Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Well, hello
Speaker 1: again everyone, and welcome to tech stuff. My name is
Speaker 1: Chris Polette, and I am an editor at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Sitting across from me, as he typically
Speaker 1: does when we record podcasts, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: You enter a dark room that smells of mold. One
Speaker 1: sputtering torch is the only light source. A rough hewn
Speaker 1: oak table sits at the center of the floor, surrounded
Speaker 1: by overturned chairs. On the table is a spoiled banquet
Speaker 1: left untouched for at least several days. As you glance around,
Speaker 1: you hear a quiet click, the sound of a trap
Speaker 1: going off. Quick roll, you're saving brow'd do you're you're
Speaker 1: you haven't. You took an arrow to the knee, so
Speaker 1: you will now be a guards So I can no
Speaker 1: longer be an adventurer, not like me. So we are
Speaker 1: today going to talk about the history of massively multiplayer
Speaker 1: online role playing games, and it all actually stems back
Speaker 1: to what I was just alluding to, and all of
Speaker 1: you guys out there who are big D n D
Speaker 1: fans picked up on it. I'm sure immediately we're talking
Speaker 1: about dudgeons and dragons, and it's important to talk about
Speaker 1: dungeons and dragons first to understand why m m O
Speaker 1: RPGs exist at all. Yeah, now, there were some computer
Speaker 1: role playing games, but they weren't like what we think
Speaker 1: of today and then and really they came around right
Speaker 1: about the same time as D and D took off.
Speaker 1: So let's let's start with um, let's start with D
Speaker 1: n D first of all to kind of explain what's
Speaker 1: going on. So we're not we're not even talking about
Speaker 1: D n D online. We're actually talking about specifically about
Speaker 1: the pencil and paper and dice and all that jazz
Speaker 1: game screens, etcetera. So back in nineteen uh, there were
Speaker 1: some some some guys who had created a war game,
Speaker 1: a miniature's war game called chain Mail. All right, now,
Speaker 1: war games are they've been around for a while, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's where you essentially have figures that represent military units,
Speaker 1: or you might even have what they used to call chits,
Speaker 1: those little pieces of cardboard that had the little number.
Speaker 1: It kind of looked like, Um, if you haven't seen
Speaker 1: these old style things. They actually sort of look like
Speaker 1: the periodic table. They have the picture of your unit
Speaker 1: and how many hit points it has and all that stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: So the ideas that you would try and uh out
Speaker 1: strategicize your opponent playing on a map, and the map
Speaker 1: might have even topographical elements that would indicate how you
Speaker 1: might have an advantage or disadvantage in a given situation,
Speaker 1: depending upon your unit and where your enemy is located.
Speaker 1: And anyway, the whole game was this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: matching wits against an opponent. Well, chain mailind of brought
Speaker 1: that down a little bit. Chain Mail was an idea
Speaker 1: of using smaller units in very specific circumstances, like say
Speaker 1: in castle or a dungeon. But then the game creators,
Speaker 1: among them a certain Gary Gygax, I feel like I've
Speaker 1: heard that name before, UH, decided that what if we
Speaker 1: were to to to change this. So instead of playing,
Speaker 1: you know, controlling units, you control a specific character, someone
Speaker 1: who has a personality of background, UH, goals, motivations. UH.
Speaker 1: They have their own abilities and their own disadvantages, and
Speaker 1: you were to take on this role within an adventure.
Speaker 1: And that was that where the whole role playing game
Speaker 1: idea kind of spawned out of You would have someone
Speaker 1: who is in charge of explaining all the environments and
Speaker 1: taking care of all the game mechanics on the back end.
Speaker 1: That would be the dungeon master or game master. And
Speaker 1: then the players would each control a character and would
Speaker 1: try and pursue certain goals dependent upon the game itself
Speaker 1: and that character's personality. And this was kind of a
Speaker 1: radical idea at the time, back in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: and uh it called I could I guess you could
Speaker 1: say it was a popular idea, particularly among high school
Speaker 1: and college students. Now, your characters when when you first
Speaker 1: started there, there are some elements of chance involved here. Um.
Speaker 1: When you first create your character, uh, you roll the
Speaker 1: dice to to determine what the character's characteristics are. Their attributes. Yeah, like, um,
Speaker 1: for example, of strength, how strong that person is, or
Speaker 1: or how much dexterity that person has the ability to
Speaker 1: get out of the way when somebody's swinging an axe
Speaker 1: at their head. Um. Now, I haven't played D and
Speaker 1: D for about twenty years, but I remember that it
Speaker 1: used to range between three and eighteen for normal characters. Yes,
Speaker 1: because you roll, Um, the thing is um with the uh.
Speaker 1: You know that that's one aspect of it too. But
Speaker 1: the dungeon master or game master would use a screen
Speaker 1: to hide the dungeon or whatever it is that you
Speaker 1: were going and venturing in, so you didn't really know.
Speaker 1: Unlike those other games where you could see there were
Speaker 1: mountains ahead of your characters, you could go around the
Speaker 1: mountains when you came, Um, you'll be riding six white horses.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, um, in a dungeon and in D and D,
Speaker 1: you didn't necessarily know. And this is the difference in
Speaker 1: a role playing game and those other games. You are
Speaker 1: actually pretending to be, you know, this character. So uh.
Speaker 1: One of the first things I had to learn and
Speaker 1: I when I started playing dn D, I was I
Speaker 1: think eight years old or nine years old. Um, you
Speaker 1: had to learn that you can't see what's going on,
Speaker 1: so you have to remember to ask what do I see?
Speaker 1: What do I hear? You know, and the dungeon master
Speaker 1: might not necessarily tell you you hear the click of
Speaker 1: a trap unless you ask, like, well, you just heard
Speaker 1: a clicking noise? Oh right, that clicking noises and D
Speaker 1: n D were never a good thing. But you also
Speaker 1: you also had different play styles. Right. You had people
Speaker 1: who would play very achievement oriented, Right. They wanted to
Speaker 1: they wanted to get whatever the goal was, and it
Speaker 1: was less about the experience of being a character. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you had people who really kind of embraced
Speaker 1: the idea of role playing being someone else and to
Speaker 1: really kind of try and drive that aspect more than
Speaker 1: the rules necessarily. So you you kind of had these
Speaker 1: two types subcategories of players rule rule players that were
Speaker 1: all about the statistics and and getting the good roles
Speaker 1: and getting the best equipment for their character because it
Speaker 1: would guarantee their success that kind of thing, and role
Speaker 1: players who are more interested in the personality aspects. Most
Speaker 1: most players fall somewhere within that spectrum. Between those two.
Speaker 1: The same thing holds true by the way of m
Speaker 1: m O RPGs. So the only reason I even mentioned
Speaker 1: all of that is so that we have the foundation
Speaker 1: to build upon, so that we understand once we get
Speaker 1: into m m O RPGs why they're a big deal. Well,
Speaker 1: computer role playing games have been around, like I said,
Speaker 1: about as long as uh Dungeons and Dragons have, because
Speaker 1: that was they sort of went around at um. The
Speaker 1: rise of personal computers on the desktop. Uh right, right
Speaker 1: about the same time that the mid to late seventies,
Speaker 1: and they got popular in high schools and colleges, which
Speaker 1: were breeding grounds not just for role playing games, but
Speaker 1: for computer sciences. Yes, yes, that's true. Uh. The thing is,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that that Dungeons and Dragons and
Speaker 1: other role playing games took off was because it gave
Speaker 1: you an opportunity to play a game with your friends.
Speaker 1: You weren't sitting at home on one machine interacting with
Speaker 1: the game on the machine. I mean that was fun too.
Speaker 1: I like playing uh those games by myself. Also, we
Speaker 1: usually call those c RPGs computer role playing games. They
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have a multiplayer element to them, right, but
Speaker 1: but the multiplayer games, both on paper and and computers,
Speaker 1: give you an opportunity to uh go through the experience
Speaker 1: with other people and uh, which which can be fun
Speaker 1: because you never know what those other people are are
Speaker 1: going to do. And it also gives you this feeling
Speaker 1: of camaraderie es pre decor if you will, and and
Speaker 1: depending upon the game, it may allow certain players to
Speaker 1: band together and oppose other players. So you can even
Speaker 1: have elements within the game where you've got a struggle
Speaker 1: between two groups of players, and if the game is
Speaker 1: designed properly, meaning that it's you know, a dynamic element
Speaker 1: to it, you might even be able to have players
Speaker 1: actually influence the course of the game's world, which is
Speaker 1: pretty tricky because you know, that's a very delicate balance
Speaker 1: to to create when you are a developer. You don't
Speaker 1: want to make it so easy to affect the game's
Speaker 1: world that it is UH that that one group of
Speaker 1: players essentially dominates and makes all the determine nations of
Speaker 1: where the game's world is going. At the same time,
Speaker 1: you don't want it to be so static that it
Speaker 1: feels like no matter what you do, you don't influence
Speaker 1: the outcome. It's a really tricky balance. Well, I would UH.
Speaker 1: I would argue that one of the things that makes
Speaker 1: UH online role playing games so much fun UH is
Speaker 1: not necessarily the high graphics elements. I think the the
Speaker 1: the element of play is most important. That's one of
Speaker 1: the things. I mean, you don't see these things, these
Speaker 1: fantastic UH animations of spells and and UH sword play
Speaker 1: and whatever else that you might happen to be engaged
Speaker 1: in when you're playing a tabletop role playing game because
Speaker 1: imagine what imagine it. It's this thing that we used
Speaker 1: to do before there was the internet. Well, I I
Speaker 1: do love looking at the amazing graphics work of some
Speaker 1: of these game studios now, but um, you know, the
Speaker 1: very first online role playing games were text based. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in fact, we can talk a little about them. First
Speaker 1: of all, I wanna define a couple of terms for
Speaker 1: the very earliest games. Some of them were built on
Speaker 1: something called PLATO, which is an acronym for Programmed Logic
Speaker 1: for Automated Teaching Operations. Here's the funny thing, this sucker
Speaker 1: pre dates pretty much all of this stuff that we're talking.
Speaker 1: PLATO actually came out before D and D the tabletop
Speaker 1: game came out early sixties actually. But but PLATO was
Speaker 1: all about. It was supposed to be an educational platform,
Speaker 1: which of course meant that students immediately figured out ways
Speaker 1: to play games on it, and uh like almost immediately.
Speaker 1: This is for education. I want to kill stuff. So, um,
Speaker 1: the University of Illinois built programmed Logic for automated teaching operations.
Speaker 1: So it's a platform that could run on network to computers. Now,
Speaker 1: these computers are networked to one another, they are not
Speaker 1: networked into a larger network. Think land Party, not the Internet, right,
Speaker 1: and uh, immediately you had students start to figure out
Speaker 1: ways to create games because it meant that they could
Speaker 1: link it to other students and have a social experience
Speaker 1: on a computer, which just shows you that, you know,
Speaker 1: we are very social creatures. The you know, the first
Speaker 1: thing we start looking at is how can we use
Speaker 1: this machine to connect to other people? So that's one
Speaker 1: acronym you need to know. Another one is MUD, which
Speaker 1: stands for multi user dungeons, not not what happens when
Speaker 1: you add water to earth um, which just makes me
Speaker 1: almost go off on a brack tangent. But I'm not
Speaker 1: going to what happened to the water. Uh So Also
Speaker 1: with mud come a couple of other um uh topics
Speaker 1: or a couple other acronyms, MoU and mush. Have you
Speaker 1: heard about those? So a move is a move is
Speaker 1: an acronym that has an acronym in it because move
Speaker 1: stands for mud object oriented, MUSH stands for mud users.
Speaker 1: Shared hallucination or shared hack or shared habitat or shared holiday.
Speaker 1: It really depends on who you ask. They're all pretty similar.
Speaker 1: But but these are basically the frameworks within which people
Speaker 1: built games. Now back in there was a game that
Speaker 1: came out called Colossal Cave Adventure sometimes just called Adventure
Speaker 1: by William Crowther and it was a single player text
Speaker 1: based game, but it was what created the foundation for
Speaker 1: some of the multi user games that came after it.
Speaker 1: UH In ninety seven and published in seventy eight, a
Speaker 1: game called Maria came out, and now Maria was built
Speaker 1: on top of Plato. There were other games that came
Speaker 1: out before Maria, but Maria is one of the more
Speaker 1: famous ones, and it allowed up to ten players to
Speaker 1: get together in a party and go on a dungeon
Speaker 1: crawling adventure UH. And it was created with these these
Speaker 1: very simple vector graphics like a UM. You know, you
Speaker 1: see like the green wall with a green door outline
Speaker 1: on it, and you would push a command that would
Speaker 1: knock the door open and then you might have an
Speaker 1: encounter afterward, you might find treasure, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing about it was not only did it
Speaker 1: allow up to tend people to play that that itself
Speaker 1: was interesting, but it also created the dungeons um every
Speaker 1: time you played, so the dungeons were not pre generated,
Speaker 1: they generated dynamically when you would play the game, so
Speaker 1: you would never necessarily have the same experience twice because
Speaker 1: the dungeon would be randomly created when you started. UM
Speaker 1: and UH. So that that was sort of an early
Speaker 1: example of how people were trying to kind of port
Speaker 1: the experience of playing Dungeons and Dragons or a game
Speaker 1: like D and D to a computer environment and not
Speaker 1: have it be a single player playing with computer generated characters,
Speaker 1: although there are plenty of examples of that as well.
Speaker 1: UM and then in nineteen seventy eight, a fellow named
Speaker 1: Roy Trubshaw created the very first multi user dungeon and
Speaker 1: it was called Mud. That's why we call the MUDs
Speaker 1: because he made it. It was he was in Essex University,
Speaker 1: and so Mud became the generic term for games that
Speaker 1: were built in this way. UM and it became very
Speaker 1: very popular. And then eventually again these were on network computers.
Speaker 1: There was no Internet yet, but Trubshaw connected his game
Speaker 1: to the ARPA net in nineteen eighty, so suddenly you
Speaker 1: had essentially the ancestor too massively multiplayer online role playing games.
Speaker 1: Because it made it gave access to people beyond just
Speaker 1: folks who had uh the access to those specific computers
Speaker 1: within Essex University to play. Yeah, my my notes have
Speaker 1: the game down as being called Dungeon d U N
Speaker 1: G E N. Yeah, I have it as it was
Speaker 1: called multi User Dungeon. So yeah, yeah, but by the
Speaker 1: same same thing. I mean, that's that is where mud
Speaker 1: came from. They probably, I'm sure it was called dungeon,
Speaker 1: just as uh for shorthand the next one I have
Speaker 1: doesn't pop up til do you have anything you wanted
Speaker 1: to mention before I go to that? Okay. So in
Speaker 1: the University of Virginia there were a couple of classmates,
Speaker 1: John Taylor and Kelton Flynn, and they created a game
Speaker 1: called The Dungeons of Kezm, which was a six player game,
Speaker 1: and it was also inspired by duchess and dragons, and
Speaker 1: it used as key graphics to represent elements of the game. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's making me think of some of the old games
Speaker 1: I used to play. And they also founded a company
Speaker 1: in eight two called the Kezmi Company. A few years later,
Speaker 1: they I'll mention it when it happens, but they would
Speaker 1: come up with another game that would be uh kind
Speaker 1: of a big influence on online role playing games in
Speaker 1: the future. UH. In any four, you had a fellow
Speaker 1: named Mark Peterson who wrote The Realm of ang Mar
Speaker 1: and Uh. It was originally a kind of an offshoot
Speaker 1: of another game called The Scepter of Goth and Uh.
Speaker 1: In ninety four Peterson rewrote it and adapted it for
Speaker 1: MS DOSS, which I don't know how many of you
Speaker 1: guys remember MS DOSS. That's pre windows UM, but that
Speaker 1: was the that formed the basis of a game that
Speaker 1: ended up being found on a lot of bulletin board systems. So,
Speaker 1: if you guys heard our episode about bbs IS, you
Speaker 1: know that there used to be these communities. Still aren't
Speaker 1: in many cases, but there were these communities that were
Speaker 1: housed on individual, private individuals computers, although you could also
Speaker 1: have companies that do this too, but you could have
Speaker 1: a private individual who would open up their computer to
Speaker 1: allow other people to dial into their computer to access
Speaker 1: files and play games. This is one of the games
Speaker 1: that was found on a lot of bbs is. And
Speaker 1: if the BBS would allow multiple people to call in
Speaker 1: at once, if they had multiple lines that would allow
Speaker 1: for that, then you can have people play this game simultaneously. UM.
Speaker 1: And in eight five you had the introduction of Mirror World,
Speaker 1: which was a multi user dungeon that could be run
Speaker 1: on a home computer as opposed to some you know,
Speaker 1: research institution or university's computer. Yeah, I remember the modem
Speaker 1: speeds back then. That was. Yeah. Yeah, I've got an
Speaker 1: interesting thing to mentioned in one about that. Five was
Speaker 1: also the year that the Kezmi Corporation came out with
Speaker 1: Island of Kezmi, which again Kelton Flynn and John Taylor,
Speaker 1: and this ran on compu Serve. Yeah, I've heard of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it was the first commercial multiplayer online role playing game.
Speaker 1: I don't think you could call it massive. Big has
Speaker 1: had a limit to how many players could play one,
Speaker 1: no more than one. Compared compared to the earlier games,
Speaker 1: that's pretty massive. Yeah, compared to you know, the old
Speaker 1: the Older Kids My game where six people could play,
Speaker 1: or even the the the ten player Maria game, it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's I think it's almost ten times that. Wow.
Speaker 1: So I'm not that stupid people, almost but not quite.
Speaker 1: An interesting game comes out interesting for a couple of
Speaker 1: reasons because, for one thing, you can confuse it with
Speaker 1: another game by the same name. Never Winter Nights by
Speaker 1: Don Daglo and Catherine Mattega comes out has no connection
Speaker 1: at all to the Never Winter Nights game that came
Speaker 1: out by BioWare. But this game ran on A O L.
Speaker 1: And I've heard of it. I used that joke already.
Speaker 1: They and A O L used an interesting pricing mechanism.
Speaker 1: So this is a commercial game. You had to pay
Speaker 1: to play. And the way it worked was that you
Speaker 1: would pay six dollars an hour to play this game
Speaker 1: at three hundred bawd. And when we were talking hours,
Speaker 1: that's about how long it would take to load to
Speaker 1: make a move. Uh. For twelve dollars an hour, you
Speaker 1: could play at Hey, that's just screaming fast, right, It's
Speaker 1: it's screaming all right. I don't know if it's screaming fast.
Speaker 1: And this was the first graphics based M M O RPG. Uh, Now,
Speaker 1: do you have any you want to mention at all
Speaker 1: before we get to ninety, because then I've got the biggie. Well.
Speaker 1: I figured that we were going to talk about the
Speaker 1: the Ultimate series of games because they were important for
Speaker 1: the role playing game world, but they weren't massively multiplayer, right,
Speaker 1: and that yes, that will definitely lead into a very
Speaker 1: important discussion so Ultima. While while we've got this development
Speaker 1: over here with the multi user games, there's still quite
Speaker 1: a bit of work being done in single player computer
Speaker 1: role play games. Oh absolutely, they were huge and one
Speaker 1: of the one of the people who was really spearheading
Speaker 1: this movement. We've actually we did an entire episode on him,
Speaker 1: Richard Garriott, the Lord British of the Ultimate series. He
Speaker 1: founded the Ultimate series. First game was Al Kalabeth, which
Speaker 1: then eventually of which he was in college at the time. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, he actually chopped out of college because his
Speaker 1: computer game business took off so well. His dad, by
Speaker 1: the way, astronaut. Yes, dad's an astronaut. He jumps out
Speaker 1: of college, makes millions of dollars. But yeah, they were
Speaker 1: he was working with. Don't take that as a lesson, kids,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying drop out of college. Your mileage may
Speaker 1: very yes. Um. Yeah, he was talking in one about
Speaker 1: the possibility of an online version of Ultima. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Ultima was a series that he created after his first
Speaker 1: success in computer role playing games and then Ultimate. Uh.
Speaker 1: The original Ultimate games were kind of your standard hack
Speaker 1: and slash RPG type games where you took on the
Speaker 1: role of a character and tried to defeat some sort
Speaker 1: of massively evil villain. But after Ultimate three UH, Richard
Speaker 1: Garriott took an interesting turn. He really began to do
Speaker 1: something new with computer role playing games. He created the
Speaker 1: concept of UH. Well, it didn't create the concept, but
Speaker 1: he incorporated the concept of morality and how your choices
Speaker 1: can affect gameplay and UH. In Ultima four, you took
Speaker 1: on the role of a character called the Avatar, who
Speaker 1: was supposed to be the exemplification of all the best
Speaker 1: traits in the world. He was supposed to be the
Speaker 1: the paragon of virtue. And if you, um, if you
Speaker 1: played like a nasty person and you stole stuff and
Speaker 1: you killed innocence, you could not win the game. It
Speaker 1: was impossible to win the game because in order to
Speaker 1: win the and you had to make lots of sacrifices
Speaker 1: and and be virtuous. And then this sort of gave
Speaker 1: a real shot in the arm to his series. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was already popular, but then it became crazy popular,
Speaker 1: and so he continued to develop the games, and as
Speaker 1: the multi user craze continued, with fairly primitive games compared
Speaker 1: to some of the standalone games on computers, he began
Speaker 1: to turn his eye towards developing an online version of
Speaker 1: this Ultima world now in the meantime, just before he this,
Speaker 1: while while this this whole plan for an online version
Speaker 1: of Ultima was in the earliest development phases, another game
Speaker 1: in ninety six came out called Meridian fifty nine, and
Speaker 1: that was developed by a company called three d O
Speaker 1: which no longer exists. Um they were, They were something
Speaker 1: of an innovator for their time. Yes, um but if
Speaker 1: you've never heard of them, and it's because they've been
Speaker 1: closed for for quite a while. It's one of the
Speaker 1: first massively multiplayer online role playing games ever released by
Speaker 1: a major publisher, and and a lot of the things
Speaker 1: that we associate with m m O RPGs began with
Speaker 1: this game. For one, it had a monthly subscription for
Speaker 1: a flat rate, so you would pay us a flat
Speaker 1: rate each month to play. It had a three D
Speaker 1: first person view of the world in a fantasy setting,
Speaker 1: and uh not all. In fact, a lot of m
Speaker 1: m O RPGs do not take the first person views.
Speaker 1: Several of them take a third person view, where you're
Speaker 1: either behind or or over the character you're playing. Um
Speaker 1: but U three d O ran this game, but then
Speaker 1: it shut down. The three d O shutdown in two
Speaker 1: thousand three, it ceased to be Actually, they closed the
Speaker 1: game on August thirty one, two from what I have, yeah,
Speaker 1: well the game itself still continued because what happened was
Speaker 1: in February Meridian fifty nine was turned over to the
Speaker 1: original technical developers, which were a couple of brothers who
Speaker 1: have opened the game to the public for no charge
Speaker 1: to the player. So there it's running on two servers
Speaker 1: in the United States. But yeah, I love the name
Speaker 1: of the company though, Near Death Studios. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: just the game is when it's running on two servers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's but it's interesting that it's still you know,
Speaker 1: this shows that the people who adopt these games can
Speaker 1: be very passionate, and even when a studio itself is
Speaker 1: in financial trouble, people want those games to continue, which
Speaker 1: is somewhat problematic because how do you keep this going
Speaker 1: when the in order to run the game, you actually
Speaker 1: do have to spend real money. I mean, because you're
Speaker 1: talking about electricity costs, you're talking about server costs, you're
Speaker 1: talking about you know, you might have to have space
Speaker 1: for that machine. It's Uh, it's tough. And um, that's
Speaker 1: not the only time that has happened by a long shot.
Speaker 1: But so at that same time, Richard Garriott and the
Speaker 1: folks over at Origin and later Electronic Cards were working
Speaker 1: on Ultimate Online. Yeah. Ultimate Online was apparently originally supposed
Speaker 1: to go on now, keeping in mind the time frame
Speaker 1: we were originally talking about for that when I met.
Speaker 1: When I brought it up, we were very much in
Speaker 1: the online service provider world and Sierra had its own
Speaker 1: network it was working on, but they ended up shutting
Speaker 1: it down. Um, and Ultimate Online became a an Internet
Speaker 1: m m O RPG, which was probably better for h
Speaker 1: for everyone involved because it gave you a much wider audience.
Speaker 1: I got to actually see this game and action when
Speaker 1: it was in its alpha build, before it even opened
Speaker 1: up to the beta world. Uh and uh, because um,
Speaker 1: Richard Garrett came down to a science fiction convention that
Speaker 1: I go to a lot, dragon Con in Atlanta. So
Speaker 1: Richard Garrett used to be a very frequent guest at
Speaker 1: dragon Con, and in fact, he and I kind of
Speaker 1: struck up a bit of a friendship and we would
Speaker 1: chat about the games and stuff, and he would show
Speaker 1: me the games that were in development, including Ultima Online,
Speaker 1: and it was really a neat thing. It was. It
Speaker 1: was a kind of a new idea. It was building
Speaker 1: on that work that other people have done in previous
Speaker 1: generations of multi user dungeons, but on a huge scale,
Speaker 1: and also created a much more dynamic world. So Ultimate
Speaker 1: Online had a world where, in theory anyway, you had
Speaker 1: ecosystems that could actually be affected by player behavior. So,
Speaker 1: for example, let's say that you are in a forest
Speaker 1: and you decide one day that you are the bunny slayer,
Speaker 1: and you go on a bunny slaying rampage and you
Speaker 1: hack can slash every bunny you can find. Well, there's
Speaker 1: a limited number of bunnies for a given amount of time,
Speaker 1: and as you start slaying these bunnies, there are other consequences.
Speaker 1: For example, there are also wolves in the forest, and
Speaker 1: now all the bunnies are gone, which means that the
Speaker 1: food source for the wolves are gone. You know, they
Speaker 1: no longer have their normal food source, so they might
Speaker 1: actually venture out of the forest and start to attack villagers.
Speaker 1: So you could actually, inadvertently, while slaying bunnies, as any
Speaker 1: good hero would want to do, bring terror and and
Speaker 1: and hardship upon a village because these wolves are now
Speaker 1: attacking people. Uh. On the flip side, if you were
Speaker 1: you know, Wolf's Bane, and you were going out into
Speaker 1: the woods to slay every single wolf you saw, the
Speaker 1: bunny population might explode, and bunnies are everywhere almost like triples. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just a small example of what was dynamically supposed
Speaker 1: to happen in the world. Uh. And and to some
Speaker 1: degree it did work like that, although there were definitely
Speaker 1: some issues as well. It didn't always work exactly the
Speaker 1: way people had planned. And also player behavior really really
Speaker 1: changed that world quite a bit. If you, uh, if
Speaker 1: you've played recent mmorpg more recent MMO RPGs and been
Speaker 1: annoyed at the fact that there are people who are
Speaker 1: playing the game just apparently to make other people miserable,
Speaker 1: called griefers. Yeah, uh, that started pretty much with the
Speaker 1: dawn of mmrpgs. Yeah. Now there were people who would
Speaker 1: lurk just outside of starting areas and waylay characters, and uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes they would just do it just to do it.
Speaker 1: You know. It wasn't they knew you probably were not
Speaker 1: carrying anything of value on you. There was no reason
Speaker 1: to really attack you. There was no real benefit, and
Speaker 1: yet they would do it because they're jerks. Um it. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: and there were a lot of other problems. There were
Speaker 1: people who were finding ways to cheat the system. In fact,
Speaker 1: there was a monumental event. So the game launches in Yeah,
Speaker 1: well August of nine seven. The game has its first
Speaker 1: monumental event. August. What happened? Oh was it ninth? I've
Speaker 1: got eighth. But but you know what I'm talking about, right, Well,
Speaker 1: there was an assassination, yes, of Lord British himself. Now
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Lord British is uh. Normally in the
Speaker 1: game was invulnerable to attack. But um uh, there was
Speaker 1: an in game appearance of Lord British that happened during
Speaker 1: the beta testing of Ultimate Online. So the game had
Speaker 1: not gone gold yet. It was still but it was
Speaker 1: open to players who were in the beta program. And
Speaker 1: uh so Lord British was showing up during an event
Speaker 1: in order to kind of stress test the servers. The
Speaker 1: idea was that if Lord British is there, then most
Speaker 1: of the beta players are going to be logged on
Speaker 1: and this will help the origin and determine how well
Speaker 1: their servers can hold up to the strain of a
Speaker 1: lot of people playing at one time, yes, uh. And
Speaker 1: then depending upon whom you ask, uh, something went terribly wrong.
Speaker 1: Either it was a computer issue or a human issue.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of kind of hard to, uh to
Speaker 1: say what, although I think I know what it really happened.
Speaker 1: What happened is that the server crashed, server reboots. Richard
Speaker 1: Garriott is there as Lord British, server reboots and resets
Speaker 1: Lord British, turning off his invulnerability flag. Richard Garriott does
Speaker 1: not think he needs, does not realize this, and does
Speaker 1: not turn the invulnerability flag back on. And then there
Speaker 1: was a character called Reins who testing out this theory,
Speaker 1: attacked Lord British and killed him. And he was also
Speaker 1: he was not the player behind Rains was already kind
Speaker 1: of a notorious on the servers because he was known
Speaker 1: for exploiting bugs as opposed to reporting bugs, a software
Speaker 1: consul from what I understand, so um uh it was
Speaker 1: also supposedly one of the earliest griefers in the beta program,
Speaker 1: So he was one of these people I was talking
Speaker 1: about in a way, so uh, yeah, they were. He
Speaker 1: was already kind of on thin ice, so that it
Speaker 1: was an amusing situation and it was an irritating situation,
Speaker 1: and uh they you know, the game also even had
Speaker 1: little humorous responses and references to this when it went gold.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was one of those memorable moments in
Speaker 1: m m O RPG history. So Ultimate Online ends up
Speaker 1: being the very first mm O RPG to hit one
Speaker 1: thousand subscribers. It's really successful early on in in the
Speaker 1: in these early early days of the mm O RPG. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the next one that I have is it's going
Speaker 1: to put it to shame even are you talking about
Speaker 1: the one from Variant Interactive Later Sony Online Entertainment premiered
Speaker 1: in ever Crack also known as ever Quest or Rest
Speaker 1: or never Rest. Yeah, lots of different names for this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was again. And what's also interesting is so far
Speaker 1: Maridy in fifty nine Ultima Online request all three fantasy
Speaker 1: based role playing games. Yes, EverQuest launches and it is
Speaker 1: a massive success. Uh. It was in development at the
Speaker 1: same time as Ultimate Online. Had a very different look
Speaker 1: from Ultima Online, although similar setting in the sense of
Speaker 1: it's the sword and sorcery realm. And uh, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was one of those games where eventually, if you were
Speaker 1: talking about an m m O RPG, you were talking
Speaker 1: either about Ultimate Online or ever Request, and EverQuest popularity
Speaker 1: skyrocketed that that might be a and and understatement in
Speaker 1: some ways, and as people would play it for hours
Speaker 1: and hours and and and lose track of time, and
Speaker 1: there were divorces and well and also it was you know,
Speaker 1: they had the benefit of seeing what was not working
Speaker 1: on Ultimate Online and building out their world so that
Speaker 1: it could limit these problems as much as possible. Some
Speaker 1: problems are hard to get around because they are human generated,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to create systems that prevent human behavior
Speaker 1: from happening. Humans are very good at figuring out ways
Speaker 1: to get around systems so that they can be jerks. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just true. We're you know, we're like, hey, I
Speaker 1: really wanted to to to do this one thing. The
Speaker 1: game's not letting me. But I bet if I try
Speaker 1: it this way, it'll work. So yeah, Quest launches. But
Speaker 1: another game also fairly popular, not nearly as popular as
Speaker 1: ever Quest launches, called Asheran's Call. That one was from
Speaker 1: Turbine Entertainment later on taken over by Microsoft and Ashuran's Call.
Speaker 1: Uh another fantasy game. Yeah, yeah, it had it had
Speaker 1: sort of a different system though UH to it. It
Speaker 1: was sort of a loyalty system where you would basically, um,
Speaker 1: there were It was sort of like a lord and
Speaker 1: vassals kind of situation where um, the lord was expected
Speaker 1: to be good to his I assume there were ladies too,
Speaker 1: But basically in in this role, the person at the
Speaker 1: top of the pyramid is supposed to expected to be
Speaker 1: good to their people, um, for which they would be
Speaker 1: rewarded and the people would be able to support their uh,
Speaker 1: the person at the top of the pyramid. So it
Speaker 1: was supposed to kind of feudalism. Yeah, it was really
Speaker 1: supposed to work out in the game, and apparently it
Speaker 1: was sort of a limited success, but it was a different,
Speaker 1: a very different kind of system than than anyone else
Speaker 1: had had. There. There are a couple of games that
Speaker 1: really tried to break the mold UM and that was
Speaker 1: one of them, and and they they've all met with
Speaker 1: varying degrees of success. Um. Two thousand wasn't interesting year
Speaker 1: because that's when Lucas Arts announced UH that it was
Speaker 1: developing a game that initially I was very very eager
Speaker 1: to get my hands on, called Star Wars Galaxies. So
Speaker 1: it's announced in two thousand and the original launch date
Speaker 1: was going to be in two thousand one, but it
Speaker 1: was delayed until two thousand three. Uh. The game. The
Speaker 1: setting of the game, first of all set in the
Speaker 1: Star Wars universe, obviously, but the actual setting of the
Speaker 1: game was set after the events of Episode four, often
Speaker 1: just called Star Wars, also known as a New Hope.
Speaker 1: So and you hope justin It's O Death Stars blown up.
Speaker 1: That's when the game is set. And you could actually
Speaker 1: encounter characters from the films as you played the game. Um,
Speaker 1: but there were a lot of issues people had with
Speaker 1: this game. There were some gameplay issues, there were some
Speaker 1: story issues. There were people who were very upset that
Speaker 1: the Jedi system was kind of weird in Star Wars
Speaker 1: Galaxies in order to be a Jedi, you know, keep
Speaker 1: in mind set during the original trilogy, not a lot
Speaker 1: of Jedi in that original trilogy. You essentially had Luke,
Speaker 1: and then you had you know, Darth Vader of the
Speaker 1: Dark Lord of the Sith, and you had Yoda and
Speaker 1: then as far as you knew that was that was
Speaker 1: it Obi Wan in the first film, but then he
Speaker 1: dies spoiler alert, and so, um, you didn't have that
Speaker 1: any Jedi running around. I mean, the idea was that
Speaker 1: Darth Vader had gone and and pretty much killed all
Speaker 1: the rest of them. So, because you know, they wanted
Speaker 1: the game to be true to the lore of Star
Speaker 1: Wars as much as possible, they did not want it
Speaker 1: to be easy to go out and create a Jedi,
Speaker 1: as if it were, then everyone would go out and
Speaker 1: create a Jedi, and then you'd suddenly have a Star
Speaker 1: Wars universe where a hundred thousand Jedi are running around.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't feel like Star Wars. So what they did
Speaker 1: was they created a system that was difficult to discover
Speaker 1: how to unlock the Jedi. It was almost ah, it
Speaker 1: seemed almost random, like there was this list of criteria
Speaker 1: you had to complete, and the list was never made public.
Speaker 1: But uh so the game longed. In two thousand three,
Speaker 1: the first the first person to unlock the Jedi slot
Speaker 1: character did it within I think four months after the
Speaker 1: game launched. Uh They later on changed the requirements for
Speaker 1: becoming a Jedi and made it a quest that you
Speaker 1: could take, so that you would have a very specific
Speaker 1: pathway you could take in order to become a Jedi.
Speaker 1: Because people were saying Star Wars The coolest people in
Speaker 1: Star Wars are the Jedi. They have They're the ones
Speaker 1: who have all the really cool powers. They have the
Speaker 1: light sabers. These guys are awesome, and you're making it
Speaker 1: impossible for me to find out how to play one.
Speaker 1: So it's a very frustrating experience for people. Well, these
Speaker 1: problems continued, among other issues, including things like reefers and
Speaker 1: cheaters that sort of stuff, and the game was ultimately
Speaker 1: shut down in twven, partially because there was another Star
Speaker 1: Wars game on the horizon, but we'll get to that
Speaker 1: in a little bit. Yeah, I was a little surprised
Speaker 1: that you didn't mention Dark Age of Camelot in two
Speaker 1: thousand one. Well that's just because the Star Wars Galaxies
Speaker 1: was originally and now. But yeah, in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: Dark Age of Camelot came out and that was that
Speaker 1: was an interesting game too, because that focused a lot
Speaker 1: on player versus player gameplay and it was specifically set
Speaker 1: within the the world of King Arthur and legend. Yeah
Speaker 1: another fantasy, but um but yeah, very specific fantasy though,
Speaker 1: that's true. The the interesting thing about this is that
Speaker 1: you had games where player versus player combat was possible
Speaker 1: because a lot of people wanted to have the ability
Speaker 1: to test their characters against other people's characters and play
Speaker 1: against them. There were other games that really stressed UH
Speaker 1: player cooperation, and some did not even allow player versus
Speaker 1: player interaction. You had to you could not attack another player. UH.
Speaker 1: Some games tried to split the difference where within certain
Speaker 1: regions there was no way you could attack another player.
Speaker 1: If you ventured outside of those regions, outside those safe zones,
Speaker 1: then you could attack or be attacked by other players
Speaker 1: and UH. Then there was another way of doing this
Speaker 1: where games would create specific servers where if you would
Speaker 1: log on to certain servers, they'd be player friendly in
Speaker 1: the sense that you are not going to be attacked
Speaker 1: by any other player because that's the kind of server
Speaker 1: it is. And other servers or player versus player servers
Speaker 1: where it's anything goes and lots of different experimentation during
Speaker 1: this time to find out what what's the right way
Speaker 1: of going about it, and to this day companies are
Speaker 1: still experimenting with that. It also had the the people
Speaker 1: in the game, the characters in the game UH as
Speaker 1: part of a basically specific tribes UM basically the the UH,
Speaker 1: the English, the Norse and the Celtic groups when and
Speaker 1: each of them had specific attributes at which they excelled UM.
Speaker 1: For example, the the Celts were particularly good at magic um,
Speaker 1: and UM. The Norse were better at melee combat UM.
Speaker 1: And that's something again. These systems, if you'll notice, the
Speaker 1: systems are the kinds of things that are pretty common
Speaker 1: across all of the the current m m O RPGs.
Speaker 1: But it's sort of like they're being rolled out game
Speaker 1: by game and people are um, they're sort of picking
Speaker 1: up to the point where it's they take a, B, C,
Speaker 1: D and E, where before they were just sort of a, well,
Speaker 1: this is an okay game, but look at this one thing.
Speaker 1: It's so cool. Yeah. Um. Two thousand one was also
Speaker 1: an anarchy online launched as a science fiction based game,
Speaker 1: so breaking the mold. I mean, Star Wars Galaxies had
Speaker 1: not come out yet. It had been announced, but it
Speaker 1: hadn't come out. And you could also argue that Star
Speaker 1: Wars is in fact a fantasy not science fiction. I
Speaker 1: would not argue against that. I think it's both. I
Speaker 1: think that when most of the explanations for the technology
Speaker 1: within Star Wars really boiled down to magic, it pretty
Speaker 1: much just suggest fantasy. Well well yeah, but the thing
Speaker 1: yet well anyway, a lightsabers, a magic sword, it really is.
Speaker 1: But uh, blasters and and land speeders are techno apology,
Speaker 1: which is yeah, yeah, okay, all right, it's got the
Speaker 1: trappings of science fiction. It's a fantasy. So Anarchy Online
Speaker 1: was science fiction based. Uh. It had some pretty major
Speaker 1: technical issues when it launched, and had particular problems handling
Speaker 1: large loads of players. So if a lot of people
Speaker 1: tried to play on one server, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of issues with lag and and and server stability. So
Speaker 1: it had some issues when it launched. There's still a
Speaker 1: lot of people who really loved that game, but there
Speaker 1: were a lot of problems with it. It did have
Speaker 1: several expansions though, yes, and this is when this is
Speaker 1: the period in which you started to see a lot
Speaker 1: of that. Ever, Quest was infamous for the expansions that
Speaker 1: I think sixteen different expansions came out forever request, so
Speaker 1: that's you know, and these were ways to increase the
Speaker 1: appeal of the game to the longtime players who had
Speaker 1: pretty much achieved everything they could do within the base game. Now,
Speaker 1: why why would they keep playing? And remember, these games
Speaker 1: are based on not just a purchase price, but a
Speaker 1: monthly subscription. And so you want to try and keep
Speaker 1: those players around as long as possible. Well, one way
Speaker 1: to do that is to release expansions that continue to
Speaker 1: engage players even after they have completed, you know, the
Speaker 1: massive percentage of the base game. Well. Uh, in two
Speaker 1: thousand two, we saw the launch of Final Fantasy eleven online. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it launched in in Japan on the PlayStation two
Speaker 1: and at that time, so it was available on multiple platforms.
Speaker 1: In fact, that was a big deal. It was a
Speaker 1: massively multiplayer online game that was supporting platforms across various
Speaker 1: kinds of machines. So it wasn't you know, you didn't
Speaker 1: have to just play the game on one particular computer.
Speaker 1: In fact, the same servers were supporting the game for
Speaker 1: multiple platforms. And you might say, well, you know, so
Speaker 1: what's the big deal about consoles. Well, keep in mind
Speaker 1: that consoles, for the most part, don't necessarily have keyboards.
Speaker 1: And so if you want to talk, this is part
Speaker 1: of the online multiplayers variods. You want to communicate with
Speaker 1: your your teammates to achieve whatever goals to slay the
Speaker 1: dragon or to break into the fortress or whatever that
Speaker 1: you're trying to accomplish, you need them or to irritate people, uh,
Speaker 1: taunt people. You need to be able to communicate with
Speaker 1: one another. And so now they're starting to figure out
Speaker 1: ways convenient ways to do that to make that happen.
Speaker 1: In two thousand three, h and by the way, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of games that can come out over
Speaker 1: in Asia that fall into this category that I'm not
Speaker 1: really going to talk about. I'm telling mostly about the
Speaker 1: ones that were played in the Western hemisphere, um because
Speaker 1: that's where the majority of our listeners are from. But
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, Ubisoft launches a game called Shadow
Speaker 1: Bain and Shadow Bain. The interesting thing to me about
Speaker 1: Shadow Bain was that the idea behind it was that
Speaker 1: the game's events would not be pregenerated quests. Because for
Speaker 1: a lot of these m m O RPGs, you create
Speaker 1: a character, there are certain quests within the world that
Speaker 1: exist and have existed for everyone that you can go
Speaker 1: and complete. So your buddy can go and they get
Speaker 1: a quest from this person, Hey, this in is full
Speaker 1: of rats. I need you to clean it out. And
Speaker 1: your buddy goes in and cleans out all the rats,
Speaker 1: and then you go to that same person. That person says, hey,
Speaker 1: this in is full of rats. I need you to
Speaker 1: clean them out. Then you can go and clean out
Speaker 1: all the rats. Uh Shadow Bain was different. It depended
Speaker 1: upon the players to generate the content and the events
Speaker 1: within the game that would affect everyone, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It's also putting a lot of responsibility on the backs
Speaker 1: of the players. So I can't tell you exactly how
Speaker 1: well it works because I never played Shadow Bain. I
Speaker 1: just thought it was interesting to try and go about
Speaker 1: making a game in that way. I have played in
Speaker 1: games where the game content was supposed to be player generated,
Speaker 1: and I gotta tell you, for every cool event that happens,
Speaker 1: there's about twenty hours of nothing happening. Um one one
Speaker 1: phenomenon we didn't mention. I just it's really not core
Speaker 1: to what we're talking about, but just to show the
Speaker 1: popularity of of uh M m O RPGs in the
Speaker 1: early two thousand's is also when we start talking about
Speaker 1: people trading real money for stuff in games and spawning
Speaker 1: its own economy. Of course that that became a problem
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. You know, gold farming as
Speaker 1: they call it. Yeah, so you had it's kind of
Speaker 1: crazy comment. Across many platforms, in many games, you had
Speaker 1: people willing to pay real money to get in game
Speaker 1: resources to make their players stronger within the game, which
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting because you think you could be
Speaker 1: using that real money to get you real resources to
Speaker 1: make you happier in real life. But people were deriving
Speaker 1: so much pleasure from the games themselves that they wanted
Speaker 1: to uh to to deck out their characters with the
Speaker 1: best stuff that they could possibly get. And in some
Speaker 1: cases it wasn't like some cases it was so that
Speaker 1: they could show off. Some cases, it was so that
Speaker 1: they could take advantage of other players more effectively. Some
Speaker 1: people just wanted, you know, they really like playing the game,
Speaker 1: and they just wanted to have the coolest stuff that
Speaker 1: they could get for their character, and they really didn't
Speaker 1: have the time or the inclination to go get it themselves.
Speaker 1: Because sometimes you're talking about items that would drop only
Speaker 1: if you killed a certain monster and not always. You know,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't always drop, so in other words, you might
Speaker 1: have to face off against this particularly powerful creature and
Speaker 1: use a lot of your resources like health potions or whatever,
Speaker 1: in order to take the creature down, and then the
Speaker 1: creature drops items, and it may even be that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's only a certain percentage of the time will it
Speaker 1: drop the item you're specifically looking for. To make it
Speaker 1: more complicated, you would have games where other players could
Speaker 1: pick up an item when it dropped, and so it
Speaker 1: may only drop that one item. But then there's fifty
Speaker 1: people all trying to grab it at the same time,
Speaker 1: and there's only one instance of that item. Well, then
Speaker 1: you know that would cause problems too, because you have
Speaker 1: people who would camp out waiting for a mom start
Speaker 1: to regenerate in order for them to go in and
Speaker 1: try and farm out this particular item. And it for
Speaker 1: some people it was worthwhile. For others, they just said,
Speaker 1: this doesn't make the game fun if I'm just you know,
Speaker 1: competing against all these people to wait for this one
Speaker 1: monster to loads so I can get this one item.
Speaker 1: You know, this feels more like work than a game,
Speaker 1: and that became a problem for some people. It's still
Speaker 1: a problem today, depending upon how the game handles items.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of games now that will drop
Speaker 1: items that are specific only to that one character, so
Speaker 1: that each character that is participating and say a raid
Speaker 1: all has access to the same general stuff, but if
Speaker 1: they take it, it does not get removed from the
Speaker 1: other person's game. So if if we are banding together
Speaker 1: and we take down a monster and that monster drops
Speaker 1: twenty gold, you get to pick up twenty gold. I
Speaker 1: get to pick up twenty gold, and it's not like
Speaker 1: the twenty gold only exists for the two of us.
Speaker 1: So anyway, moving onto two thousand and four, which is
Speaker 1: a big year and m m O RPGs again, I'm
Speaker 1: surprised you didn't mention evonline, which also debuted into Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought about that and then I didn't. Do you
Speaker 1: want to say anything about ev evonline is still very popular, Um,
Speaker 1: it's uh it's made by a European company, um named
Speaker 1: CCP Games, and very predominantly male too from what I understand, Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's a it's a big still very very
Speaker 1: popular with space exploration and basically space combat. Um. Whereas
Speaker 1: in the Star Wars games you might actually be a
Speaker 1: character and you know, on your feet, most of what
Speaker 1: I've seen of EV online is uh, space based, so
Speaker 1: you know, you have your ship and you're doing stuff, um,
Speaker 1: and there's there's interstellar commerce and that kind of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: Obviously I've never played, but it's I do know some
Speaker 1: people who do, and they really love it so and
Speaker 1: it's it's got a big following, which is why I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, you should mention it. Always one of us
Speaker 1: nice to see a game that does not necessarily just
Speaker 1: fall into the sword and sorcery realm. So next we
Speaker 1: have in two thousand four three games that three among
Speaker 1: the many games that came out, three big ones, ever
Speaker 1: Request To, which you know, because ever Quest, even with
Speaker 1: the expansion packs, was starting to show its age, and
Speaker 1: ever Quest two was an opportunity for Well to sell
Speaker 1: more copies of games for one thing, but also to
Speaker 1: update the graphics and game engine beyond what an expansion
Speaker 1: pack could do. And so ever Quest To launches, City
Speaker 1: of Heroes launches, and now you've got the superhero supervillain
Speaker 1: kind of games launching, which was a neat um, a
Speaker 1: neat expansion on m m O RPGs. And then the
Speaker 1: big game that is on the tip of everyone's tongue
Speaker 1: when they talk about m m O RPGs, World of Warcraft,
Speaker 1: which I think you cannot describe anything other than phenomenal success.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean it was. It was a true phenomenon.
Speaker 1: There are over ten million people playing the game. I
Speaker 1: remember when Ultimate Online launched, it was a big deal
Speaker 1: when they hit a hundred thousand subscribers. Now we're talking
Speaker 1: about ten million people playing this game, and it even
Speaker 1: it even. I know that the largest number I've seen
Speaker 1: attributed to it was a couple from a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. Now we're recording this in twelve where they
Speaker 1: had hit twelve million at one point, maybe even thirteen.
Speaker 1: So it is declined in the past year or two,
Speaker 1: but not it's still going. Yeah, there there are plenty
Speaker 1: of people who still play. And uh, and the expansion
Speaker 1: packs have really continued the development of that world so
Speaker 1: much so that they destroyed it at one point, Cataclysm completely.
Speaker 1: Uh turned the world upside down and UH. It upsets
Speaker 1: some players because things changed so dramatically. But the whole
Speaker 1: point of it was that the player base for for
Speaker 1: Wow was made up a lot a lot of the
Speaker 1: player base we're old time players who have been playing forever,
Speaker 1: and you know, you have to keep making things interesting
Speaker 1: and adding a new realm every now and then, and
Speaker 1: upping the level cap by five only goes so far.
Speaker 1: And so there have been some calculated risks of really
Speaker 1: shaking the game up in order to keep long time
Speaker 1: players around and interested, because now they've got you know,
Speaker 1: even places that seemed familiar are now new to them. Uh.
Speaker 1: For new players, it was a little confusing, so you'd ask,
Speaker 1: like a level seventy eight character, Hey, how do I
Speaker 1: get to such and such? Like, Uh, well, I can
Speaker 1: tell you how you used to be able to get there,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you get there now. Um, left
Speaker 1: at the barrel should have taken on the left. And Albuquerque.
Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, that those games, all three of those
Speaker 1: games were made a big impact. And you know, it
Speaker 1: was at this point that you really started to see
Speaker 1: some real competition between games, because there are only so
Speaker 1: many gamers out there who want to play online role
Speaker 1: playing games. And yeah, and subscriptions can start to rack up.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are not necessarily cheap and maybe somewhere
Speaker 1: in the realm of you know, twenty a month a
Speaker 1: month to play, and you know, you start playing multiple games,
Speaker 1: you only have so much time to dedicate to each game.
Speaker 1: So the competition was pretty fierce. World of Warcraft ran
Speaker 1: with this and did really well. Two thousand eight there
Speaker 1: was a game that launched that you know in other
Speaker 1: games again launched between two thousand four, and Guild Wars
Speaker 1: is a good one. That's actually a really good example
Speaker 1: dn D Online, which changed from and it's not the
Speaker 1: only one. In fact, the one I'm about to mention
Speaker 1: also did this. D n D Online and Age of
Speaker 1: Conan which launched. Both of those were games that you
Speaker 1: would pay for originally and you did a monthly subscription.
Speaker 1: Both of those games also came out with free to
Speaker 1: play models, where you could play the game for free,
Speaker 1: but you would not have access to all the content,
Speaker 1: and depending upon the way the game model was, like
Speaker 1: an Age of Conan, you could switch from a free
Speaker 1: account to a paid account and then you would get
Speaker 1: access to all the premium content. D and D Online
Speaker 1: had a system where you could pay money for in
Speaker 1: game credits and use those in game credits to unlock
Speaker 1: areas of the game. Uh So, yeah, it was It
Speaker 1: was a experimenting with different ways to get players engaged
Speaker 1: with the game and enough so that they'd be willing
Speaker 1: to pay to play the whole thing. And I don't
Speaker 1: know how successful that was, honestly, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: not the only time we've seen that too. We've also
Speaker 1: seen online role playing games where if you pay real
Speaker 1: money you get access to in game resources. UM. This
Speaker 1: is also carried over into casual games. We've seen that.
Speaker 1: When we had our episode about casual games, we talked
Speaker 1: about games where you can pay cash to get an
Speaker 1: advantage in the game freemium freemium. And it's also a
Speaker 1: fairly controversial approach because you've got gamers who are saying
Speaker 1: this takes skill out of it. If I just have
Speaker 1: deep enough pockets, I can get an advantage over everyone
Speaker 1: else in the game and it has no bearing on
Speaker 1: whether I play the game well or not. And you
Speaker 1: know there's something to that. But guess what, that's what
Speaker 1: real life is about too. I hate to tell you
Speaker 1: a real life if you have a lot of money,
Speaker 1: you can make up for a basic lack of skills.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, you can hire people who have
Speaker 1: skills for you. Uh. And then I wanted to end
Speaker 1: my discussion anyway on a game that launched in UM
Speaker 1: sort of like tail in twenty eleven into into it's
Speaker 1: a little game called Star Wars the Old Republic. Yes,
Speaker 1: we have finally reached the one m m oh rpg
Speaker 1: I actually play, alright, I have not played any other
Speaker 1: m m O rpg. I've seen them developed, I've you know,
Speaker 1: I've played on someone else's account just to get a
Speaker 1: feel for it, but I've never actually got an account myself.
Speaker 1: I mean, I did play a little bit of dn
Speaker 1: D online for about a couple of months. But well,
Speaker 1: you you wrote an article for the site. Yes, and
Speaker 1: as that, I created an account so I could play it,
Speaker 1: so I could get a better understanding of how it worked.
Speaker 1: So Star Wars the Old Republic the reason there are
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons why I wanted to play it.
Speaker 1: One is that my hatred for Star Wars has not
Speaker 1: gotten that out of hand yet. The prequels really did
Speaker 1: a number on me. People still don't get me started,
Speaker 1: please don't. But but I still despite all that, I
Speaker 1: still loved the Star Wars universe, and I really loved
Speaker 1: the Knights of the Old Republic games, which are set
Speaker 1: up almost four thousand years before the original trilogy. Uh.
Speaker 1: Star Wars the Old Republic has set about thirty years
Speaker 1: before the original trilogy, so there are no characters from
Speaker 1: the original trilogy or any of the the Star Wars
Speaker 1: movies that are in the games. The games, You're You're in,
Speaker 1: You're You're encountering, you know, ancestors several generations removed from
Speaker 1: anyone in the the film series. The nice thing about
Speaker 1: that is that you don't have to worry about impacting
Speaker 1: the world so much that the movies could not have
Speaker 1: happened right, because that was one of the problems, is
Speaker 1: that you want this rich world that Lucas created that
Speaker 1: people find so interesting and compelling, but they didn't want
Speaker 1: to create it in such a way that if you
Speaker 1: did one set of actions, you you invalidate what happens
Speaker 1: in the movies, because then you've just invalidated the reason
Speaker 1: why everyone loves it in the first place. So that's
Speaker 1: a tricky balance. Well, by setting it years before the
Speaker 1: events of the films, it kind of take that causation away.
Speaker 1: And Uh, the Nights of the Old Republic games were
Speaker 1: a lot of fun for me, So I wanted to
Speaker 1: play this and I ended up getting account and I
Speaker 1: do play. Uh. The my main character in case you're
Speaker 1: all wondering, is an imperial agent. You can play either
Speaker 1: as the imperial side or the rebel side. It's not
Speaker 1: the same as the movies and on. Depending on which
Speaker 1: side you're you're on, you can play light side or
Speaker 1: dark side, so you could be a light side Imperial
Speaker 1: agent if you wanted to be. I'm not. I played
Speaker 1: the dark side. Yeah. Every time I can't I can,
Speaker 1: I play it, I choose the dark side option. Um.
Speaker 1: And so anyway, it's a really fun game set in
Speaker 1: the Star Wars universe, and I've been having a blast
Speaker 1: with it, and it makes me think that if I
Speaker 1: had had a broadband connection earlier, I probably would have
Speaker 1: gotten into M m O RPGs earlier. Now the way
Speaker 1: I play it, I play it more as a single
Speaker 1: player kind of experience, and I only occasionally team up
Speaker 1: with people because I just haven't made that many friends
Speaker 1: on on Star Wars the Old Republic yet. But who knows,
Speaker 1: maybe after this podcast goes live, folks will track me
Speaker 1: down and be like, hey, man, I'll help you out.
Speaker 1: You're having trouble taking that Mandalorian down, And I will say, yes,
Speaker 1: yes I am. That guy is tough and he's really
Speaker 1: irritating me. So yeah, they're They're scads of other games
Speaker 1: that we haven't mentioned, some very high profile games dozen
Speaker 1: like Halo games, and yeah, and there are other games
Speaker 1: that are There are other games that are massively multiplayer.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'd argue that the Halo games fit in
Speaker 1: this where there's not role playing involved, but it is
Speaker 1: a massively multiplayer online game, so you can have a
Speaker 1: lot of people playing at once even though they're not
Speaker 1: necessarily role playing. Yeah, it's it's funny because I think
Speaker 1: in a way, some of them, some of it's fuzzy.
Speaker 1: To be honest, Um, there are different degrees of the
Speaker 1: role playing involved. When you're playing you, is that really
Speaker 1: playing a role Yeah, so so, and again there are
Speaker 1: people who get into the role playing, and there are
Speaker 1: people who despise the role playing. And sometimes you'll have
Speaker 1: of companies create servers just for role players so that
Speaker 1: the role players can be all, you know. The hardcore
Speaker 1: gamers might say that's all hippie dippy, So the role
Speaker 1: players gonna be all hippie dipping on their own servers,
Speaker 1: and everyone who's just you know, who just wants to
Speaker 1: play the game can be on their servers. I like
Speaker 1: a balance between the two. So I'm somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't really identify myself with either group.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's kind of a bird's eye view of
Speaker 1: the history of m m O RPGs. We really have
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons to thank for it. I'm sure that
Speaker 1: the games would have would have developed on their own
Speaker 1: without it, but that was truly an inspiration. And D
Speaker 1: and D and yeah, and role playing games in general
Speaker 1: go well beyond just D n D. You can find
Speaker 1: tons and tons of them. Some of them are out
Speaker 1: of print now, but there have been games ranging across
Speaker 1: all genres, from horror to science fiction, mystery, just about
Speaker 1: everything you could think about there is a role playing
Speaker 1: game out there that fits it. So guys, if you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for topics that we should tackle in
Speaker 1: future episodes, please let us know. You can say as
Speaker 1: an email all right, just as tech stuff at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com or let us know on Facebook or Twitter
Speaker 1: are handled, there is tech stuff hs W and Chris
Speaker 1: and I will game with you again really soon. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
Speaker 1: staff works dot Com, brought to you by the reinvented
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you