When we moved over here to Massively Overpowered, some of us transplanted our long-running columns to the new space. I perhaps felt most devastated that I was going to lose all of the Game Archaeologist articles that I had painstakingly researched over the years. So my mission with this space became two-fold: to rescue and update my older columns while continuing to add more articles to this series on classic MMOs and proto-MMOs.
I’ve been pleased with the results so far because TGA is a series that I really don’t want to see vanish. As MMORPG fans, we should consider it important to remember and learn about these older titles and to expand our knowledge past the more popular and well-known games of yesteryear.
Now that we have quite a catalogue of Game Archaeologist columns, I thought it would be helpful to end the year by gifting this handy guide to you that organizes and compiles our continuing look at the history of the genre. Enjoy!
Proto-MMOs
MMOs from the 1990s
- Dark Sun Online
- The 4th Coming
- Furcadia
- Kingdom of Drakkar
- Mythic’s early online games part one and part two
- Meridian 59
- Multiplayer Battletech
- AOL’s Neverwinter Nights
- Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds
- The Shadow of Yserbius
- Sega’s 10Six
- Tibia
- Underlight
MMOs from the 2000s
- Anarchy Online
- Asheron’s Call
- Asheron’s Call 2
- The Chronicles of Spellborn
- Dark Age of Camelot
- Earth and Beyond
- EverQuest Online Adventures
- EverQuest II East
- EA’s Majestic
- Myst Online Uru Live
- Phantasy Star Online
- Puzzle Pirates
- Rubies of Eventide
- Saga of Ryzom
- Seed
- Shadowbane
- The Sims Online
- Disney’s Toontown Online
- Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
MMOs that never launched
- SOE’s The Agency
- Guild Wars Utopia
- Hero’s Journey
- Highlander Online
- Mythic’s Imperator Online
- Middle-earth Online
- Microsoft’s Mythica
- 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
- Revisiting the first three months of World of Warcraft
- Where are all of the open-source MMOs?
- When Hellgate London got Flagshipped
- 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.
