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First ever MMO
RobUey
Member Posts: 34
since im only 16, i wasnt around in the 'old days', and am part of the next generation in gaming, so i dont no, what was the first MMO? ive heard alot bout UO and EQ1 being quite early, was it a gradual evolution from MUDs to MMOs or was there a definitive game that revolutionised it all? if it was the later, when was it made?
Just curious is all ^_^
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Comments
The first real graphical mmorpg was Ultima online, and if it was released today with better graphics people would lap it up.
No levels, Skill based
Huge crafting lists
Player houses
Fishing mining and lumber cutting.
It feel out to EQ1 due to it being 2D but it was released first.
Actually the very first Mmorpg id Meridian 59. a product from 3DO (famous for their might and magic franchise). it was a commercial failure sadly.
So, yeah, UO was the very first mmorpg to do commercial success. EQ1 followed. Still, EQ1 had more a success than UO, probably because it was basically a diku MUD with 3d graphic.
Eh yeah, while UO was quite the experiment (complete interaction with the world's item, ability to have houses and free pvp, factioned even.), EQ1 might have been a surprise for the main stream public, but anybody that ever played a diku mud (most used mud code ever i think) felt right at home.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
I will disagree with Volkmar on this one. It seems to me that UO and EQ made big strides in mmo gaming and EQ does look better and it did take more lives Ultima. But sadly EQ was a bigger hit but I think UO is a better game alround
Just typing...... Mmmmkay
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I must not fear, fear is the mind killer.
Fear is the little death that leads to obliteration, I must permit fear to pass over me and through me.
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The original model of UO's Justice system (free, open PvP) is still the watermark of all PvP gaming today. Also, their housing model is still one of the most compared-to models around. UO also used a classless, skill-based system that is also highly referred to. The concept of recalling all over the world has been reviled and beloved by many, and no game to date has used a similar system. Item degradation, a player-run economy, and spell reagents (all not new concepts to MUDs) were done reasonably well in UO and rarely improved upon by other MMOGs.
All of these are major gameplay concepts that UO brought to the masses. Even if they didn't invent them, UO has left a lasting mark on the MMOG community.
But EverQuest must get the main prize as being the model of MMOG. Nearly every game on the market today seems reminiscent of EQ, and a vast majority of them are labeled EQ clones. Camping was practically invented in the game. The term for gaining a level, "ding", comes from the sound effect in EQ. Raiding is a masterwork in EQ. The term for unique monsters, "named", was made ubiquitous through the game. The list goes on.
Primarily, EQ was the first fully-3D MMOG that came to market. It was a good game, though deeply flawed with many problems at the time (and arguably still is today). Hundreds of thousands of players cut their teeth on the game...and still do today (it still claims to maintain nearly a half-million subscribers). EverQuest is mentioned in the news, and is still what new MMOG companies and/or new releases from veteran companies compares their marketing and revenue models to.
All that may change in the future, but it's still true today.
I'd have to agree with the others and say EQ and UO really begin the era of MMO's, even if they weren't the first. Both games had very different styles, but you don't see as many UO type games as you do EQ. This is probably due to the larger success EQ had so most companies chose to follow in its footsteps.
Oddly enough I'm only 16 also, though I got EQ a few months after it came out. Heh I remeber being to shy to talk to anyone so I hid in corners and solo'd with my mage. Probably not the best thing for a 10 year old to be doing on reflection.
I started in UO, moved to EQ, then Anarchy Online, then Galaxies, and lastly EQ2.
Each had it's good and Bad.
UO
Good-None level based advancement, interesting crafting tree (less ultra-rare drops to find), housing system was best ever.
Bad- Graphics. Plain and Simple. I wish UO could have updated them, but EQ made UO "Look" terrible. It was a relatively small world too. Without "Zoning", it was hard to add real new areas. Also, none leveling skill systems run into the "I maxed my combat skills, now I am invincible and bored" syndrome. Small selection of weapons and Skills, expecially small Spell Set.
EQ
Good-Graphics. Large world, with complex (Overly so in some cases) crafting. Large selection of weapons, armor, spells.
Bad-Quickly became a Rodent Wheel chase for that next level or the next slightly better item then you just got. Quick leveling early on hooks ya, trying to reach some of the powerful spells/weapons/items keeps ya, but eventually you realize there will ALWAYS be another level to get. The term "Time Sink" was born here. I personally disliked having to camp some "Brigand" spawn to get his TOOTH to combine with other weird items to make my class armor. A Brigands TOOTH! Come on! LOL
Anarchy Online
Good-Unique concept, no more Orcs and Trolls. Classes were vaguely familiar (Nano as Magic), but different enough to be a refreshing change. Graphics were good too.
Bad-Before long you realize that as you level you keep having to upgrade to new weapons, creating the same EQ Quest thing, get item, imediately begin quest for next item to replace item you just spent 3 days getting. Rodent Treadmill again.
Star Wars Galaxies (I was in Beta for game and JTL, so I was there from the start)
Good-Stunning visually. Large selection of classes in a Tree based system. Absolute best crafting system I have ever seen!
Bad-Great for a while, but eventually you Master a series of Professions and have nothing new to do. PvP was ruined by Jedi, and Dev's not understanding PvP beyond the numbers (Cracked down on Rebels because our "Numbers were too high", but never realized that most Rebels are Rebels in name only. Completely imbalancing the Game.) Imperials get AT-ST's, Rebels get......Nothing, hehe. Sure, most of this was fixed eventually, but by then it had lost the flavor.
IMO Jedi completely ruined the game. Jedi ruled PvP, the rest of us became fodder. Besides, the system to get a Jedi favored grinders and Ubers. Jedi became as common as Jawas on Tatooine, completely out of sync with the time-line.
Galaxies tried real hard, and came real close to perfect. IMO they went wrong early by completely misunderstanding what was happening inside their own game. ie Bounty Hunters were supposed to hunt Jedi and keep numbers down through perma-death. Jedi didn't show up till a year in, BHs useless all that time. Then when Jedi come in, Jedi are allowed to Level unmolested to "Test the Jedi System". Then BH can hunt Jedi, but no upgrades are made to BH's, so almost impossible to kill one. The Jedi screamed about Perma-Death, and they got rid of that for a XP loss System. BOOOOOM! Jedi population exploded and BH's became rarer then the Jedi they were supposed to hunt, pointless.
The other example is the "Crackdown" mentioned above. They realized that 70% or whatever of Factioned players were Rebels, poor Imperials right? So, they created random Imperial patrols hunting us etc etc. What the Devs didn't realize is that most Rebel players didn't PvP most of the time, many didn't PvP at all! They were really PvEers who wanted the Rebel Tag. What was already a hard fight for the Rebels shifted, and PvP became less and less popular, atleast in my circle.
Every class screamed for months and months about needing a Combat Rebalance, instead they went through tweek after tweek of Jedi for months and months more, ignoring glaring problems with almost every other class. In all the time I played Droid Engineer was never able to make anything other then mobile crafting type droids, and droids for the few BH characters. Boring!
EQ2
Personally, I hated it. had all the problems of EQ, but none of the good. Graphics were ok, but had a Cartoon feel. hated the treadmill starter quests forcing me to jump through hoops for first few hours or days just to get my class! More unnecasarily complex crafting and collection of materials. Time Sink. Just find a mob, click the buttons, collect reward, repeat till you fall asleep, hehe.
Rage/Enos
Before you can way what the 'first' MMO was you need to give a clear definition to what an MMO is. Taken literally, MMO stands for "massively multiplayer online" (role playing game in the case of MMORPG.
What constitutes "massively"? is 100 people massive? or 500? or 1000? Multiplayer would denote more than one person and online would say that the game is played over a network. It doesn't say anything about the game being graphical. MUDs -- which are text-based worlds with typically hundreds of users have been around since the 1970s. If you only want to consider graphical games, one could say that the original neverwinter nights that was on AOL as the original MMO. It was graphical, it was a persistent world, and it allowed 500 concurrent users.
Meridian 59 predates UO by a number of months. They both launched in 1997. If you want to further classify the "first" MMO as a large commercial success, then you might say that UO was the first MMO with its 200k+ userbase.
So it really boils down to definition of terms. Unfortunately the acronym MMORPG is somewhat vague. I would say it like this:
First MMO: MUD1
First graphical MMO: neverwinter nights on AOL
First large-scale commercial success: UO
www.TheChippedDagger.com My 90-day 2D Java MMORPG project
They that can give up essential liberty for temporary safetey deserve neither. -- Ben Franklin
If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. -- Milton Berle
actually, the first graphical mmorpg, was original nwn
oNWN
i've got to agree with jayheld.
the first ever graphical mmorpg was original neverwinter nigts which ran on aol from 1991-1996.
if you don't believe me, check out this onwn nostalgia page noobs.
www.bladekeep.com/nwn
i meant UO was first as came out before EQ, not that it was a better success than EQ.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
Before EQdead, I played a MMOG called "Realm" which was released and operated by the original Sierra, before they were sold to the French.
Not sure if that was prior to UO or not. It was a 2d graphical 3rd person view game on a single server with a couple thousand subscribers. They had some innovative ideas like instancing of dungeons, personal houses, enchanting of weapons.
One of the funnest classes to play was a thief, and being able to sneak into people's houses if you we're really good at it.
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Brad McQuaid
Chairman & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Executive Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
www.vanguardsoh
Nice site, hadn't known about ONWN before. But people will always argue how many players constitutes "massive". Would I be correct in saying UO was the first to have 100,000 players?
-In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on Aug/13/08-
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RISING DRAGOON ~AION US ONLINE LEGION for Elyos
1st Generation MMORPGs:
Meridian 59, The Realm Online.... The major ones which took full advantage of the then current technolgy.
2nd Generation MMORPGs:
Ultima Online....The major ones which took full advantage of the then current technolgy.And any other lesser known MMORPGs around this era.
3rd Generation MMORPGs:
Everquest, Asheron's Call....The major ones which took full advantage of the then current technolgy.
And any lesser known MMORPGs around this era.
4th Generation MMORPGs:
Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot, and many others....The major ones which took full advantage of the then current technolgy.
And any lesser known MMORPGs around this era.
5th Generation MMORPGs:
Asheron's Call 2 (an unofficial failure. Being kept on life support by profits from AC1), Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest 2, Lineage 2, World of Warcraft.... The major ones which took full advantage of the then current technolgy. And any lesser known MMORPGs around this era.
About the definition of MMORPG aka Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game:
Raph Koster, the formost MMORPG game maker on the planet (
) commented on this in many interviews. On the old SWG forums, in magazine articles, and on online game sites. He brought attention to what constitutes "massive"? Basically there has to be enough players in the game world so that each player gets the feeling they are playing in a world, interacting with many people. AKA there has to be enough player that one can "get lost" IF one wished to.
Is 10 players massive? No. 20? 50? 100? Raph pegged roughly around 500 would be enough to be blatantly past the line of massive. He mentioned online games made available through a service called GeNie in the days right before the Internet was allowed to be widly accessed by the public. (It was in 1994 that Bush Sr. signed the legislation.) Those online GeNie game worlds would have upwards of 100 players online at the same time. Raph leaned towards Meridian 59 as being the officially first MMORPG. It had hundreds of players to feel "massive". It was graphical. It fit the definition of every letter in "mmorpg".
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Some NICE reading material on MMORPGs:
http://www.legendmud.org/raph/
Click "gaming" then "essays".
Original neverwinter nights ran on AOL from 1991-1997. It was a graphical mmorpg, the first of it's kind. Over the years oNWN was upgraded to hold a max of 500 players. Meets the requirement of the previous post. Not only were there 500 in the game at all times but hundreds others waiting for players to leave so they could take their places. oNWN was also the origin of guilds in online gaming. GOC Guild of Chaos was formed in 1992 soon to be followed by COR and others. The oldest and most noted guilds were formed in oNWN. oNWN also was the best strategic PvP game to date. A turn based game with a top view of the battle field. Was a very complicated and challenging PvP setup.
Meridian 59...that didn't come out till '96. Ultima Online shortly after. I know this because when they shut the doors to oNWN that's where all the players went.
In my opinion oNWN was not only the first mmorpg ever but the best also. Graphics sucked but it didn't matter. The premise behind the game was great and the role-play was top notch. There was a level limit, which kept the playing field equal in PvP and since it was turn based there was a lot of thought involved.
READ ABOUT IT FOR YOURSELF www.bladekeep.com/nwn/index2.htm
And by the way..oNWN has been recreated by Electronic Concepts
The game is in alpha testing now and can be found at www.forgottenworld.com
If you can deal with the old school graphics (no sound yet either) I think you all would really enjoy this game.