Sad Sad Day...

You mean The Realm? My brother and I played the free trial. We got banned in little under an hour.

[Tawmis]

All this talk of early MMOs and the Sierra MMO is looked over? Sad Sad Day...

Oh, I didn't forget - there's just so many (of the ones I listed personally) - but that list originally (with the pictures) was not done by me. It was from a website. Mary, who wrote that Graduate Article that I posted here - her uncle played THE REALM extensively, and I believe he still does, on some server (much like INN's server, where it's someone just running a personal server).

[AndreaDraco]

I've heard of almost everyone (except for Air Warrior and Habitat), but I never played any of them.

Amazing! I haven't heard of: MAZE WAR, AIR WARRIOR, HABITAT or MERIDIAN 59!

There was a special issue of a PC magazine not too long ago, entirely dedicated to fantasy RPGs and MMOs. That's why I know at least their names

[DeadPoolX]

By far the most disturbing MMO is a game called Sociolotron. It's a self-described "adult" MMO, which has plenty of normal RPG game play, but also includes stuff you'd NEVER see in a commercially sold game.

For a good idea what this game is really about, check out it's online manual.

One word of warning: This game and it's manual are NSFW.

[Tawmis]

So, kind of ironic... the wife gets this email...

So I go and check - and I see in my old email, I got the one for my account.

So after testing it out and getting it fixed - I was able to log into EverQuest for the first time since 2005.

Talk about being lost. I used to have the majority of the zones I played in MEMORIZED. I could close my eyes and get where I needed to go.

So... I log in each character to see where they are... and not one - not a single one do I remember where they are. Did the same for the wife's account to see where all her characters are. I know OF the areas they're in; just can't remember how to get where ever I needed to go. They also combined servers, obviously after the mass departure when EverQuest II (which is now free to play) and World of Warcraft came out. And even then there was about 300 people on the server, total, from what I am able to figure out. (The entire interface is COMPLETELY different from how it used to be). Areas that were OVER POPULATED with players were now echoing my foot steps. Very strange.