History of massively multiplayer online games
Encyclopedia
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 MMOG games stems from MUD
s, Dungeons and Dragons and earlier social games.
, 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.
Adventure
, created in 1975 by Will Crowther on a DEC
PDP-10
computer, was the first widely used 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.
Many MUD
s 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.
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 1977, 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 512x512 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.
s) was Island of Kesmai designed by Kelton Flinn
and John Taylor. Still roguelike
, this game became available in 1985 for $12.00 per hour via the CompuServe
online service and supported up to one hundred players.
The first graphical character-based interactive environment, though not actually an RPG, was Club Caribe
. Although first released as Habitat
in 1988, Club Caribe was introduced by LucasArts
for Q-Link
customers on their Commodore 64
computers. Users could interact with one another, chat and exchange items. Although very basic, its use of online avatars
(already well established off-line by Ultima and other games) and combining chat
and graphics was revolutionary.
The first graphical MMORPG 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
.
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.
The term MMORPG was coined by Richard Garriott
, the creator of Ultima Online
, in 1997. The term probably derives from "MMOG", which can be traced back to the 1993 E3 Convention, when Dale Addink
used it to describe the AirWarrior franchise.
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. Not only that, but 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 game from a major publisher, the one of 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.
Ultima Online
, released in September 1997, is now credited with popularizing the genre. It featured 3D isometric
/third-person graphics, and was set in the already popular Ultima universe. It was also a more involved, complex game than many of its predecessors.
Two years after Ultima Online
, The Fourth Coming
was released, an MMORPG in 3D isometric
. It was launched in France under the name La 4ème Prophétie and contributed to spread the MMORPG culture in Europe as one of the first graphical MMORPG. It became very popular through the website GOA until its close in 2001. This MMORPG featured a unique communication system. The game has lost its popularity, however it is still a subject of nostalgia for its old players and some servers continue to host players.
Meanwhile, commercial online gaming was becoming extraordinarily popular in South Korea
. Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds
, designed by Jake Song
, was commercially released in 1996 and eventually gained over one million subscribers. Song's next game, Lineage
(1998), enjoyed even greater success gaining millions of subscribers in Korea and Taiwan
. This helped to secure developer NCsoft
's dominance in the global MMORPG market for several years.
NCSoft has released Lineage 2, City of Heroes
, Guild Wars
, Exteel
, and Aion: The Tower of Eternity. And titles like Blade & Soul
and Guild Wars 2
are expected to be released in late 2011 to early 2012.
EverQuest
, launched in March 1999 by Verant Interactive (later acquired by Sony Online Entertainment
), brought fantasy MMORPGs into the Western mainstream. It was the most commercially successful MMORPG in the United States
for five years, and was the basis for 16 expansions (as of December 2009) and several derivative games.
In 1999, following Ultima Online and EverQuest, was another hit, Asheron's Call
. Together, these three games are sometimes referred to as the original "big three" of the late 1990s.
s expanded into new video game genres around this time, though RPGs, with their ability to "suck in" the player, were (and still are) the most financially promising.
The next generation of MMORPGs, following the "big three" of the previous decade, was to include the medieval PvP
-oriented Dark Age of Camelot
, the sci-fi Anarchy Online
, and Ultima Online 2
. Anarchy Online, released first in June 2001, was saddled with crippling technical problems upon its release, mostly due to an inability to handle the huge playerbase. Dark Age of Camelot launched smoothly four months later, introducing "Realm vs. Realm" PvP
and other innovations, and quickly passed Ultima Online and Asheron's Call in popularity, and became EverQuest 's main rival. Ultima Online 2 was cancelled by Electronic Arts
in March 2001, as they had decided that the market was becoming saturated and that it would be more profitable to divert resources to the original Ultima Online. RuneScape
by Jagex was also released in 2001. 2001 also saw MMORPGs move off of PCs and onto home consoles in a limited form with the release of Phantasy Star Online
; however, due to platform limitations, it would not be until Final Fantasy XI
s release that 'massive' features found their way outside of non-combat areas on consoles.
In 2002 the sprite-based Ragnarok Online
, produced by Korean company Gravity Corp, was released. Though unknown to many Western players, the game took Asia by storm as Lineage had done. The publisher has claimed in excess of 25 million subscribers of the game, although this number is based upon a quantity of registered users (rather than active subscribers). 2002 also saw the release of MapleStory
, another sprite-based title, which was completely free-to-play
- instead of charging a monthly fee, it generated revenue by selling in-game "enhancements". MapleStory would go on to become a major player in the new market for free-to-play MMORPGs (generating huge numbers of registered accounts across its many versions), if it did not introduce the market by itself.
In September 2002, Earth & Beyond
was released. Having been in development since 1997, this was the first 3D sci-fi space-ship based MMORPG. Earth and Beyond only lasted two years before being shut down by developer Westwood Studios
' owners, Electronic Arts
.
In November 2002, Final Fantasy XI
by Square-Enix became the first MMOG to provide clients for different platforms using a single set of servers, in addition to being the first 'true' MMOG to appear on a video game console
due to its initial release in Japan in May of the same year on the PlayStation 2
. It would go on to provide a client for a third platform, the Xbox 360
, in 2006.
In March 2003, Ubisoft
launched their first MMORPG: Shadowbane
. Shadowbane was notable for featuring no quests, and instead relying on player warfare to provide immersion. To support this goal it featured player-built, player-owned, and player-razed cities and capitals, and a system for player government.
Also in March 2003 Sony Online Entertainment
launched EverQuest Online Adventures
, a Playstation 2
spin-off of the successful EverQuest
MMO. This game is only accessible to Playstation 2 players and it's still running.
May 2003 saw the release of Eve Online
, produced by Crowd Control Productions, which had players taking the role of spaceship pilots and had gameplay similar to the series Star Control
. Though not the first space MMO (Microsoft Allegiance was the first space MMO and was released in 1999), Eve was able to achieve lasting success. One of the reasons for its success may have been the game's design, in which all subscribers play in one shared universe as a result the natural partitioning of the game universe into solar systems connected by stargates. This partitioning allows the world to be divided up in such a way that one or more solar systems run on different servers, while still maintaining a single coherent world.
In October 2003, Lineage II
(NCsoft's sequel to Lineage) became the latest MMORPG to achieve huge success across Asia. It received the Presidential Award at the 2003 Korean Game awards, and is now the second most popular MMORPG in the world. As of the first half of 2005 Lineage II counted over 2.25 million subscribers worldwide, with servers in Japan, China, North America, Taiwan, and Europe, once the popularity of the game had surged in the West.
2003 also saw the appearance of Second Life
. While not primarily a role playing game, it is clearly multiplayer and online, and it is used as a platform where people construct role playing games based on Gor, Star Trek, vampires, and other genres.
In April 2004, NCSoft produced another significant title, City of Heroes
. It introduced several major innovations in gameplay and also featured an extreme number of possible visual character appearances, and its comic-book superhero
theme made it stand out.
's EverQuest II
and Blizzard Entertainment's
World of Warcraft
(WoW). At the time, Sony expected to dominate the market, based on the success of the first EverQuest, and decided to offer a flat monthly rate to play all of their MMORPGs including EverQuest, EverQuest II, and Star Wars Galaxies
, to keep from competing with itself. While EverQuest II was a commercial success as predicted, World of Warcraft immediately overtook all of these games upon release, and indeed became so popular that it dwarfed all previous monthly-fee MMORPGs. At present, WoW
is one of the most played games in North America, and the most subscribed to MMORPG worldwide, with a total of over 12 million customers. The closest MMORPG to World of Warcraft is in terms of paying subscribers is RuneScape
with more than one million subscribers and even more free players. RuneScape is also the world's largest free MMORPG, though it receives less media attention than WoW. With the release of these newer games, subscriptions began to decline for many older MMORPGs, even the year-old Lineage II
, and in particular Everquest. The current MMORPG market has World of Warcraft in a position similar to the position of Dungeons & Dragons
in the tabletop RPG market, with both games' market share being greater than 50% of the overall market.
In August 2005 Sony Online Entertainment acquired The Matrix Online
, and the game was shut down at 11:59pm, 31 July 2009. It is the first game Sony has ended.
On April 25, ArenaNet
(a subsidiary of NCSoft
) successfully launched Guild Wars
, introducing a new financial model which might have been partly responsible for the game's success. Though definitely an online RPG, and technically having a persistent world (despite most of the game's content being instanced
), it requires only a one-time purchasing fee. It was also designed to be "winnable", more or less, as developers would not profit from customers' prolonged playtime. Other differences compared to traditional MMORPGs include strictly PvP-only areas, a relatively short playtime requirement to access end-game content, instant world travel, and strategic PvP. The game is designed around the max level cap of level 20, so players will not run into the level-spreading problem when grouping. For these differences it was termed instead a "Competitive Online Role-Playing Game" (CORPG) by its developers. With five million games purchased as of April '09, Guild Wars is still continuously profitable (due to several stand-alone games) but is still not viewed by some as a serious competitor to WoW in terms of profit and number of players. However, the alternative nature of the payment system in Guild Wars means that the game does not aim to "compete" with WoW rather than exist along-side it, and in that sense it can still be considered a large success.
There has also been significant competition (and potential for profit) among free-to-play
MMORPGs. A few of the most successful of these are Silkroad Online
by the publisher Joymax
, the 3D sprite based MMORPG Flyff
by Aeonsoft, Rappelz by nFlavor, (with Aeonsoft and nFlavor merging in 2010 to become Gala Lab Corp) Perfect World
by Beijing Perfect World, the 2D scrolling MMORPG MapleStory
by Wizet
and finally the free-to-play converted Shadowbane
by Ubisoft
. Most of these games generate revenue by selling in-game "enhancements", and due to their free nature have accumulated huge numbers of registered accounts over the years, with a majority of them from East Asia.
On July 1, 2009, Ubisoft
shut down the Shadowbane
servers.
Many of the most recent big-budget contributions to the market have focused on giving players visually stunning graphics. In 2007, The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
(LOTRO) was one of the first of these to meet with commercial success, followed by the problematic 2008 launch of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
and the Player versus player
focused Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
. Much like LOTRO, many of the games in development with big expectations have multi-media tie-ins, such as Star Wars: The Old Republic
, Star Trek Online
and Stargate Worlds
.
, has gathered a respectable subscription base (NCSoft's previous titles include Guild Wars
and Lineage II
). Upcoming titles also include Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter, Star Wars: The Old Republic
, and Warhammer 40,000 Online
. Stellar Dawn
, an upcoming multiplayer sci-fi game by Jagex - the maker of RuneScape - is supposed to be a rival of WoW
: Mark Gerhard, the CEO of Jagex, has stated in an interview with Eurogamer
that he suspects that the players of Stellar Dawn are the same players who play WoW
.
On December 2010, Blizzard confirmed that they're working on Titan, a new MMO. Lastly much hype has been surrounding Guild Wars 2
which features many innovative new systems that aim to drastically alter the way people play MMORPGs. It will have the same Buy-to-play purchase model as the original.
MUD
A MUD , pronounced , is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, with the term usually referring to text-based instances of these. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat...
s, Dungeons and Dragons and earlier social 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 cableSerial cable
A serial cable is a cable that can be used to transfer information between two devices using serial communication. The form of connectors depends on the particular PHY used...
, but when one of the authors began attending MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
in 1974, the game was enhanced so that it could be played across the ARPAnet
ARPANET
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network , was the world's first operational packet switching network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet...
, forerunner of the modern Internet.
Colossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure gave its name to the computer adventure game genre . It was originally designed by Will Crowther, a programmer and caving enthusiast who based the layout on part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky...
, created in 1975 by Will Crowther on a DEC
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
PDP-10
PDP-10
The PDP-10 was a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from the late 1960s on; the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor model 10". The first model was delivered in 1966...
computer, was the first widely used adventure game
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
. The game was significantly expanded in 1976 by Don Woods. Adventure contained many D&D features and references, including a computer controlled dungeon master
Dungeon Master
In the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, the Dungeon Master is the game organizer and participant in charge of creating the details and challenges of a given adventure, while maintaining a realistic continuity of events...
.
Inspired by Adventure, a group of students at MIT, in the summer of 1977 wrote a game called Zork
Zork
Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language...
for the PDP-10. It became quite popular on the ARPANET
ARPANET
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network , was the world's first operational packet switching network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet...
. Zork was ported under the name Dungeon to FORTRAN
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
by a programmer working at DEC
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
in 1978.
In 1978 Roy Trubshaw
Roy Trubshaw
Roy Trubshaw was a programmer at the University of Essex who co-authored MUD1, the first MUD, with Richard Bartle on a DEC PDP-10. Both of them now work together at Multi-User Entertainment with Trubshaw being the company’s technical director....
, 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
BCPL
BCPL is a procedural, imperative, and structured computer programming language designed by Martin Richards of the University of Cambridge in 1966.- Design :...
(the predecessor of C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
), before handing over development to Richard Bartle
Richard Bartle
Richard Allan Bartle is a British writer, professor and game researcher, best known for being the co-creator of MUD1 and the author of the seminal Designing Virtual Worlds. He is one of the pioneers of the massively multiplayer online game industry.-Life and career:Bartle received a Ph.D...
, a fellow student at Essex University, in 1980.
MUD
MUD1
Multi-User Dungeon, or MUD is the first MUD and the oldest virtual world in existence. It was created in 1978 by Roy Trubshaw at Essex University on a DEC PDP-10 in the UK, using the MACRO-10 assembly language...
, 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
CompuServe
CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...
. 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.
Many MUD
MUD
A MUD , pronounced , is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, with the term usually referring to text-based instances of these. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat...
s are still active and a number of influential MMORPG designers, such as Raph Koster
Raph Koster
Raphael "Raph" Koster is an American entrepreneur, game designer, and author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Koster is widely recognized for his work as the lead designer of Ultima Online and the creative director behind Star Wars Galaxies...
, Brad McQuaid
Brad McQuaid
Brad McQuaid is an American computer game designer who was the key designer of EverQuest, a highly successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in 1999...
, Matt Firor
Matt Firor
Matt Firor is a well known game producer/designer of Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games . Matt is best known for his involvement in the critically acclaimed game Dark Age of Camelot for Mythic Entertainment.-Biography:...
, Mark Jacobs
Mark Jacobs (video game designer)
Mark Jacobs is the former GM/VP/CEO of Mythic Entertainment, Inc. He is one of the pioneers in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game industry, having created two early MUDs, Aradath and Dragon's Gate serving as both the designer and programmer in addition to his duties as...
, Brian Green
Brian Green (game developer)
Brian "Psychochild" Green is a game developer known for his work on the online 3D graphical RPG, Meridian 59. He worked on the game for 3DO, then co-founded Near Death Studios in 2001. He is a frequent gaming conference speaker and writes for a number of game design websites, including...
, and J. Todd Coleman
J. Todd Coleman
J. Todd Coleman is an American computer game designer who is a director of massively multiplayer online role-playing game titles. He is known for Shadowbane released in 2003 and Wizard101 released in 2008...
, 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 mainframeMainframe computer
Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...
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
Spasim
Spasim was a 32-player 3D networked computer game by Jim Bowery involving 4 planetary systems with up to 8 players per planetary system, released in March 1974...
, 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
Moria (PLATO)
Moria is a dungeon crawl style computer role-playing game first developed for the PLATO system around 1975, with copyright dates listed as 1978 and 1984...
written in 1977, 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
Avatar (computer game)
Avatar is an early graphics-based multi-user highly interactive role-playing computer game, created on the University of Illinois' Control Data Corporation PLATO system in the late 1970s. It has graphics for navigating through a dungeon, and chat style text for player status and communication with...
, 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
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
. This 2.5-D game was running on 512x512 plasma panels
Plasma display
A plasma display panel is a type of flat panel display common to large TV displays or larger. They are called "plasma" displays because the technology utilizes small cells containing electrically charged ionized gases, or what are in essence chambers more commonly known as fluorescent...
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
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
, VMS
OpenVMS
OpenVMS , previously known as VAX-11/VMS, VAX/VMS or VMS, is a computer server operating system that runs on VAX, Alpha and Itanium-based families of computers. Contrary to what its name suggests, OpenVMS is not open source software; however, the source listings are available for purchase...
, or DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
, were far more accessible to the public.
Early commercial development
The first commercial MMORPG (although what constitutes "massive" requires qualification when discussing mid-1980s mainframeMainframe computer
Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...
s) was Island of Kesmai designed by Kelton Flinn
Kelton Flinn
Kelton Flinn is an American computer game designer who is a major pioneer in online games. He is a co-founder of the seminal online game company Kesmai, which they began in 1982...
and John Taylor. Still roguelike
Roguelike
The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement. Most roguelikes feature ASCII graphics, with newer ones increasingly offering tile-based graphics. Games are typically dungeon crawls, with many...
, this game became available in 1985 for $12.00 per hour via the CompuServe
CompuServe
CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...
online service and supported up to one hundred players.
The first graphical character-based interactive environment, though not actually an RPG, was Club Caribe
Club Caribe
Club Caribe was one of the first graphical online worlds. It was available in the 1980s on the exclusively Commodore 64 online service Quantum Link. Originally available in limited release as Habitat, Club Caribe was eventually released to the public as an extension of Q-Link's "People Connection"...
. Although first released as Habitat
Habitat (video game)
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...
in 1988, Club Caribe was introduced by LucasArts
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...
for Q-Link
Quantum Link
Quantum Link was a U.S. and Canadian online service for Commodore 64 and 128 personal computers that operated from November 5, 1985 to November 1, 1995. It was operated by Quantum Computer Services of Vienna, Virginia. In October 1991 they changed the name to America Online, which continues to...
customers on their Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
computers. Users could interact with one another, chat and exchange items. Although very basic, its use of online avatars
Avatar (computing)
In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...
(already well established off-line by Ultima and other games) and combining chat
Online chat
Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, that offers an instantaneous transmission of text-based messages from sender to receiver, hence the delay for visual access to the sent message shall not hamper the flow of communications in any of the directions...
and graphics was revolutionary.
The first graphical MMORPG was Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights (AOL game)
Neverwinter Nights was the first multiplayer online role-playing game to display graphics, and ran from 1991 to 1997 on AOL.-Gameplay:Neverwinter Nights was developed to be played similarly to the Gold Box series of games...
by designer Don Daglow
Don Daglow
Don Daglow is an American computer game and video game designer, programmer and producer. He is best known for designing a series of pioneering simulation games and role-playing games, as well as the first computer baseball game and the first graphical MMORPG, all between 1971 and 1995...
and programmer Cathryn Mataga
Cathryn Mataga
-Biography:Mataga has worked on Neverwinter Nights. She was born William Mataga and at some point underwent sex reassignment surgery.- Credited games :*Grand Theft Auto Advance , Rockstar Games, Inc....
(not to be confused with Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights , produced by BioWare and published by Infogrames , is a third-person perspective computer role-playing game that is based on third edition Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms rules. It was originally to be published by Interplay Entertainment, but the publisher's financial...
by BioWare
BioWare
BioWare is a Canadian video game developer founded in February 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Augustine Yip. BioWare is currently owned by American company Electronic Arts...
). "Neverwinter Nights" went live on AOL for PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
owners in 1991 and ran through 1997. This project was personally championed and green-lighted by AOL President Steve Case
Steve Case
Stephen McConnell "Steve" Case is an American businessman best known as the co-founder and former chief executive officer and chairman of America Online . Since his retirement as chairman of AOL Time Warner in 2003, he has gone on to build a variety of new businesses through his investment...
. 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
NSFNet
The National Science Foundation Network was a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation beginning in 1985 to promote advanced research and education networking in the United States...
acceptable use policies. Consequently, early online games like Legends of Future Past
Legends of Future Past
Legends of Future Past was the first commercial text-based MMORPG to make the transition from a proprietary network provider to the Internet. It was designed by Jon Radoff and Angela Bull. . It was also notable in that it had paid Game Masters who conducted online events...
, Neverwinter Nights, GemStone III
GemStone IV
GemStone IV is a multiplayer text-based online role-playing game produced by Simutronics. Players control characters in a High Fantasy game world named "Elanthia". The first playable version of the game was known as GemStone ][ and was launched in April 1988 on GEnie...
, Dragon's Gate
Dragon's Gate
Dragon's Gate was an interactive, real time, text-based multi user online fantasy role-playing game, sometimes referred to as a MUD. It was one of the longest running pay-for-play online games in the world, it opened to the public in the spring of 1990 on GEnie. In the summer of 1996 the game was...
, and Federation relied heavily on proprietary services such as CompuServe
CompuServe
CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...
, America Online, and GEnie
GEnie
GEnie was an online service created by a General Electric business - GEIS that ran from 1985 through the end of 1999. In 1994, GEnie claimed around 350,000 users. Peak simultaneous usage was around 10,000 users...
for distribution.
Air Warrior
Air Warrior
Air Warrior was an early multiplayer on-line air-combat simulator. A player is able to fly a simulated World War II aircraft, fighting with and against other players, each flying his own simulated aircraft. It was introduced in 1986 by Kelton Flinn and his company Kesmai. At this time the internet...
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
The Shadow of Yserbius
The Shadow of Yserbius, originally published by Sierra On-Line, was the first of three graphical MUDs for the online community. Opening to rave reviews, The Shadow of Yserbius, according to industry critics, set the standard by which all future MUDs would be judged. The game was followed by two...
, an MMORPG on The Sierra Network (TSN), which ran from 1992 through 1996. The game was produced by Joe Ybarra
Joe Ybarra
Joe Ybarra is one of the original game producers at Electronic Arts in 1982 , where the concept of a game producer was created by Trip Hawkins...
. The Shadow of Yserbius was an hourly service, although it also offered unlimited service for $119.99 per month, until AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
acquired TSN and rendered it strictly an hourly service. The name was then changed from TSN to the ImagiNation Network
ImagiNation Network
The ImagiNation Network , aka The Sierra Network , was an early online multiplayer gaming system. Developed by Sierra On-Line in 1989, and first available to the public in 1991, the ImagiNation Network was a unique online gaming network that gave subscribers from all over the United States of...
.
Commercial MMORPGs on the Internet
As NSFNETNSFNet
The National Science Foundation Network was a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation beginning in 1985 to promote advanced research and education networking in the United States...
restrictions were relaxed, traditional game companies and online services began deploying games on the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. 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 of Future Past
Legends of Future Past was the first commercial text-based MMORPG to make the transition from a proprietary network provider to the Internet. It was designed by Jon Radoff and Angela Bull. . It was also notable in that it had paid Game Masters who conducted online events...
. Legends was also notable for being one of the first titles to have featured professional Game Masters who conducted online events.
The term MMORPG was coined by Richard Garriott
Richard Garriott
Richard Allen Garriott is a British-American video game developer and entrepreneur.He is also known as his alter egos Lord British in Ultima and General British in Tabula Rasa...
, the creator of Ultima Online
Ultima Online
Ultima Online is a graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game , released on September 24, 1997, by Origin Systems. It was instrumental to the development of the genre, and is still running today...
, in 1997. The term probably derives from "MMOG", which can be traced back to the 1993 E3 Convention, when Dale Addink
Aces High (computer game)
Aces High is a combat flight simulator and massively multiplayer online game for Microsoft Windows. It was created by HiTech Creations and originally released on May 8, 2000, the game is subscriber based and is constantly updated and upgraded...
used it to describe the AirWarrior franchise.
The Realm Online
The Realm Online
The Realm Online, originally known simply as The Realm, is a second generation MORPG . The Realm Online is still being played by a small number of players, and is known as one of the few MMORPGs that is still dial-up friendly and easy to play.The Realm was launched in March 1995 for Windows...
was another successful early Internet MMORPG, launched by Sierra Online
Sierra Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment Inc. was an American video-game developer and publisher founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems by Ken and Roberta Williams...
. Although released just after Meridian 59, the beta
Development stage
A software release life cycle refers to the phases of development and maturity for a piece of computer software—ranging from its initial development, to its eventual release, and updated versions of the released version to help improve software or fix bugs still present in the software.- Pre-alpha...
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
Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds
NEXUS: The Kingdom of the Winds , alternately known as Nexus TK or simply Nexus, is a Pay to Play MMORPG, currently run in the US by Kru Interactive. Nexus began as a U.S. version of the Korean game 바람의 나라 developed by NEXON Inc...
, whose beta was released to Korean audiences in 1996 was one of the first mmorpgs. Not only that, but it is still an active game today with over 1000 subscribers.
Meridian 59
Meridian 59
Meridian 59, abbreviated M59, is an online computer role-playing game first published by the now defunct 3DO Company. First launched online in an early form on December 15, 1995 and released commercially on September 27, 1996 with a flat-rate monthly subscription, Meridian 59 is often credited as...
, launched by 3DO
The 3DO Company
The 3DO Company , also known as 3DO , was a video game company...
in late 1996, was one of the first Internet MMORPGs. It was one of the first Internet game from a major publisher, the one of 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
Game engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...
, 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.
Ultima Online
Ultima Online
Ultima Online is a graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game , released on September 24, 1997, by Origin Systems. It was instrumental to the development of the genre, and is still running today...
, released in September 1997, is now credited with popularizing the genre. It featured 3D isometric
Isometric projection
Isometric projection is a method for visually representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions in technical and engineering drawings...
/third-person graphics, and was set in the already popular Ultima universe. It was also a more involved, complex game than many of its predecessors.
Two years after Ultima Online
Ultima Online
Ultima Online is a graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game , released on September 24, 1997, by Origin Systems. It was instrumental to the development of the genre, and is still running today...
, The Fourth Coming
The 4th Coming
The 4th Coming , and also known in French as La Quatrième Prophétie, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in 1999 by Vircom Interactive for Microsoft Windows...
was released, an MMORPG in 3D isometric
Isometric projection
Isometric projection is a method for visually representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions in technical and engineering drawings...
. It was launched in France under the name La 4ème Prophétie and contributed to spread the MMORPG culture in Europe as one of the first graphical MMORPG. It became very popular through the website GOA until its close in 2001. This MMORPG featured a unique communication system. The game has lost its popularity, however it is still a subject of nostalgia for its old players and some servers continue to host players.
Meanwhile, commercial online gaming was becoming extraordinarily popular in South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
. Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds
Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds
NEXUS: The Kingdom of the Winds , alternately known as Nexus TK or simply Nexus, is a Pay to Play MMORPG, currently run in the US by Kru Interactive. Nexus began as a U.S. version of the Korean game 바람의 나라 developed by NEXON Inc...
, designed by Jake Song
Jake Song
Jake Song, Korean Name Song Jae-kyeong , b. 1965 , is a South Korean programmer who is regarded as one of the greatest game developers in Korea. He played a major role in creating the MMORPG Lineage, an online game with huge following in Korea...
, was commercially released in 1996 and eventually gained over one million subscribers. Song's next game, Lineage
Lineage (computer game)
Lineage is a medieval fantasy, massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in the United States in 1998 by the South Korean computer game developer NCsoft. It is most popular in Korea and is available in Chinese, Japanese, and English language versions...
(1998), enjoyed even greater success gaining millions of subscribers in Korea and Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
. This helped to secure developer NCsoft
NCsoft
NCsoft is a South Korea-based online video game company, which has published massively multiplayer online role-playing games including Lineage, City of Heroes, Wildstar, Exteel, Guild Wars and Aion.-History:...
's dominance in the global MMORPG market for several years.
NCSoft has released Lineage 2, City of Heroes
City of Heroes
City of Heroes is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the superhero comic book genre, developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCsoft. The game was launched in North America on April 27, 2004 and in Europe on February 4, 2005 with English, German and French language...
, Guild Wars
Guild Wars
Guild Wars is an episodic series of online 3D fantasy role-playing games developed by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft. Although often defined as an MMORPG the developers define it as a CORPG due to significant differences from the MMORPG genre. It provides two main modes of gameplay—a cooperative...
, Exteel
Exteel
Exteel was a third-person shooter game published by NCsoft, a Korean game company, and was developed by NCsoft's . Players controlled giant vehicles called Mechanaughts and fought against the computer, or against other online players, in a variety of gameplay modes. The Mechanaughts were...
, and Aion: The Tower of Eternity. And titles like Blade & Soul
Blade & Soul
Blade & Soul is a fantasy martial-arts massively multiplayer online role-playing game in development by Korean game developer NCsoft and its Team Bloodlust division.-History:...
and Guild Wars 2
Guild Wars 2
Guild Wars 2 is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game in development by ArenaNet. Set in the fantasy world of Tyria, the game follows the re-emergence of Destiny's Edge, a disbanded guild dedicated to fighting the Elder Dragons, a Lovecraftian species that has seized control of Tyria in...
are expected to be released in late 2011 to early 2012.
EverQuest
EverQuest
EverQuest, often shortened to EQ, is a 3D fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game that was released on the 16th of March, 1999. The original design is credited to Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, and Bill Trost...
, launched in March 1999 by Verant Interactive (later acquired by Sony Online Entertainment
Sony Online Entertainment
Sony Online Entertainment is a game development and game publishing division of Sony that is best known for creating massively multiplayer online games, including EverQuest, EverQuest II, The Matrix Online, PlanetSide, Star Wars Galaxies, Free Realms, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, DC Universe...
), brought fantasy MMORPGs into the Western mainstream. It was the most commercially successful MMORPG in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
for five years, and was the basis for 16 expansions (as of December 2009) and several derivative games.
In 1999, following Ultima Online and EverQuest, was another hit, Asheron's Call
Asheron's Call
Asheron's Call is a fantasy MMORPG for Microsoft Windows-based PCs developed and published by Turbine Entertainment. It was published by Microsoft until 2004. Asheron's Call is set on the continent of Dereth and its surrounding islands on the fictional planet of Auberean...
. Together, these three games are sometimes referred to as the original "big three" of the late 1990s.
Second generation MMORPGs
By the turn of the century, game companies were eager to capitalize on the new market. The concept of massively multiplayer online gameMassively multiplayer online game
A massively multiplayer online game is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and usually feature at least one persistent world. They are, however, not necessarily games played on...
s expanded into new video game genres around this time, though RPGs, with their ability to "suck in" the player, were (and still are) the most financially promising.
The next generation of MMORPGs, following the "big three" of the previous decade, was to include the medieval PvP
Player versus player
Player versus player, or PvP, is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between two or more live participants. This is in contrast to games where players compete against computer controlled opponents, which is correspondingly referred to as player versus environment...
-oriented Dark Age of Camelot
Dark Age of Camelot
Dark Age of Camelot is a 3D medieval fantasy MMORPG, released on October 10 2001 in North America and in Europe shortly after through it's partner GOA. It is still running today recently celebrating its 10th anniversary....
, the sci-fi Anarchy Online
Anarchy Online
Anarchy Online is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game published and developed by Funcom. Released in the summer of 2001, the game was first in the genre to include a science-fiction setting, dynamic quests, free trials, and in-game advertising. The most ground breaking feature in...
, and Ultima Online 2
Ultima Worlds Online: Origin
Ultima Worlds Online: Origin — originally titled Ultima Online 2 — was to be the first sequel to the popular 1997 massively multiplayer online role-playing game Ultima Online...
. Anarchy Online, released first in June 2001, was saddled with crippling technical problems upon its release, mostly due to an inability to handle the huge playerbase. Dark Age of Camelot launched smoothly four months later, introducing "Realm vs. Realm" PvP
Player versus player
Player versus player, or PvP, is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between two or more live participants. This is in contrast to games where players compete against computer controlled opponents, which is correspondingly referred to as player versus environment...
and other innovations, and quickly passed Ultima Online and Asheron's Call in popularity, and became EverQuest 's main rival. Ultima Online 2 was cancelled by Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
in March 2001, as they had decided that the market was becoming saturated and that it would be more profitable to divert resources to the original Ultima Online. RuneScape
RuneScape
RuneScape is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in January 2001 by Andrew and Paul Gower, and developed and published by Jagex Games Studio. It is a graphical browser game implemented on the client-side in Java, and incorporates 3D rendering...
by Jagex was also released in 2001. 2001 also saw MMORPGs move off of PCs and onto home consoles in a limited form with the release of Phantasy Star Online
Phantasy Star Online
Phantasy Star Online is an online multiplayer action RPG title, originally released for the Dreamcast in 2000, bundled with a demo of Sonic Adventure 2. Another edition, entitled Phantasy Star Online ver.2, was released for Dreamcast the following year...
; however, due to platform limitations, it would not be until Final Fantasy XI
Final Fantasy XI
, also known as Final Fantasy XI Online, is a MMORPG developed and published by Square as part of the Final Fantasy series. It was released in Japan on Sony's PlayStation 2 on May 16, 2002, and was released for Microsoft's Windows-based personal computers in November 2002...
s release that 'massive' features found their way outside of non-combat areas on consoles.
In 2002 the sprite-based Ragnarok Online
Ragnarok Online
Ragnarok Online , often referred to as RO, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game or MMORPG created by GRAVITY Co., Ltd. based on the manhwa Ragnarok by Lee Myung-jin. It was first released in South Korea on 31 August 2002 for Microsoft Windows and has since been released in many other...
, produced by Korean company Gravity Corp, was released. Though unknown to many Western players, the game took Asia by storm as Lineage had done. The publisher has claimed in excess of 25 million subscribers of the game, although this number is based upon a quantity of registered users (rather than active subscribers). 2002 also saw the release of MapleStory
MapleStory
MapleStory is a free-to-play, 2D, side-scrolling massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by the South Korean company Wizet. Several versions of the game are available for specific countries or regions, and each is published by various companies such as Nexon...
, another sprite-based title, which was completely free-to-play
Free-to-play
Free-to-play refers to any video game that has the option of allowing its players to play without paying. The model was first popularly used in early massively multiplayer online games targeted towards casual gamers, before finding wider adoption among games released by major video game...
- instead of charging a monthly fee, it generated revenue by selling in-game "enhancements". MapleStory would go on to become a major player in the new market for free-to-play MMORPGs (generating huge numbers of registered accounts across its many versions), if it did not introduce the market by itself.
In September 2002, Earth & Beyond
Earth & Beyond
Earth & Beyond was a science fiction massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Westwood Studios and published by Electronic Arts . The game was released on September 24, 2002 in the United States. EA shut down Earth & Beyond on September 22, 2004...
was released. Having been in development since 1997, this was the first 3D sci-fi space-ship based MMORPG. Earth and Beyond only lasted two years before being shut down by developer Westwood Studios
Westwood Studios
Westwood Studios was a computer and video game developer, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in as Westwood Associates, and renamed to Westwood Studios when it merged with Virgin Interactive in...
' owners, Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
.
In November 2002, Final Fantasy XI
Final Fantasy XI
, also known as Final Fantasy XI Online, is a MMORPG developed and published by Square as part of the Final Fantasy series. It was released in Japan on Sony's PlayStation 2 on May 16, 2002, and was released for Microsoft's Windows-based personal computers in November 2002...
by Square-Enix became the first MMOG to provide clients for different platforms using a single set of servers, in addition to being the first 'true' MMOG to appear on a video game console
Video game console
A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game...
due to its initial release in Japan in May of the same year on the PlayStation 2
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
. It would go on to provide a client for a third platform, the Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
, in 2006.
In March 2003, Ubisoft
Ubisoft
Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. is a major French video game publisher and developer, with headquarters in Montreuil, France. The company has a worldwide presence with 25 studios in 17 countries and subsidiaries in 26 countries....
launched their first MMORPG: Shadowbane
Shadowbane
Shadowbane was a free fantasy computer role-playing game created by Wolfpack Studios and published on March 25, 2003 by Ubisoft for Windows and Mac platforms. Originally commercial and subscription-driven, Shadowbane was launched in March 2003, and was the creation of text-MUD veterans J...
. Shadowbane was notable for featuring no quests, and instead relying on player warfare to provide immersion. To support this goal it featured player-built, player-owned, and player-razed cities and capitals, and a system for player government.
Also in March 2003 Sony Online Entertainment
Sony Online Entertainment
Sony Online Entertainment is a game development and game publishing division of Sony that is best known for creating massively multiplayer online games, including EverQuest, EverQuest II, The Matrix Online, PlanetSide, Star Wars Galaxies, Free Realms, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, DC Universe...
launched EverQuest Online Adventures
EverQuest Online Adventures
EverQuest Online Adventures is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game for the PlayStation 2. EQOA is one of the few MMORPGs released on a video game console...
, a Playstation 2
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
spin-off of the successful EverQuest
EverQuest
EverQuest, often shortened to EQ, is a 3D fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game that was released on the 16th of March, 1999. The original design is credited to Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, and Bill Trost...
MMO. This game is only accessible to Playstation 2 players and it's still running.
May 2003 saw the release of Eve Online
EVE Online
Eve Online is a video game by CCP Games. It is a player-driven, persistent-world MMORPG set in a science fiction space setting. Characters pilot customizable ships through a galaxy of over 7,500 star systems. Most star systems are connected to one or more other star systems by means of stargates...
, produced by Crowd Control Productions, which had players taking the role of spaceship pilots and had gameplay similar to the series Star Control
Star Control
Star Control is a science fiction computer game that was developed by Toys for Bob and published by Accolade in the early 1990s. Star Control still enjoys a cult following...
. Though not the first space MMO (Microsoft Allegiance was the first space MMO and was released in 1999), Eve was able to achieve lasting success. One of the reasons for its success may have been the game's design, in which all subscribers play in one shared universe as a result the natural partitioning of the game universe into solar systems connected by stargates. This partitioning allows the world to be divided up in such a way that one or more solar systems run on different servers, while still maintaining a single coherent world.
In October 2003, Lineage II
Lineage II
Lineage II is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game for Microsoft Windows. It is a prequel to Lineage, and is set 150 years before the earlier game. It has become very popular since its October 1, 2003 launch in South Korea, reporting 1,000,918 unique users during the month of March 2007...
(NCsoft's sequel to Lineage) became the latest MMORPG to achieve huge success across Asia. It received the Presidential Award at the 2003 Korean Game awards, and is now the second most popular MMORPG in the world. As of the first half of 2005 Lineage II counted over 2.25 million subscribers worldwide, with servers in Japan, China, North America, Taiwan, and Europe, once the popularity of the game had surged in the West.
2003 also saw the appearance of Second Life
Second Life
Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...
. While not primarily a role playing game, it is clearly multiplayer and online, and it is used as a platform where people construct role playing games based on Gor, Star Trek, vampires, and other genres.
In April 2004, NCSoft produced another significant title, City of Heroes
City of Heroes
City of Heroes is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the superhero comic book genre, developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCsoft. The game was launched in North America on April 27, 2004 and in Europe on February 4, 2005 with English, German and French language...
. It introduced several major innovations in gameplay and also featured an extreme number of possible visual character appearances, and its comic-book superhero
Superhero
A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...
theme made it stand out.
Current-generation MMORPGs
The most recent generation of MMORPGs, based on arbitrary standards of graphics, gameplay, and popularity, is said to have launched in November 2004 with Sony Online EntertainmentSony Online Entertainment
Sony Online Entertainment is a game development and game publishing division of Sony that is best known for creating massively multiplayer online games, including EverQuest, EverQuest II, The Matrix Online, PlanetSide, Star Wars Galaxies, Free Realms, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, DC Universe...
's EverQuest II
EverQuest II
EverQuest II is a 3D fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Sony Online Entertainment , based on EverQuest, and shipped on 8 November 2004...
and Blizzard Entertainment's
Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher founded on February 8, 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by three graduates of UCLA, Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce and currently owned by French company Activision Blizzard...
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
(WoW). At the time, Sony expected to dominate the market, based on the success of the first EverQuest, and decided to offer a flat monthly rate to play all of their MMORPGs including EverQuest, EverQuest II, and Star Wars Galaxies
Star Wars Galaxies
Star Wars Galaxies is a Star Wars themed MMORPG for Microsoft Windows developed by Sony Online Entertainment and published by LucasArts.-History:...
, to keep from competing with itself. While EverQuest II was a commercial success as predicted, World of Warcraft immediately overtook all of these games upon release, and indeed became so popular that it dwarfed all previous monthly-fee MMORPGs. At present, WoW
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
is one of the most played games in North America, and the most subscribed to MMORPG worldwide, with a total of over 12 million customers. The closest MMORPG to World of Warcraft is in terms of paying subscribers is RuneScape
RuneScape
RuneScape is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in January 2001 by Andrew and Paul Gower, and developed and published by Jagex Games Studio. It is a graphical browser game implemented on the client-side in Java, and incorporates 3D rendering...
with more than one million subscribers and even more free players. RuneScape is also the world's largest free MMORPG, though it receives less media attention than WoW. With the release of these newer games, subscriptions began to decline for many older MMORPGs, even the year-old Lineage II
Lineage II
Lineage II is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game for Microsoft Windows. It is a prequel to Lineage, and is set 150 years before the earlier game. It has become very popular since its October 1, 2003 launch in South Korea, reporting 1,000,918 unique users during the month of March 2007...
, and in particular Everquest. The current MMORPG market has World of Warcraft in a position similar to the position of Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...
in the tabletop RPG market, with both games' market share being greater than 50% of the overall market.
In August 2005 Sony Online Entertainment acquired The Matrix Online
The Matrix Online
The Matrix Online was a massively multiplayer online game developed by Monolith Productions created by Richard Carroll. It was the official continuation of the storyline of the Matrix series of films. The game began closed beta-testing in June 2004 which was then opened for people who pre-ordered...
, and the game was shut down at 11:59pm, 31 July 2009. It is the first game Sony has ended.
On April 25, ArenaNet
ArenaNet
ArenaNet is a computer game developer and part of NCsoft Corporation, founded in 2000 by Mike O'Brien, Patrick Wyatt and Jeff Strain and located in Bellevue, Washington...
(a subsidiary of NCSoft
NCsoft
NCsoft is a South Korea-based online video game company, which has published massively multiplayer online role-playing games including Lineage, City of Heroes, Wildstar, Exteel, Guild Wars and Aion.-History:...
) successfully launched Guild Wars
Guild Wars
Guild Wars is an episodic series of online 3D fantasy role-playing games developed by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft. Although often defined as an MMORPG the developers define it as a CORPG due to significant differences from the MMORPG genre. It provides two main modes of gameplay—a cooperative...
, introducing a new financial model which might have been partly responsible for the game's success. Though definitely an online RPG, and technically having a persistent world (despite most of the game's content being instanced
Instance dungeon
In massively multiplayer online games, an instance is a special area, typically a dungeon, that generates a new copy of the location for each group, or for certain number of players, that enters the area. Instancing, the general term for the use of this technique, addresses several problems...
), it requires only a one-time purchasing fee. It was also designed to be "winnable", more or less, as developers would not profit from customers' prolonged playtime. Other differences compared to traditional MMORPGs include strictly PvP-only areas, a relatively short playtime requirement to access end-game content, instant world travel, and strategic PvP. The game is designed around the max level cap of level 20, so players will not run into the level-spreading problem when grouping. For these differences it was termed instead a "Competitive Online Role-Playing Game" (CORPG) by its developers. With five million games purchased as of April '09, Guild Wars is still continuously profitable (due to several stand-alone games) but is still not viewed by some as a serious competitor to WoW in terms of profit and number of players. However, the alternative nature of the payment system in Guild Wars means that the game does not aim to "compete" with WoW rather than exist along-side it, and in that sense it can still be considered a large success.
There has also been significant competition (and potential for profit) among free-to-play
Free-to-play
Free-to-play refers to any video game that has the option of allowing its players to play without paying. The model was first popularly used in early massively multiplayer online games targeted towards casual gamers, before finding wider adoption among games released by major video game...
MMORPGs. A few of the most successful of these are Silkroad Online
Silkroad Online
Silkroad Online is a fantasy MMORPG set in the 7th century AD, along the Silk Road between China and Europe. The game requires no periodic subscription fee, but players can purchase premium items to customize or accelerate gameplay.- Gameplay :...
by the publisher Joymax
Joymax
Joymax is a Korean online games developer and service provider. They are the creators of Silkroad Online and Karma Online. They will also host the english version of Digimon Masters.-Available:-External links:**...
, the 3D sprite based MMORPG Flyff
Flyff
Flyff is a fantasy MMORPG by Korean development company Gala Lab .Flyff is a fairly typical party-oriented grinding game where no character can do everything, and efficient play requires working in groups to level up by killing monsters, or Masquerpets...
by Aeonsoft, Rappelz by nFlavor, (with Aeonsoft and nFlavor merging in 2010 to become Gala Lab Corp) Perfect World
Perfect World
Perfect World , is a 3D adventure and fantasy MMORPG with traditional Chinese settings. Players can take on various roles depending on choice of race and choice of class within that race....
by Beijing Perfect World, the 2D scrolling MMORPG MapleStory
MapleStory
MapleStory is a free-to-play, 2D, side-scrolling massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by the South Korean company Wizet. Several versions of the game are available for specific countries or regions, and each is published by various companies such as Nexon...
by Wizet
Wizet
Wizet is a game development studio located in Seoul, South Korea, and is popular for its hit game, MapleStory. Wizet developed a franchise system and expanded its services to Japan, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, the USA, Europe, Brazil, and Vietnam...
and finally the free-to-play converted Shadowbane
Shadowbane
Shadowbane was a free fantasy computer role-playing game created by Wolfpack Studios and published on March 25, 2003 by Ubisoft for Windows and Mac platforms. Originally commercial and subscription-driven, Shadowbane was launched in March 2003, and was the creation of text-MUD veterans J...
by Ubisoft
Ubisoft
Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. is a major French video game publisher and developer, with headquarters in Montreuil, France. The company has a worldwide presence with 25 studios in 17 countries and subsidiaries in 26 countries....
. Most of these games generate revenue by selling in-game "enhancements", and due to their free nature have accumulated huge numbers of registered accounts over the years, with a majority of them from East Asia.
On July 1, 2009, Ubisoft
Ubisoft
Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. is a major French video game publisher and developer, with headquarters in Montreuil, France. The company has a worldwide presence with 25 studios in 17 countries and subsidiaries in 26 countries....
shut down the Shadowbane
Shadowbane
Shadowbane was a free fantasy computer role-playing game created by Wolfpack Studios and published on March 25, 2003 by Ubisoft for Windows and Mac platforms. Originally commercial and subscription-driven, Shadowbane was launched in March 2003, and was the creation of text-MUD veterans J...
servers.
Many of the most recent big-budget contributions to the market have focused on giving players visually stunning graphics. In 2007, The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game for Microsoft Windows set in a fantasy universe based upon J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings...
(LOTRO) was one of the first of these to meet with commercial success, followed by the problematic 2008 launch of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is a fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by a Norwegian computer video game developer company, Funcom, and is published by Eidos Interactive for the PC platform...
and the Player versus player
Player versus player
Player versus player, or PvP, is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between two or more live participants. This is in contrast to games where players compete against computer controlled opponents, which is correspondingly referred to as player versus environment...
focused Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy setting. It was developed by Mythic Entertainment and simultaneously released in North and South Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand on September 18, 2008...
. Much like LOTRO, many of the games in development with big expectations have multi-media tie-ins, such as Star Wars: The Old Republic
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Star Wars: The Old Republic, abbreviated as TOR or SWTOR, is an upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game based in the Star Wars universe. Currently in development by BioWare Austin and a supplemental team at BioWare Edmonton, the game was first announced on October 21, 2008, at an...
, Star Trek Online
Star Trek Online
Star Trek Online, often abbreviated as STO, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Cryptic Studios based on the popular Star Trek series created by Gene Roddenberry. The game is set in the 25th century, 30 years after the events of Star Trek Nemesis...
and Stargate Worlds
Stargate Worlds
Stargate Worlds was a massively multiplayer online role-playing game video game in-development by Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment in association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and published by FireSky for Microsoft Windows. The game's setting was mainly borrowed from military science fiction series...
.
Upcoming MMORPGs
Although no competitor has been able to garner a subscription base to rival World of Warcraft, there are some promising games in development. Aion: The Tower of Eternity, developed by NCsoftNCsoft
NCsoft is a South Korea-based online video game company, which has published massively multiplayer online role-playing games including Lineage, City of Heroes, Wildstar, Exteel, Guild Wars and Aion.-History:...
, has gathered a respectable subscription base (NCSoft's previous titles include Guild Wars
Guild Wars
Guild Wars is an episodic series of online 3D fantasy role-playing games developed by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft. Although often defined as an MMORPG the developers define it as a CORPG due to significant differences from the MMORPG genre. It provides two main modes of gameplay—a cooperative...
and Lineage II
Lineage II
Lineage II is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game for Microsoft Windows. It is a prequel to Lineage, and is set 150 years before the earlier game. It has become very popular since its October 1, 2003 launch in South Korea, reporting 1,000,918 unique users during the month of March 2007...
). Upcoming titles also include Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter, Star Wars: The Old Republic
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Star Wars: The Old Republic, abbreviated as TOR or SWTOR, is an upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game based in the Star Wars universe. Currently in development by BioWare Austin and a supplemental team at BioWare Edmonton, the game was first announced on October 21, 2008, at an...
, and Warhammer 40,000 Online
Warhammer 40,000 Online
Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online is an upcoming science fiction massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 setting. It is currently under development by Vigil Games...
. Stellar Dawn
Stellar Dawn
Stellar Dawn is an upcoming browser-based sci-fi themed MMORPG under development by UK game developer Jagex.Originally known as MechScape, the project was scrapped and renamed after it was decided that the completed project did not meet the standards of the original design brief...
, an upcoming multiplayer sci-fi game by Jagex - the maker of RuneScape - is supposed to be a rival of WoW
Wow
-Business:*WOW!, an internet, cable, and phone company*WOW! , a defunct ISP from CompuServe*WOW, a radio station in Omaha, Nebraska, started in 1922 by Woodmen of the World; today known as KXSP*WOW , English toy company...
: Mark Gerhard, the CEO of Jagex, has stated in an interview with Eurogamer
Eurogamer
Eurogamer is a Brighton-based website focused on video games news, reviews, previews and interviews. It is operated by Eurogamer Network Ltd., which was formed in 1999 by brothers Rupert and Nick Loman. Eurogamer has grown to become one of the most important European-based websites focused on...
that he suspects that the players of Stellar Dawn are the same players who play WoW
Wow
-Business:*WOW!, an internet, cable, and phone company*WOW! , a defunct ISP from CompuServe*WOW, a radio station in Omaha, Nebraska, started in 1922 by Woodmen of the World; today known as KXSP*WOW , English toy company...
.
On December 2010, Blizzard confirmed that they're working on Titan, a new MMO. Lastly much hype has been surrounding Guild Wars 2
Guild Wars 2
Guild Wars 2 is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game in development by ArenaNet. Set in the fantasy world of Tyria, the game follows the re-emergence of Destiny's Edge, a disbanded guild dedicated to fighting the Elder Dragons, a Lovecraftian species that has seized control of Tyria in...
which features many innovative new systems that aim to drastically alter the way people play MMORPGs. It will have the same Buy-to-play purchase model as the original.