the game archaeologist

Justin Olivetti is Massively Overpowered’s resident Game Archaeologist; he never lets a good old game stay buried. [Follow this column’s RSS feed]

Wow.

The Game Archaeologist: A look back at proto-MMOs through the 1980s

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Today I want to try something a little different as we look at MMORPG history. Rather than focus in on a single title or...

The Game Archaeologist: World of Warcraft in the 1990s

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MMORPGs don't pop out of nowhere, ex nihilo, to suddenly be enjoyed by players across the globe. Good ones take several years, dozens of...

The Game Archaeologist: Runes of Magic, an MMO that made millions disappear

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In more ways than one, the year 2004 was a pivotal one for the MMORPG community. Even as games like City of Heroes, EverQuest...

The Game Archaeologist: Dragon Ball Online, the MMO that never made it to the west

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It was back in 1986 that Toei Animation, a Japanese company, brought a new series called Dragon Ball into the world. The initial run...
KITTY!

Tamriel Infinium: The history of Elder Scrolls games (before and after Elder Scrolls Online)

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There's nothing quite like that feeling when you first dip your toes into a particular game only to discover that it's part of a...
Something fell.

The Game Archaeologist’s ultimate MMO archives v7.0

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Once again we put a wrap on another year of MMORPG news, opinions, and -- most pertinent to this column -- history. In a...

The Game Archaeologist: The Sims Bustin’ Out, the online Sims game nobody remembers

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Many gamers who complete that Venn diagram of being fans of both MMOs and The Sims no doubt will be familiar with the tragically...

The Game Archaeologist: Firefall, an MMO tragedy about more than just a bus

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Back when I first started writing for Massively and was energetic enough to go on trips to trade shows, I hit up a PAX...

The Game Archaeologist: Gameline, the Atari 2600 digital storefront

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Modern MMO gamers are blessed with plenty of conveniences that we take for granted. One such convenience is the ability to simply download any...

The Game Archaeologist: EverQuest Mac, the O.G. classic server

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In 2003, Sony Online Entertainment tried an experiment to reach out to the (then) small-but-growing community of Mac users. The company released EverQuest Macintosh...

The Game Archaeologist: Coca-Cola’s crazy virtual hangout

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Part of the sheer joy and fun of the early online world of the late '90s and early 2000s was the experimentation that took...

The Game Archaeologist: Pirates of the Caribbean Online

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In 1967, Disneyland opened one of its most iconic attractions: a dark boat ride called Pirates of the Caribbean. A large fandom surrounding the...

The Game Archaeologist: PlaneShift, the poster child of open-source MMOs

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As the character creation screen fades out, a dark vista fades into being. The fledgling adventurer looks around at dim shapes and sinister movements...

The Game Archaeologist’s ultimate MMO archives v6.0

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And that's a wrap on this year in history! While everyone says farewell to 2022, here at TGA we're always looking way back at...
This took some work.

The Game Archaeologist: Wizardry Online, the short-lived permadeath MMO

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While the Wizardry series may not have the cultural cache that Ultima or Final Fantasy ended up with, nevertheless the dungeon crawling RPG series...

The Game Archaeologist: The radically different design of early EverQuest II

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Sometimes it's all about timing -- both good and bad -- when it comes to MMORPG releases. EverQuest II may go down as the...

The Game Archaeologist: Dark Ages, the weird lovechild of Celtic lore and Lovecraftian legends

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While the online world was fascinated by "the Big Three" Western MMOs in 1999 -- that would be EverQuest, Ultima Online, and Asheron's Call...

The Game Archaeologist: The legacy of Ultima Online

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Last week in The Game Archaeologist, we traced the history of Ultima Online’s origin, development, and testing -- not to mention one pesky in-game...

The Game Archaeologist: How Ultima Online got made

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You know how there’s that yokel in every global chat channel that likes to troll players by claiming that World of Warcraft was the...

The Game Archaeologist: MegaWars, the Star Trek online sim from the ’70s

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When we look at the early days of online computer gaming, it shouldn't be a surprise that the geeky crowd that was working on...

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