Video history of MMOs

[Mrbloodworth]

MMO Part 1: Crawling Through the MUD

MMO Part 2: Expansions

MMO Part 3: High Level

MMO Part 4: End Game Content

Discuss:

[Raph]

I blogged it here, with commentary:

http://www.raphkoster.com/2011/11/30/3-part-video-history-of-mmos/

There's some additions to the history in the comment thread.

Never did watch the 4th part.

[koro]

A decent enough series even though, as Raph and co. mention on his site, it's woefully incomplete and fairly simplistic. That said, I imagine it was more designed as a brief primer into the history of the genre for the people who never heard of anything that came before WoW; if that was its goal, I'd say it did it well enough.

At the very least it'd be a good jumping-off point for a much longer and more in-depth series on the subject.

[shiznitz]

I thought it was a decent job - from the point of view of a non-industry person.  It gave UO and Meridian the due they deserve but often do not get.  I also agreed with the diagnoses on why some worked and others didn't.   How reliable are the revenue and subscriber figures used?  Some of that was new to me.

I was glad that Second Life was ignored. It wasn't a MMO but it does get lumped into the genre sometimes.

[Chimpy]

They did make it sound like WoW came up with the whole "expand the existing game" idea, even though EQ had been doing it before.

[Sky]

I love the bit about UO's ecosystem.

My second beta character was named Slim Pickens, because, well they were.

[Raph]

They did make it sound like WoW came up with the whole "expand the existing game" idea, even though EQ had been doing it before.

UO did it before EQ, and every MUD ever did it too, going clear back to the first one.

There really are not THAT many innovations that you can credit to WoW. They popularized pure quest-driven play, which I don't think had ever been taken to that extreme before. But really, most of the best qualities of WoW fall under polish, not invention.

[Sky]

Another thing he oddly left out (because he mentioned bang's influence on lineage) was libraries. A whole generation of online gamers played runescape at the library, I've been here for the whole cycle of it and it's been pretty interesting to watch. Especially the awesome day you show some kid the setting to maximize it on a big imac screen. It's fun watching it works it viral magic, kids bringing in their friends, gear them up and walk them through stuff.

I'd estimate we get about a hundred gamers through our doors daily, and that's pretty conservative because I'm just counting those using our computers. Runescape/popcap/zynga folks. Also get a few that regularly game on their laptops in the back area, but that's a small clique.

[Mrbloodworth]

Do you ever do a kiosk of medieval and fantasy books near the computers?

[Ghambit]

Part 1 is a bit too objective and quick imo.  The main thrust for MUDs came from the tabletop gaming sector and really nowhere else.  D&D grognards wanted the 'verse on their rigs, so they raped the systems and lore and pasted them into their local BBSs.  Insta-mmo.  That's really when it all started to take off and for no other reason.

I'd say w/o tabletop gaming influences you'd have seen at least a 5-yr lag time in development at that time.  Just imagine for sec. if D&D never existed.

After that, it was AOL driving mainstream multiplayer influence.  Again, w/o that...  the genre would've been delayed.

[jcthebuilder]

The Ultima Online footage of the Stygian Dragon was from a video I took of our guild killing it the first time.

That Everquest footage looked hilariously bad. I don't remember the graphics being that basic. Maybe it was mostly alpha/beta footage.

[Kageru]

Everquest looked like I remember it. The early UI, small graphic window and graphics on low for could still stress machines of the time, but it opened up. Especially with the jump to the new UI.

Very interesting watch, a nice way to be able to see some antique games in a roughly chronological and thematic order. Some more analysis of why recent games did not seriously challenge wow would be interesting but I guess that is seen as being open to debate / inflammatory and thus skipped. The importance of WoW being it's massive scale and solid new user experience is safe enough.

I'd say w/o tabletop gaming influences you'd have seen at least a 5-yr lag time in development at that time.  Just imagine for sec. if D&D never existed.

I doubt it would have changed much. Using a computer to automate games is a pretty natural step. It could have started from miniature / simulation rules like D&D did and probably would have ended up somewhere similar. Indeed it might have done better since a lot of the D&D rules don't translate to computer that well or are over-simplified to ease the effort of book-keeping.

[Merusk]

The memory never matches reality and time is unkind to technology - especially graphics.

At the time you may have labeled them as "mediocre" but "great spell effects."  That was at the time.   If you haven't looked at the screenshots in the years since your memory tends to selectively upgrade them or fill-in with the imagination.

No, that's really how it looked.  Yes, we all thought it was pretty cool.

For another illustration of this, think back to the first 'really fast' computer you worked with. How amazed you were at it's responsiveness and boot time.   Now remember the /actual/ specs of that machine and compare them to the "crappy floor models" of today.  (Note, this won't work as well for those under 25.)

My goddamn laser mouse has more processing power than my first computer.