MMORPGs | Code Like It's 198x

In 1997 Origin Systems asked people to pay to test its online Ultima, expecting a few thousand. “50,000 people sent us money!” Richard Garriott told Edge. “Suddenly we were like, ‘Uh-oh, we’re really in trouble!’” Origin rebuilt the project for four servers across the United States, and Ultima Online went on to become what Computer Gaming World later called “the first successful MMORPG”. It was not the first online world. Players had been sharing dungeons for nearly 20 years before, first as text on a university mainframe in Essex, then by the hour on America’s dial-up networks, where one player told Compute! of a telephone bill of more than $2,000 in a single month. Seven years after Ultima Online, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft took the same idea to 12 million subscribers.

Fast facts

What it is: a role-playing game in a shared world that keeps running when a player logs off, played online by hundreds or thousands of people at once, usually for a monthly fee.
Where it started: MUD, written by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at the University of Essex from 1978.
Pay-by-the-hour worlds: Island of Kesmai (CompuServe, 1985), Habitat (QuantumLink, Commodore 64, 1986), Neverwinter Nights (America Online, 1991).
Internet worlds: Meridian 59 (3DO, 1996), Ultima Online (Origin, 1997), EverQuest (Verant and Sony, 1999), Lineage (NCsoft, Korea, 1998).
The peak: World of Warcraft (Blizzard, 2004), with 12 million subscribers by 2010.

MUD

The genre’s name comes from its first game. Roy Trubshaw, a student at Essex University, had found a way for two copies of a program on the university’s DECsystem-10 to write to shared memory, so that they could “communicate with one another instantly”. He used it to build a multiplayer version of Adventure. In 1978 Richard Bartle, in his first year, joined him, and when Trubshaw’s course ended he handed Bartle the third version of the program to finish. “When I took it over from Roy it wasn’t really a game, although we all called it one,” Bartle told Edge in 2004. “I made a conscious decision to ‘gamify’ it.”

MUD, for Multi-User Dungeon, was a text adventure in which the other characters were people. Players typed commands, explored, fought, talked and stole from each other, earned points, and rose through levels towards the rank of wizard or witch, which brought “immense powers which can then be used to pester mortals”, as Computer Gamer put it in 1985. The game had no end. “I’ve never thought of the game as having a particular object to achieve,” Trubshaw said.

Outsiders could play only when the university did not need its computer, at night and at weekends, dialling in over the national packet-switched network. In 1984 Micro Adventurer found players as far away as Australia. Century Communications bought the rights that year, a version ran on Commodore’s Compunet service, and a later deal with British Telecom set up a company, MUSE Ltd, to write a larger MUD2. Most of all, MUD was copied. By 1994 Computer Gaming World counted about 300 MUDs, “mostly running on university computers”, and Edge put the number at more than 700 two years later. Bartle later claimed that MUDs “owned ten per cent of the bits on the internet in 1994, before the world wide web”. The MUD entry follows them in more detail.

Paying by the hour

In the United States the online worlds grew up on commercial networks that charged by the minute. Island of Kesmai, written by John Taylor and Kelton Flinn, opened on CompuServe in December 1985 as a fantasy role-playing game for up to 50 players at once. It drew its dungeons with letters and symbols, a “>” for the player and a letter for each monster or other player, and came with a manual of about 160 pages. Computer Gaming World’s columnist called it “the prototype of MP games to come”, and met a player who sometimes spent 40 hours a week in it. It cost money. In 1994 CompuServe was charging $4.80 an hour at 2400 baud for its game areas.

Lucasfilm Games gave the idea pictures. Habitat, written for the Commodore 64 and the QuantumLink network in 1986, gave each player an on-screen figure, an avatar, and a room of their own, the “turf”, to decorate. Players moved with the joystick and chose from four commands, go, do, get and put. Visiting QuantumLink’s offices while it was being finished, Shay Addams found it “a multi-player happening that takes place live, on-line, as an unlimited number of people inhabit, explore and interface in an alternative universe depicted with animated graphics”. Its programmer and designer was Chip Morningstar and its artist Gary Winnick. Looking back in 2011, Edge thought it had “hit computer screens 15 years too early”, but had met problems “that every Blizzard employee would recognise today”, from testy players to the struggle to make enough content.

Neverwinter Nights followed on America Online in June 1991, built with SSI on its Advanced Dungeons & Dragons “Gold Box” games, so that it looked and played like them “except that the online players can talk to and help each other”. By 1994 it was, in Computer Gaming World’s view, AOL’s most popular game, at $9.95 a month for five hours and $3.50 for each hour after. In 1997, with its code five or six years old, it was due to lose its place on AOL’s games channel.

Onto the Internet

The Internet removed the hourly charge. 3DO’s Meridian 59, developed by Archetype, was advertised in 1996 as “the first Internet graphical MUD game”. It showed its world in simple first-person 3D and ran on Windows 95 over an ordinary Internet connection. Edge found it “oddly captivating”, with virtual weddings attended by hundreds of players, and noted the new way of paying: in Britain £40 for the software, then about £6.50 a month for unlimited play.

Ultima Online brought Richard Garriott’s Britannia online in 1997. Its world had its own ecology: kill the sheep near a dragon’s lair, Edge reported during the beta, and the dragon comes into town for food. It also had player-killers, lag and a protest at Lord British’s castle. By 1999 Origin had more than 100,000 paying players, and in 2000 about 185,000. In 2004 Computer Gaming World called it “the first successful MMORPG”, and Garriott said in 2007 that it had sold ten times as much as all the single-player Ultima games together. It is still running.

EverQuest, from Verant Interactive and Sony, went live in the United States on 16 March 1999, and pulled ahead. It had a structure, as Computer Gaming World put it in 2005, that “virtually every massively multiplayer RPG released since has borrowed”. Around the magazine’s office, it said, the game was known as “Evercrack”. In mid-2000 Verant’s chief executive, John Smedley, gave the magazine a count of 225,209 subscribers and a record of 60,934 players logged in at once on the night of its first expansion; the three big American games together had about half a million. By 2001 Edge was reporting 400,000 subscribers, and noting the other side of the business: “Build a persistent world and you must suffer persistent costs.”

The largest numbers were in South Korea. NCsoft’s Lineage: The Blood Pledge, launched in 1998, was played mostly in the country’s PC cafés, of which there were by then 20,000 or more. In 2001 its publisher claimed 12 million registered users in Korea, a quarter of the population, and Computer Gaming World reported 4 million subscribers in 2002, which made it, by that count, the biggest online game in the world. Garriott himself joined NCsoft in 2001, planning to help bring Lineage to America.

World of Warcraft

Blizzard built World of Warcraft with about 60 people, many of whom had shipped StarCraft, and opened it to North American players on 23 November 2004: two continents, eight races, nine classes, 60 levels and 2,600 quests, set in the world of its Warcraft strategy games. It changed the scale of the genre. In March 2005 Blizzard announced 1.5 million subscriptions, which Edge reckoned was “close to three times the highest global totals ever claimed for EverQuest”, and older games lost players. It reached seven and a half million in November 2006, and by 2010 12 million subscribers, who brought in nearly 40 per cent of the revenue of the world’s largest games publisher.

After the peak

The monthly subscription did not stay the rule. Edge reported in 2010 that Western publishers were starting to build free-to-play games, paid for by small purchases inside the game, and that it was “Korea, where the free-to-play fuse was lit”. World of Warcraft kept its subscription but lost players: in November 2015, with 5.5 million subscribers, Activision Blizzard said it would stop publishing the figure. The older worlds have outlived most of the companies that built them. Ultima Online and EverQuest, which Daybreak Game Company took over from Sony in 2015, were both still running more than 25 years after they opened.

Sources

Micro Adventurer, September 1984, p. 7 (news: Century Communications and MUD) and p. 22, “Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud” (playing from outside the university at night; overseas players).
Computer Gamer issue 6, September 1985, p. 48: MUD at Essex (levels and wizards; Trubshaw and Bartle on an open-ended game; MUD2; Century Communications and Compunet).
Computer Gaming World issue 29, June 1986, pp. 30–31, Patricia Fitzgibbons, “Island of Kesmai” (CompuServe, December 1985; John Taylor and Kelton Flinn; 50 players; the display; the manual; the 40-hour player; “the prototype of MP games to come”).
Computer Gaming World issue 31, September 1986, p. 27: Habitat on QuantumLink.
Commodore Microcomputers vol. 7 no. 6, November 1986, pp. 116–119, Shay Addams, “QuantumLink’s Habitat” (avatars, turfs, the four commands, Chip Morningstar and Gary Winnick).
Computer Gaming World issue 80, March 1991, p. 22: Neverwinter Nights announced for America Online.
Compute! issue 135, November 1991, p. 100: online gaming feature (Neverwinter Nights introduced in June; a Kesmai player’s $2,000 telephone bill).
Computer Gaming World issue 123, October 1994, pp. 26–27 (AOL, Neverwinter Nights and its prices; CompuServe, Island of Kesmai and its prices) and p. 38 (MUD history; about 300 MUDs).
Edge issue 39, December 1996, p. 15: Meridian 59 (more than 700 MUDs; UK prices; virtual weddings).
Computer Gaming World issue 148, November 1996, p. 203: Meridian 59 advertisement (“the first Internet graphical MUD game”). Issue 150, January 1997, p. 333: index listing Archetype as developer.
Computer Gaming World issue 158, September 1997, p. 51: Neverwinter Nights to leave AOL’s games channel.
Edge issue 49, September 1997: Ultima Online’s beta and its ecology. Edge issue 54, January 1998: the protest at Lord British’s castle. Computer Gaming World issue 177, April 1999: more than 100,000 paying players. Edge issue 74, August 1999, p. 56: Richard Garriott interview (the 50,000 paying testers and the four servers).
Computer Gaming World issue 192, July 2000, pp. 39–41: John Smedley on EverQuest’s 225,209 subscribers and 60,934 players online; about 185,000 Ultima Online subscribers; half a million for the three big games.
Edge issue 102, October 2001, p. 49: Sony Online Entertainment feature (EverQuest’s 400,000 subscribers; “persistent costs”).
PC Zone issue 109, December 2001, p. 26: Anthony Holden on online games in South Korea (Lineage’s 12 million registered users; PC cafés).
Edge issue 123, May 2003, p. 8: Lineage’s 3 million subscribers, mostly playing in PC cafés.
Computer Gaming World issue 206, September 2001: Garriott, Destination Games and NCsoft. Issue 215, June 2002, p. 48: Lineage’s 4 million subscribers.
Edge issue 141, October 2004, pp. 115–116, “The making of MUD”: Trubshaw, Bartle, the DECsystem-10, the handover, MUSE and MUD2; Bartle’s “ten per cent of the bits”.
Computer Gaming World issue 243, October 2004, Hall of Fame: Ultima Online as “the first successful MMORPG”. Issue 250, April 2005, p. 86: EverQuest’s influence and “Evercrack”.
PC Zone issue 77, June 1999, p. 12: reader’s letter giving EverQuest’s US launch on 16 March.
Edge issue 152, August 2005, p. 63: World of Warcraft’s 1.5 million subscriptions compared with EverQuest, Ultima Online and Lineage.
Edge issue 172, February 2007, p. 11: World of Warcraft’s seven and a half millionth player, November 2006.
Edge issue 180, October 2007: Garriott on Ultima Online’s sales.
Edge issue 212, March 2010, p. 74: the making of World of Warcraft (60 developers; 23 November 2004; its races, classes, levels and quests).
Edge issue 220, November 2010, pp. 76–77: free-to-play in the West and Korea.
Edge issue 222, Christmas 2010, p. 3: World of Warcraft’s 12 million subscribers and share of Activision Blizzard’s revenue.
Edge issue 231, September 2011, p. 86: Habitat (“15 years too early”).
GameSpot, “Blizzard Will No Longer Report World of Warcraft Subscriber Numbers”, November 2015 (web, secondary): 5.5 million subscribers. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/blizzard-will-no-longer-report-world-of-warcraft-s/1100-6431943/
Wikipedia, “EverQuest”, “Lineage (video game)” and “Ultima Online” (web, secondary): EverQuest’s release on 16 March 1999 and Daybreak’s operation of it since 2015; Lineage’s release in September 1998; Ultima Online still running. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverQuest, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineage_(video_game) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online