Behind history are people and stories, some of them well-known and some of them obscure. It has been my mission in The Game Archaeologist to research, document, and share these tales with you so that we will end up with a semi-comprehensive overview of the MMORPG genre’s history to date.
As I did last December, I’m once again delivering a comprehensive guide to all of the articles in this series sorted by decade and category so that perhaps you, too, may discover a few MMOs you never knew existed and trace the fascinating course of this genre’s history. I’ve added all of the new columns from 2019, so that you can catch up on any that you have missed. Enjoy!
Proto-MMOs from the 1970s and 1980s
- Air Warrior and Legends of Kesmai
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Lucasfilm’s Habitat
- The Island of Kesmai
- Maze War
- Monster
- A brief history of multi-user dungeons (MUDs)
- The Plato MMOs
- Sceptre of Goth
MMOs from the 1990s
- BBS door games
- Castle Infinity
- Dark Sun Online
- The 4th Coming
- Fates of Twinion and Ruins of Cawdor
- Furcadia
- Kingdom of Drakkar
- Lineage
- Mankind
- Mythic’s early online games part one and part two
- Meridian 59
- Multiplayer Battletech
- AOL’s Neverwinter Nights
- Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2
- Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds
- The Realm Online
- The Shadow of Yserbius
- Sega’s 10Six
- Terra, SubSpace, and Sovereign
- Tibia
- Underlight
MMOs from the 2000s
- Anarchy Online
- Asheron’s Call
- Asheron’s Call 2
- The Chronicles of Spellborn
- City of Heroes part one, part two, part three, part four, part five
- Dark Age of Camelot
- Dungeon Runners
- Earth and Beyond
- EverQuest Online Adventures
- EverQuest II East
- EverQuest Mac
- Fallen Age
- Fury
- Hellgate London
- EA’s Majestic
- Myst Online Uru Live
- Neocron
- Phantasy Star Online
- Puzzle Pirates
- Rubies of Eventide
- Saga of Ryzom
- Seed
- Shadowbane
- Shattered Galaxy
- A Tale in the Desert
- The Sims Online
- Disney’s Toontown Online
- Warhammer Online
- Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
MMOs that never launched
- SOE’s The Agency
- Interplay’s Fallout Online
- Guild Wars Utopia
- Halo Universe
- Harry Potter Online
- Hero’s Journey
- Highlander Online
- Mythic’s Imperator Online
- Lost Colony
- Middle-earth Online
- Funcom’s Midgard
- Microsoft’s Mythica
- Project Copernicus
- Stargate Worlds
- Perpetual’s Star Trek Online
- True Fantasy Live Online
- Ultima Worlds Online Origin
- Ultima X Odyssey
- Climax’s Warhammer Online
- Wing Commander Online and Privateer Online
- Wish
Miscellania
- Remembering the life and work of Brad ‘Aradune’ McQuaid
- The day Dungeons and Dragons Online dropped the free-to-play bomb
- Is it worth the hassle to update graphics in older MMORPGs?
- Ironman modes and elective permadeath
- A history of EverQuest expansions
- Raph Koster on MUDs and Privateer Online
- Revisiting the first three months of World of Warcraft
- Where are all of the open-source MMOs?
- How DikuMud shaped modern MMOs
- A talk with the man behind EQOA’s revival project
- Six Halloween holidays from buried MMOs
- Six videos from MMOs that never launched
- Eight launch trailers from classic MMOs
- Talking with the Asheron’s Call superfan
- Five eye-opening videos about the MMO genre
- Ten strange pre-release facts about World of Warcraft
- Online gaming service providers from the ’80s and ’90s
- The assassination of Lord British
- Star Wars Galaxies’ NGE
- Seven MMOs operating on borrowed time
- What Star Wars Galaxies life was like before the NGE
- Ten facts of EverQuest life circa 1999
- Ten more facts of EverQuest life circa 1999
Believe it or not, MMOs did exist prior to World of Warcraft! Every two weeks, The Game Archaeologist looks back at classic online games and their history to learn a thing or two about where the industry came from… and where it might be heading.
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