Back to the Beginning With the Open Meridian Project

SBFord · February 2016

Back to the Beginning With the Open Meridian Project

The oldest MMORPG ever, Meridian 59, is making a comeback, and we got the scoop on the project at PAX South.

Read the full story here

Sirmatthias · February 2016

I guess they're trying to "re" invent the wheel.

barasawa · February 2016

Sirmatthias said:

I guess they're trying to "re" invent the wheel.

Sounds more like they're trying to restore an old wagon wheel.

Banegrivm · February 2016

Not the oldest MMO, although that's amusing. Neverwinter Nights (NWN for short) on AOL was first by a few years in 1991 followed by Shadows of Yserbius in The Sierra Network (later bought by AT&T and rebranded the Imagination Network) a year later. Meridian 59 didn't come out until 1995. It's a little late to the party for being "the first". Guilds from the original NWN are still around today as well.

Thourne · February 2016

Banegrivm said:

Not the oldest MMO, although that's amusing. Neverwinter Nights (NWN for short) on AOL was first by a few years in 1991 followed by Shadows of Yserbius in The Sierra Network (later bought by AT&T and rebranded the Imagination Network) a year later. Meridian 59 didn't come out until 1995. It's a little late to the party for being "the first". Guilds from the original NWN are still around today as well.

Nothing like getting charged by the hour....if you could even get on.

Thourne · February 2016

@Banegrivm ;
Could you imagine the number of f2p gamers who's heads would utterly explode getting charged 5 bucks an hour?
LOL

Banegrivm · February 2016

Thourne said:

Banegrivm said:

Not the oldest MMO, although that's amusing. Neverwinter Nights (NWN for short) on AOL was first by a few years in 1991 followed by Shadows of Yserbius in The Sierra Network (later bought by AT&T and rebranded the Imagination Network) a year later. Meridian 59 didn't come out until 1995. It's a little late to the party for being "the first". Guilds from the original NWN are still around today as well.

Nothing like getting charged by the hour....if you could even get on.

Man I remember those AOL bills, holy crap. People spent hundreds of dollars a month just to play. It was insane. No one in their right frame of mind nowadays would pay money for that. The one thing NWN had going for it that most modern MMO's don't is a tried and true sense of community. Although it also had real role playing (and I'm not talking about that bad soap opera drama we're stuck with nowadays that people call RP) and it had meaningful PVP... not to mention... the DM room!

Avanah · February 2016

Server 102 1996! "Taki" "Shadow Rose".

tawess · February 2016

Again nostalgia beats actual sense.

Now i did play the original game and while it was pretty radical for it´s time. I see no reason at all to bring it back.

Urncaller · February 2016

Banegrivm said:

Not the oldest MMO, although that's amusing. Neverwinter Nights (NWN for short) on AOL was first by a few years in 1991 followed by Shadows of Yserbius in The Sierra Network (later bought by AT&T and rebranded the Imagination Network) a year later. Meridian 59 didn't come out until 1995. It's a little late to the party for being "the first". Guilds from the original NWN are still around today as well.

Yeah I use to pla that on AOL as well then went on to Underlight which a lot have forgotten about.

Daenks · February 2016

Banegrivm said:

Not the oldest MMO, although that's amusing. Neverwinter Nights (NWN for short) on AOL was first by a few years in 1991 followed by Shadows of Yserbius in The Sierra Network (later bought by AT&T and rebranded the Imagination Network) a year later. Meridian 59 didn't come out until 1995. It's a little late to the party for being "the first". Guilds from the original NWN are still around today as well.

Oldest "Commercial" MMO is the key word there

Thourne · February 2016

Daenks said:

Banegrivm said:

Not the oldest MMO, although that's amusing. Neverwinter Nights (NWN for short) on AOL was first by a few years in 1991 followed by Shadows of Yserbius in The Sierra Network (later bought by AT&T and rebranded the Imagination Network) a year later. Meridian 59 didn't come out until 1995. It's a little late to the party for being "the first". Guilds from the original NWN are still around today as well.

Oldest "Commercial" MMO is the key word there

Considering we were charged hourly to play the games he mentions, they were definitely commercial ventures.

inmysights · February 2016

oldest, non-text MMO, yes there were chat rooms and MUD's but there was nothing even close to M59!! Loved it and played it everyday until March 16, 1999 when EQ1 was launched!!

OneEyeRed · February 2016

Daenks said:

Banegrivm said:

Not the oldest MMO, although that's amusing. Neverwinter Nights (NWN for short) on AOL was first by a few years in 1991 followed by Shadows of Yserbius in The Sierra Network (later bought by AT&T and rebranded the Imagination Network) a year later. Meridian 59 didn't come out until 1995. It's a little late to the party for being "the first". Guilds from the original NWN are still around today as well.

Oldest "Commercial" MMO is the key word there

Yea wasn't Archmage before both of those? I can't quite remember it was so long ago...

Banegrivm · February 2016

inmysights said:

oldest, non-text MMO, yes there were chat rooms and MUD's but there was nothing even close to M59!! Loved it and played it everyday until March 16, 1999 when EQ1 was launched!!

NWN on AOL and Shadows of Yserbius as well as Underlight (mentioned above) were non text MMO's. Again, out before M59 as those of us simply referred to it as at that time. They were great games. Better sadly than most modern games which could learn quite a bit from their examples.

A1learjet · February 2016

lulz played it and at the time loved it!

psiic · February 2016

They planning to charge us $6 an hour again to play it? I had many $300 - $600 a month gaming bills back between this and AOL NWN. AOL was the worst they charged you for service, then charged you extra for the game section, then another fee for NWN as it was considered premium. God Bless Ultima Online that set a reasonable price point for online gaming that has endured for 25 years.

Rockinw311 · February 2016

Personally, I miss TradeWars and the BBS days

Renanton · February 2016

I remember when NWN shutdown and we got an influx of players into a small game called Lords of Empyria. Also don't never seem to see anyone ever mentioning the TEN Network which had D&D Dark Sun Online. That was my first online game in 1995. What fun

Banegrivm · February 2016

psiic said:

They planning to charge us $6 an hour again to play it?

I had many $300 - $600 a month gaming bills back between this and AOL NWN. AOL was the worst they charged you for service, then charged you extra for the game section, then another fee for NWN as it was considered premium. God Bless Ultima Online that set a reasonable price point for online gaming that has endured for 25 years.

Not sure what NWN you were playing but they never had a double charge like that. It was always just a flat hourly fee for AOL itself. At one point they talked about making a games channel after AOL bought the Imagination Network from AT&T so that they could move Shadows of Yserbius onto it. Then they were going to put NWN on it, add in Multi-Player Battletech: Solaris, The Realm (which I tested in alpha), and UO. Again, everything for an hourly charge. At that time AOL had just gone to a flat fee to compete with other ISP's. But, Steve Case the CEO at the time didn't like the objections to the fact that no one would pay an hourly fee when they could pay a monthly fee as UO was currently doing. He got greedy and being egotistical instead of making it work and trying to make a profit he lead by his ego and shut down the entire games section sealing the fate of NWN until Bioware secured the rights to make their version of an NWN game.

SlyLoK · February 2016

I used AOL games for one month.. Got the bill then went to Gamestorm for $9.95 a month. There I found some of the best games ever.. Warcraft , Air Warrior , Legends of Kesmai , MP Battletech , Aliens Online , Silent Death , Magestorm , Darkness Falls and plenty more.

Course EA eventually bought Gamestorm and some of the titles ( KesCo titles if I remember. Still using the code from those games today ). Shut the games down and then eventually Gamestorm once they ran everyone off ( tried to move everyone to UO - Sent everyone a disc ). Sad too.. Gamestorm went from 50k-100k concurrent users to barely breaking 10k very quickly.

When people say first MMO.. Do they not include the 2D tile based or text based variants that came prior? They had many players at once also and the worlds were huge as well.

Jaiml · February 2016

My memory may be fooling me (sometimes you remember things better than they were). BUT being able to capture an opposing guilds Guild Hall in M59 was fun. Various sizes and locations were a neat touch. These new "modern" instanced Guild Halls with everyone having the same ones does not cut it.

As for NWN... I was in college and could not afford to play. I still remember pouring over magazine articles about the game. I remember making plans on how to schedule 6 hours of play time in my week once I had a job and could hopefully afford to pay for that much play time!

I'm sure memories are flowering everything up and painting out the bad stuff. It sure seemed like a great time back then!

ULBlue13 · April 2016

NWN on AOL and Shadows of Yserbius as well as Underlight (mentioned above) were non text MMO's. Again, out before M59 as those of us simply referred to it as at that time. They were great games. Better sadly than most modern games which could learn quite a bit from their examples.

Just found this thread on a search. Some of you might like to know that Underlight is also active - in fact, it more or less never went away. It's free-to-play now. It relaunched as Underlight: Shades of Truth, then as Underlight: Clash of Dreams which is what it is now. (Its website has recently moved back to the original address Underlight.com, after a long series of to-ings and fro-ings.) Still on the same basis as ever; no NPCs, ALL the game characters are the players or GMs, and their actions (plus live interference from GMs from time to time) determine the storyline. (And, yes, the exact same endearing graphics, but it doesn't matter, the sheer variety makes up for the technical primitiveness). Thriving recently with a good number of new players joining, the problem used to be that I'd log in and find nobody much to interact with, but in the last few months it's been bustling and great fun to play.

I always have a special interest in Underlight, because it's like no other MMORPG that I know of - I suppose that comes of having been built before time had settled what an MMORPG was supposed to be like; it dates from the Cambrian Explosion of online games!

mikeb0817 · April 2016

Wait, wasn't The Realm Online around before M59?

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