The history of massively multiplayer online games spans over thirty years and hundreds of massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) titles. The origin and influence on MMO games stems from MUDs, online RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and earlier social games.
Early Multiplayer Online Games The first virtual worlds In 1974, 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. 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; however, 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.
Adventure, created in 1975 by Will Crowther on a DEC PDP-10 computer, was the first widely played adventure game. The game was significantly expanded in 1976 by Don Woods. Adventure contained many D&D features and references, including a computer controlled dungeon master.
Inspired by Adventure, a group of students at MIT, in the summer of 1977 wrote a game called Zork for the PDP-10. It became quite popular on the ARPANET. Zork was ported under the name Dungeon to FORTRAN by a programmer working at DEC in 1978.
In 1978 Roy Trubshaw, a student at Essex University in the UK, started working on a multi-user adventure game in the MACRO-10 assembly language for a DEC PDP-10. He named the game MUD (Multi-User Dungeon), in tribute to the Dungeon variant of Zork, which Trubshaw had greatly enjoyed playing. Trubshaw converted MUD to BCPL (the predecessor of C), before handing over development to Richard Bartle, a fellow student at Essex University, in 1980.
MUD, better known as Essex MUD and MUD1 in later years, ran on the Essex University network until late 1987.
The popularity of MUDs of the Essex University tradition escalated in the USA during the 1980s when affordable personal computers with 300 to 2400 bit/s modems enabled role-players to log into multi-line Bulletin Board Systems and online service providers such as CompuServe. During this time it was sometimes said that MUD stands for "Multi Undergraduate Destroyer" due to their popularity among college students and the amount of time devoted to them.
In 1987, Nihon Falcom's Yoshio Kiya, creator of the Dragon Slayer action role-playing games, expressed his idea for an online RPG "with a system that allows total freedom for the player. For example, despite it being a sword and sorcery world, the hero decides to do nothing and just quietly enjoy his life as a local baker in town. If everyone could take up different roles in some kind of computer networked game, I think it would be really fun."Yoshio Kiya – 1987 Developer Interview
In 1989, Yehuda Simmons published Avalon: The Legend Lives which has seen continued development and support ever since. Avalon, while not the first MUD, set the bar for imitators, with never-before-seen features such as an in-depth economic system, farming and labour mechanics, player-driven autonomous governments with ministers, barons and organization elections, a warfare conquest system featuring legions, battalions, trenches, minefields, barricades and fortifications, as well as thousands of unique player abilities and skills which formed the basis of Avalon's meritocratic PVP system based on skill-worth as opposed to the traditional level-based progression system favoured by many other games of this genre. Avalon's mission statement was to be the first fully developed roleplaying world - a life within a life using real-world systems to fully immerse players into the lives of the characters they created.
Many MUDs are still active and a number of influential MMORPG designers, such as Raph Koster, Brad McQuaid, Matt Firor, Mark Jacobs, Brian Green, and J. Todd Coleman, began as MUD developers and/or players. The history of MMORPGs grows directly out of the history of MUDs.
PLATO Meanwhile, the PLATO 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.
Oubliette, written by Jim Schwaiger, and published on the PLATO system predated MUD1 by about a year. It was so difficult that one could not play it alone: in order for players to survive, they had to run in groups. While Oubliette was a multi-player game, there was no persistence to the game world. Following it, also on PLATO, was a game called Moria written in 1975Moria (1975 video game), copyright 1978. Again, players could run in parties but in this game it was also possible to effectively play while only running one character.
Another early PLATO game was Avatar, begun around 1977 and opened in 1979, written by Bruce Maggs, Andrew Shapira, and Dave Sides, all high school students using the PLATO system at the University of Illinois. This 2.5-D game was running on 512×512 plasma panels of the PLATO system, and groups of up to 15 players could enter the dungeon simultaneously and fight monsters as a team.
These games were graphical in nature and very advanced for their time, but were proprietary programs that were unable to spread beyond PLATO. Textual worlds, which typically ran on Unix, VMS, or DOS, were far more accessible to the public.
Early commercial development
The first commercial MMORPG (although what constitutes "massive" requires qualification when discussing mid-1980s mainframes) was Island of Kesmai designed by Kelton Flinn and John Taylor. This roguelike game became available in 1985 for $12.00 per hour via the CompuServe online service and supported up to one hundred players.
In early 1985, one of the first graphical online services (beaten to status as the first by Commodore's PlayNET by a matter of months) was Games Computers Play (GCP), a dial-in service for Atari 8-bit computers based in York, Pennsylvania. Users dialed in 300-baud or 1200-baud modem, and moved their avatar around an isometric virtual mallscape via joystick. They could chat privately and in virtual group chat rooms, exchange mail, and play several online multiplayer games by traveling to different doors. Most notably, one of these games, Lords of Space, was the first commercial graphical MMO, and featured a persistent universe in which an unlimited number of players traveled in armed spaceships, exploring planets to build facilities on and exploit for resources, which could in turn be sold to buy new ships and upgrade their ships' equipment. Players could run into each other and engage in combat. GCP was also notable for actively advertising the use of its text-chat rooms as a vehicle for playing remote role-playing game sessions.
Lucasfilm's Habitat was an early and technologically influential online role-playing game developed by Lucasfilm Games and made available as a beta test in 1986 by Quantum Link, an online service for the Commodore 64 computer and the corporate progenitor to America Online. It was initially created in 1985 by Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar, who were given a "First Penguin Award" at the 2001 Game Developers Choice Awards for this innovative work, and was the first attempt at a large-scale commercial virtual community (Morningstar and Farmer 1990; Robinett 1994) that was graphically based. It ran from 1986 to 1988, after which it was closed down at the end of the pilot run. A sized-down incarnation but with vastly improved graphics (avatars became equipped with facial expressions, for example) was launched for general release as Club Caribe in January 1988.
The first graphical MMORPG (initially referred to as a Multi-user Dungeon (MUD)) was Neverwinter Nights by designer Don Daglow and programmer Cathryn Mataga (not to be confused with Neverwinter Nights by BioWare). "Neverwinter Nights" went live on AOL for PC owners in 1991 and ran through 1997. This project was personally championed and green-lighted by AOL President Steve Case. Both Club Caribe and Neverwinter Nights cost $6.00 per hour to play.
During the early-1990s, commercial use of the internet was limited by NSFNET acceptable use policies. Consequently, early online games like Legends of Future Past, Neverwinter Nights, Gemstone III, Dragon's Gate, and Federation relied heavily on proprietary services such as CompuServe, America Online, and GEnie for distribution.
Air Warrior was an early multiplayer game as players could battle each other flying virtual fighter planes. The game was first introduced in 1986 and ran on the GEnie network. In 1993 the game was revised to run over the internet.
Following Neverwinter Nights was The Shadow of Yserbius, an MMORPG on The Sierra Network (TSN), which ran from 1992 through 1996. The game was produced by Joe Ybarra. The Shadow of Yserbius was an hourly service, although it also offered unlimited service for $119.99 per month, until AT&T acquired TSN and rendered it strictly an hourly service. The name was then changed from TSN to the ImagiNation Network.
Commercial MMORPGs on the Internet
As NSFNET restrictions were relaxed, traditional game companies and online services began deploying games on the internet. The first commercial text-based MMORPG to make this transition to the Internet from a proprietary network provider (CompuServe, in this case) was Legends of Future Past. Legends was also notable for being one of the first titles to have featured professional Game Masters who conducted online events.Chris Lombardi (1992), "Legends in their Own Minds," Computer Gaming World, http://static.filefront.com/cgw/1992_08_issue97.pdf
The term MMORPG was coined by Richard Garriott, the creator of Ultima Online, in 1997. Prior to this, graphical online games were known as graphical MUDs or gMUDs. The term probably derives from "MMOG", which can be traced back to the 1995 E3 Convention, when Dale Addink used it to describe Confirmed Kill.
The Realm Online was another successful early Internet MMORPG, launched by Sierra Online. Although released just after Meridian 59, the beta was active several months before. The Realm Online had fully animated 2D graphics, both in and out of combat situations, which made it accessible to a wider audience compared to more text-based games or the graphical MUDs on which it was based. Also, its gameplay and interface were already familiar to those accustomed to the graphical adventure games earlier popularised by Sierra. Like many of its predecessors, The Realm Online only featured simple turn-based combat. However, it did feature a huge number (for the time) of visual character customization options. It, too, is still running.
Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds, whose beta was released to Korean audiences in 1996 was one of the first MMORPGs. It is still an active game today with over 1000 subscribers.
Meridian 59, launched by 3DO in late 1996, was one of the first Internet MMORPGs. It was one of the first Internet games from a major publisher, one of the first to be covered in the major game magazines and the first MMPOG to introduce the flat monthly subscription fee. Perhaps most significantly, was its 3D engine, allowing players to experience the game world through the eyes of their characters. A cult following quickly grew for Meridian 59 that still exists today.
Tibia, launched by CipSoft in January 1997, started out as a hobby project by four students. The game's graphics have stayed largely the same with a 2D top-down perspective. Tibia predates many of the tropes popularized by World of Warcraft and is known for its depth, mysteries and secrets. The game is notable for its hardcore leveling curve with harsh death penalties. It still receives updates and is most popular in Poland and Brazil.