Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works in a love all things tech,
Speaker 1: and it's time for another classic episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: The episode you are about to hear originally published on
Speaker 1: June six, two thousand twelve. A two thousand and twelve.
Speaker 1: Do you remember how bride eyed and innocent we were
Speaker 1: back then? Well, this particular classic episode is called the
Speaker 1: m m O RPG Story, the massively multiplayer online role
Speaker 1: playing game story, which granted has changed a lot since
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve. There were games that have come out
Speaker 1: since then that we don't go into in this episode
Speaker 1: because we weren't able to look into the future. But
Speaker 1: we do look at the origins of the m m
Speaker 1: O RPG. Where did it come from and how did
Speaker 1: it volve? And when I say we, I mean me
Speaker 1: and my original co host Chris Pallette. So sit back, relax,
Speaker 1: and enjoy this classic episode. So we are today going
Speaker 1: to talk about the history of massively multiplayer online role
Speaker 1: playing games, and it all actually stems back to what
Speaker 1: I was just alluding to and all of you guys
Speaker 1: out there who are big D n D fans picked
Speaker 1: up on it. I'm sure immediately we're talking about dudgeons
Speaker 1: and dragons, and it's important to talk about dungeons and
Speaker 1: dragons first to understand why M m O RPGs exist
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, and now there were some computer role
Speaker 1: playing games, but they weren't like what we think of
Speaker 1: today and then and really they came around right about
Speaker 1: the same time as D and D took off. So
Speaker 1: let's let's start with um, let's start with D and
Speaker 1: D first of all to kind of explain what's going on.
Speaker 1: So we're not we're not even talking about D n
Speaker 1: D online. We're actually talking about specifically about the pencil
Speaker 1: and paper and dice and all that jazz game screens,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So back in nineteen uh, there were some
Speaker 1: some some guys who had created a war game, a
Speaker 1: miniature's war game called chain Mail. All right, now, war
Speaker 1: games are they've been around for a while, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's where you essentially have uh, 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 they had the little number
Speaker 1: they kind of look 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. Right,
Speaker 1: And anyway, the whole game was this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: matching wits against an opponent. Well, chain Mail kind of
Speaker 1: brought that down a little bit. Chain Mail was an
Speaker 1: idea of using smaller units in very specific circumstances, like
Speaker 1: say 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 the where the whole role playing game
Speaker 1: idea kind of spawned out of. You would have someone
Speaker 1: who was 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 a 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 you when you
Speaker 1: first 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 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 three see six sided die. Um, the
Speaker 1: thing is um with the uh uh you know that
Speaker 1: that's one aspect of it too. But the the dungeon
Speaker 1: master or game master would use a screen to hide
Speaker 1: the dungeon or whatever it is that you were going
Speaker 1: and venturing in, so you didn't really know. Unlike those
Speaker 1: other games where you could see there were mountains ahead
Speaker 1: of your characters, you could go around the mountains when
Speaker 1: you came, Um, you'll be riding six white horses. But meanwhile, UM,
Speaker 1: in a dungeon and in D and D, you didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily know. And this is the difference in a role
Speaker 1: playing game and those other games. You are actually pretending
Speaker 1: to be you know this character, so U one of
Speaker 1: the first things I had to learn, and I when
Speaker 1: I started playing D n D, I was I think
Speaker 1: eight years old or nine years old. Um, you had
Speaker 1: to learn that you can't see what's going on, so
Speaker 1: 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 hear the click of a
Speaker 1: trap unless you ask, like, well, you just heard a
Speaker 1: clicking noise? Oh right, that clicking noises in D and
Speaker 1: D were never a good thing. Um. 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: Same thing holds true by the way of m m
Speaker 1: O RPGs. So the only reason I even mentioned all
Speaker 1: of that is so that we have the foundation to
Speaker 1: build upon, so that we understand once we get into
Speaker 1: 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 and
Speaker 1: the rise of personal computers on the desktop, uh right,
Speaker 1: right 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 that
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 which which can be fun because
Speaker 1: you never know what those other people are are going
Speaker 1: to do. And it also gives you this feeling of camaraderie.
Speaker 1: It's pre decor if you will, and and depending upon
Speaker 1: the game, it may allow certain players to band together
Speaker 1: and oppose other players, So you can even have elements
Speaker 1: within the game where you've got a struggle between two
Speaker 1: groups of players. And if the game is designed properly,
Speaker 1: meaning that it's you know, a dynamic element to it,
Speaker 1: you might even be able to have players actually influence
Speaker 1: the course of the game's world, which is pretty tricky
Speaker 1: because you know, that's a very delicate balance to to
Speaker 1: create when you are a developer. You don't want to
Speaker 1: make it so easy to affect the game's world that
Speaker 1: it is uh uh that that one group of players
Speaker 1: essentially dominates and makes all the determinations of where the
Speaker 1: game's world is going. At the same time, you don't
Speaker 1: want it to be so static that it feels like
Speaker 1: no matter what you do, you don't influence the outcome.
Speaker 1: It's a really tricky balance. Well, I would I would
Speaker 1: argue that one of the things that makes UH online
Speaker 1: role playing games so much fun UH is not necessarily
Speaker 1: the high graphics elements. I think the the the element
Speaker 1: of play is most important. That's one of the things.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't see these things, these fantastic UH
Speaker 1: animations of spells and and UH sword play and whatever
Speaker 1: else that you might happen to be engaged in when
Speaker 1: you're playing a tabletop role playing game, because imagine it.
Speaker 1: What imagine it? It's this thing that we used to
Speaker 1: do before there was the internet. Well, I I do
Speaker 1: love looking at the amazing graphics work of some of
Speaker 1: these game studios now. But um, you know, the very
Speaker 1: first online role playing games were text based. Yeah, in fact,
Speaker 1: we can talk a little bit about them. First of all,
Speaker 1: I wanna define a couple of terms for the very
Speaker 1: earliest games. Some of them were built on something called PLATO,
Speaker 1: which is an acronym for Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations.
Speaker 1: Here's the funny thing, bit Sucker pre dates pretty much
Speaker 1: all of this stuff that we're talking. Plato actually came
Speaker 1: out before D and D the tabletop game came out
Speaker 1: early sixties actually. But but PLATO was all about It
Speaker 1: was supposed to be an educational platform, which of course
Speaker 1: meant that students immediately figured out ways to play games
Speaker 1: on it, and uh like almost immediately. This is for education.
Speaker 1: I want to kill stuff. So, um, the University of
Speaker 1: Illinois built programmed Logic for Automated Teaching operations. So it's
Speaker 1: a platform that could run on networked computers. Now these
Speaker 1: computers are networked to one another, they are not networked
Speaker 1: into a large your 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, move 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 moves
Speaker 1: to is 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 n there was a game
Speaker 1: that came out called Colossal Cave Adventure sometimes just called
Speaker 1: Adventure by William Crowther and it was a single player
Speaker 1: text based game, but it was what created the foundation
Speaker 1: for 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 trub Shaw created the very first multi user dungeon
Speaker 1: and it was called Mud. That's why we call them
Speaker 1: MUDs because he made it. It was he was in
Speaker 1: Essex University, and so mud became the generic term for
Speaker 1: games that were built in this way. UM and it
Speaker 1: became very very popular. And then eventually again these were
Speaker 1: on network computers. There was no Internet yet, but Trubshaw
Speaker 1: connected his game to the ARPA net in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: so suddenly you had essentially the ancestor to massively multiplayer
Speaker 1: online role playing games because it made it gave access
Speaker 1: to people beyond just folks who had uh the access
Speaker 1: to those specific computers within Essex University to play. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My my notes have the game down as being called
Speaker 1: Dungeon d U N G E N. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: it as it was called multi user Dungeon. Yeah. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but by the same same thing. I mean, that's that
Speaker 1: is where mud came from. They probably, I'm sure it
Speaker 1: was called dungeon, just as uh for shorthand the next
Speaker 1: one I have doesn't pop up till do you have
Speaker 1: anything you wanted to mention before I go to that? Okay,
Speaker 1: So in the University of Virginia there were a couple
Speaker 1: of classmates, John Taylor and Kelton Flynn, and they created
Speaker 1: a game called The Dungeons of Kezm which was a
Speaker 1: six player game and it was also inspired by duchess
Speaker 1: and dragons and it used as key graphics to represent
Speaker 1: elements of the game. Yeah. Yeah, it's making me think
Speaker 1: of some of the old games I used to play.
Speaker 1: And they also founded a company in eighty two called
Speaker 1: the Kezmi Company. A few years later they I'll mention
Speaker 1: it when it happens, but they would come up with
Speaker 1: another game that would be UH kind of a big
Speaker 1: influence on online role playing games in the future. UH.
Speaker 1: In any four, you had a fellow named Mark Peterson
Speaker 1: who wrote The Realm of ang Mar and UH. It
Speaker 1: was originally a kind of an offshoot of another game
Speaker 1: called The Scepter of Goth and UH. In ninety four
Speaker 1: Peterson rewrote it and adapted it for MS DOSS, which
Speaker 1: I don't know how many of you guys remember MS DOSS.
Speaker 1: That's pre windows Um, but that was the that formed
Speaker 1: the basis of a game that ended up being found
Speaker 1: on a lot of Bolton Board systems. So if you
Speaker 1: guys heard our episode about bbs is, you know that
Speaker 1: there used to be these communities. Still aren't in many cases,
Speaker 1: but there were these communities that were housed on individual,
Speaker 1: private individuals computers, although you could also have companies that
Speaker 1: do this too, But you could have a private end
Speaker 1: visual who would open up their computer to allow other
Speaker 1: people to dial into their computer to access files and
Speaker 1: play games. This is one of the games that was
Speaker 1: found on a lot of bbs is. And if the
Speaker 1: bbs would allow multiple people to call in at once,
Speaker 1: if they had multiple lines that would allow for that.
Speaker 1: 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 about that. Five was also
Speaker 1: the year that the Kezmi Corporation came out with Island
Speaker 1: of Kezmi, which again Kelton Flynn and John Taylor, and
Speaker 1: 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 because it
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 ten player Maria game, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's I think it's almost ten times that. Wow. So
Speaker 1: I'm not that stupid people, almost but not quite. An
Speaker 1: interesting game comes out interesting for a couple of reasons, because,
Speaker 1: for one thing, you can confuse it with another game
Speaker 1: by the same name, Never Winter Nights by Don Daglo
Speaker 1: and Catherine Mattega comes out has no connection at all
Speaker 1: to the Never Winter Nights game that came out by BioWare.
Speaker 1: But this game ran on A O L. And I've
Speaker 1: heard of it. I used that joke already. They and
Speaker 1: A O L used a an interesting pricing mechanism. So
Speaker 1: this is a commercial game. You had to pay to play,
Speaker 1: and the way it worked was that you would pay
Speaker 1: six dollars an hour to play this game at three
Speaker 1: hundred bawd. And when we were talking hours, that's about
Speaker 1: how long it would take to loads to make a move. Uh.
Speaker 1: For twelve dollars an hour, you can play at twelve bad. Hey,
Speaker 1: that's just screaming fast, right, good, it's screaming all right.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's streaming fast. And this was
Speaker 1: 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,
Speaker 1: right and that yes, that will definitely lead into a
Speaker 1: very important discussion. So Ultima. While while we've got this
Speaker 1: development over here with the multi user games, there's still
Speaker 1: quite a bit of work being done in single player
Speaker 1: computer role playing games. Oh absolutely, they were huge and
Speaker 1: one of the one of the people who was really
Speaker 1: spiritheading this movement. We've actually we did an entire episode
Speaker 1: on him, Richard Garriott, the Lord British of the Ultimate Series.
Speaker 1: He founded the Ultimate Series. First game was Al Kalabeth,
Speaker 1: which then eventually of which he was in college at
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah. Yeah, and uh, he actually dropped out
Speaker 1: of college because his computer game business took off so well.
Speaker 1: His dad, by the way, astronaut. Yes, dad's an astronaut.
Speaker 1: He jumps out of college, makes millions of dollars. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they were he was working with. Don't take that as
Speaker 1: a lesson, kids, I'm not saying drop out of college.
Speaker 1: Your mileage may very Yes. Um, yeah, he was talking
Speaker 1: in one about the possibility of an online version of Ultima. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: all Tima was a series that he created after his
Speaker 1: first success in computer role playing games, and then Ultima 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 Ultima 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 know, stule stuff,
Speaker 1: and you killed innocence, you could not win the game.
Speaker 1: It was impossible to win the game because in order
Speaker 1: to win the game you had to make lots of
Speaker 1: sacrifices and and be virtuous UH. And then this sort
Speaker 1: of gave a real shot in the arm to his series.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was already popular, but then it became
Speaker 1: crazy popular, and so he continued to develop the games,
Speaker 1: and as the multi user craze continued with fairly primitive
Speaker 1: games compared to some of the the standalone games on computers,
Speaker 1: he began to turn his eye towards developing an online
Speaker 1: version of This Ultimate World. Now. In the meantime, just
Speaker 1: before this, well while this, this whole plan for an
Speaker 1: online version of Ultima was in the earliest development phases,
Speaker 1: another game in nineties six came out called Meridian fifty nine,
Speaker 1: and that was developed by a company called Radio, which
Speaker 1: no longer exists. Um, they were, They were something of
Speaker 1: an innovator for their time. Yes, um, but if you've
Speaker 1: never heard of them, and it's because they've been closed
Speaker 1: for for quite a while. It's one of the first
Speaker 1: massively multiplayer online role playing games ever released by a
Speaker 1: major publisher, and and a lot of the things that
Speaker 1: we associate with m m O RPGs began with this game.
Speaker 1: For one, it had a monthly subscription for a flat rate,
Speaker 1: so you would pay us a flat rate each month
Speaker 1: to play. It had a three D first person view
Speaker 1: of the world in a fantasy setting, and uh not all.
Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of m m O RPGs do
Speaker 1: not take the first person views. Several of them take
Speaker 1: a third person view where you're either behind or or
Speaker 1: over the character you're playing. Um, but U three d
Speaker 1: O ran this game, but then it shut down. The
Speaker 1: three d O shutdown in two thousand three. It ceased
Speaker 1: to be actually they closed the game on August thirty,
Speaker 1: first of two. From what I have, yeah, well the
Speaker 1: game itself still continued because what happened was in February
Speaker 1: Meridian fifty nine was turned over to the original technical developers,
Speaker 1: which were a couple of brothers who have opened the
Speaker 1: game to the public for no charge to the player.
Speaker 1: So there it's running on two servers in the United States.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I love the name of the company though,
Speaker 1: Near Death Studios. Yeah, it's it's just as the game
Speaker 1: is when it's running on two servers. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: but it's interesting that it's still you know, this shows
Speaker 1: that the people who adopt these games can be very passionate,
Speaker 1: and even when a studio itself is in financial trouble,
Speaker 1: people want those games to continue, which is somewhat problematic
Speaker 1: because how do you keep this going when the in
Speaker 1: order to run the game, you actually do have to
Speaker 1: spend real money because you're about electricity costs, you're talking
Speaker 1: about server costs, you're talking about you know, you might
Speaker 1: have to have space for that machine. It's uh, it's tough.
Speaker 1: And UM that's not the only time that has happened
Speaker 1: by log shot. But so at that same time, Richard
Speaker 1: Garriott and the folks over at Origin and later Electronic
Speaker 1: Cards were working on Ultimate Online. Yeah. Ultimate Online was
Speaker 1: apparently originally supposed to go on. Now, keeping in mind
Speaker 1: the time frame we were originally talking about for that
Speaker 1: when I met when I brought it up, we were
Speaker 1: very much in the online service provider world and Sierra
Speaker 1: had its own network it was working on, but they
Speaker 1: ended up shutting it down. Um, and Ultimate Online became
Speaker 1: a an Internet m M RPG, which UH was probably
Speaker 1: better for uh for everyone involved, because it gave you
Speaker 1: a much wider audience. I got to actually see this
Speaker 1: game and action when it was in its alf A
Speaker 1: build before it even opened up to the beta world. Uh.
Speaker 1: And UH because um, Richard Garrett came down to a
Speaker 1: science fiction convention that I go to a lot, Dragon
Speaker 1: Con in Atlanta. So Richard Garrett used to be a
Speaker 1: very frequent guest a dragon Con, and in fact he
Speaker 1: and I kind of struck up a bit of a
Speaker 1: friendship and we would chat about the games and stuff,
Speaker 1: and he would show me the games that were in development,
Speaker 1: including Ultimate Online, and it was really a neat thing.
Speaker 1: It was a it was a kind of a new idea.
Speaker 1: It was building on that work that other people have
Speaker 1: done in in previous generations of multi user dungeons, but
Speaker 1: on a huge scale, and also created a much more
Speaker 1: dynamic world. So Ultimate Online had a world where, in
Speaker 1: theory anyway, you had ecosystems that could actually be affected
Speaker 1: by player behavior. So, for example, let's say that you
Speaker 1: are in a forest and you decide one day that
Speaker 1: you are the bunny slayer, and you go on a
Speaker 1: bunny slaying rampage and you hack can slash every bunny
Speaker 1: you can find. Well, there's a limited number of bunnies
Speaker 1: for a given amount of time, and as you start
Speaker 1: slaying these bunnies, there are other consequences. For example, there
Speaker 1: are also wolves in the forest, and now all the
Speaker 1: bunnies are gone, which means that the food source for
Speaker 1: the wolves are gone. You know, they no longer have
Speaker 1: their normal food source, so they might actually venture out
Speaker 1: of the forest and start to attack villagers. So you
Speaker 1: could actually, inadvertently, while slaying bunnies, as any good hero
Speaker 1: would want to do, bring terror and and and hardship
Speaker 1: upon a village because these wolves are now attacking people. Uh.
Speaker 1: On the flip side, if you were you know, Wolf's Bane,
Speaker 1: and you were going out into the woods to slay
Speaker 1: every single wolf you saw, the bunny population might explode.
Speaker 1: And bunnies are everywhere almost like triples. Yeah, that's just
Speaker 1: a small example of what was dynamically supposed to happen
Speaker 1: in the world. Uh. And and to some degree it
Speaker 1: did work like that, although there were definitely some issues
Speaker 1: as well. It didn't always work exactly the way people
Speaker 1: had planned. And also player behavior really really changed that
Speaker 1: world quite a bit. Yeah. If you, uh, if you've
Speaker 1: played recent mmorpg more recent MMO RPGs and been annoyed
Speaker 1: at the fact that there are people who are playing
Speaker 1: the game just apparently to make other people miserable, called griefers. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: that started pretty much with the dawn of mmrpgs. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: there were people who would lurk just outside of starting
Speaker 1: areas and waylay characters, and uh, sometimes they would just
Speaker 1: do it just to do it. You know it wasn't
Speaker 1: They knew you probably were not carrying anything of value
Speaker 1: on you. There was no reason to really attack you.
Speaker 1: There's no real benefit, and yet they would do it
Speaker 1: because they're jerks. Um it. Meanwhile, and there were a
Speaker 1: lot of other problems. There were people who were finding
Speaker 1: ways to cheat the system. In fact, there was a
Speaker 1: monumental event. So the game launches in ninety seven. Well,
Speaker 1: August of the game has its first monumental event. August.
Speaker 1: What happened? Oh was it ninth? Oh, I've got eighth,
Speaker 1: but but you know what I'm talking about right, Well,
Speaker 1: and there was an assassination, yes, of Lord British himself.
Speaker 1: Now here's the thing. Lord British is uh normally in
Speaker 1: the game was invulnerable to attack. But um uh, there
Speaker 1: was an in game appearance of Lord British that happened
Speaker 1: during the beta testing of Ultimate Online. So the game
Speaker 1: had not gone gold yet, it was still but it
Speaker 1: was open to players who were in the beta program.
Speaker 1: And uh so Lord British was showing up during uh
Speaker 1: an event in order to kind of stress test the servers.
Speaker 1: The idea was that if Lord British is there, then
Speaker 1: most of the beta players are going to be logged on,
Speaker 1: and this will help the origin and determine all well
Speaker 1: their servers can hold up to the strain of a
Speaker 1: lot of people playing at one time. And then, depending
Speaker 1: upon whom you ask, uh, something went terribly wrong. Either
Speaker 1: it was a computer issue or a human issue. And
Speaker 1: it's kind of kind of hard to uh to say what,
Speaker 1: although I think I know what it really happened. What
Speaker 1: happened is that the server crashed, server reboots. Richard Garriott
Speaker 1: is there as Lord British. Server reboots and resets Lord British,
Speaker 1: turning off his invulnerability flag. Richard Garriott does not think
Speaker 1: he needs, does not realize this, and does not turn
Speaker 1: the invulnerability flag back on. And then there was a
Speaker 1: character called Reins who testing out this theory, attacked Lord
Speaker 1: British and killed him. He was also he was not
Speaker 1: the player behind Rains was already kind of a notorious
Speaker 1: on the servers because he was known for x bloyding
Speaker 1: bugs as opposed to reporting bugs. He was a software
Speaker 1: consultant 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. Chris and I will have
Speaker 1: more to say about how to play games online with
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of other Yahoo's in just a second,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: So Ultimate Online ends up being the very first MMO
Speaker 1: RPG to hit one thousand subscribers. It's really successful early
Speaker 1: on in in the in these early early days of
Speaker 1: the m m O RPG. Yeah. But the next one
Speaker 1: that I have is it's going to put it to
Speaker 1: Shane even are you talking about the one from Variant
Speaker 1: Interactive later Sony Online Entertainment, premiered in ever Crack, Yes,
Speaker 1: also known as ever Request or Rest or never Rest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of different names for this. Yeah, this was again.
Speaker 1: And what's also interesting is so far Maridy in fifty
Speaker 1: nine Ultimate Online Request, all three fantasy based role playing games. Yes,
Speaker 1: EverQuest launches and it is a massive success. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was in development at the same time as Ultima Online,
Speaker 1: had a very different look from Ultima Online, although similar
Speaker 1: setting in the sense of it's the Sword and Sorcery realm.
Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, it was one of those games where eventually,
Speaker 1: if you were talking about an M M O RPG,
Speaker 1: you were talking either about Ultimate Online or ever Request,
Speaker 1: and EverQuest popularity skyrocketed that that might be a and
Speaker 1: and understatement in some ways, and and people would play
Speaker 1: it for hours and hours and and and lose track
Speaker 1: of time, and there were divorces and well, and also
Speaker 1: it was you know, they had the benefit of seeing
Speaker 1: what was not working on Ultimate Online and building out
Speaker 1: their world so that it could limit these problems as
Speaker 1: much as possible. Some problems are hard to get around
Speaker 1: because they are human generated, and it's hard to create
Speaker 1: systems that prevent human behavior from happening. Humans are very
Speaker 1: good at figuring out ways to get around systems so
Speaker 1: that they can be jerks. Uh, it's just true. We're
Speaker 1: you know, we're like, hey, I really wanted to to
Speaker 1: to do this one thing. The game's not letting me
Speaker 1: but I bet if I try it this way, it'll work.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Quest launches. But another game also fairly popular,
Speaker 1: not nearly as popular as ever Quest Launch, is called
Speaker 1: Asheron's Call Yep, yep. That one was from Turbine Entertainment,
Speaker 1: later on taken over by Microsoft an Ashuran's Call. Uh
Speaker 1: another fantasy game. Yeah, yeah, it had. It had sort
Speaker 1: of a different system though, uh to it. It was
Speaker 1: 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 be expected to
Speaker 1: be good to their people, um, for which they would
Speaker 1: be rewarded and the people would be able to support
Speaker 1: their uh, the person at the top of the pyramid.
Speaker 1: So it was supposed to kind of like feudalism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really supposed to work out in the game,
Speaker 1: and apparently it was sort of a limited success. It
Speaker 1: was a different, a very different kind of system than
Speaker 1: than anyone else had had. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: games that really tried to break the mold. UM, and
Speaker 1: that was one of them. And and they they've all
Speaker 1: met with varying degrees of success. UM. Two thousand was
Speaker 1: an interesting year because that's when Lucas Arts announced, uh,
Speaker 1: that it was developing a game that initially I was
Speaker 1: very very eager to get my hands on, called Star
Speaker 1: Wars Galaxies. So it's announced in two thousand and the
Speaker 1: original launch date was going to be in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: but it was delayed until two thousand three. Uh. The game, UH,
Speaker 1: the setting of the game first of all set in
Speaker 1: the Star Wars universe obviously, but the actual setting of
Speaker 1: the game was set after the events of Episode four
Speaker 1: often just called Star Wars, also known as a New Hope,
Speaker 1: So and you hope justin it's so death Stars blown up.
Speaker 1: That's when the game is set. And you could actually
Speaker 1: encounter character 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 was 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 and 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 Jedi.
Speaker 1: In that original trilogy, you essentially had Luke and then
Speaker 1: you had you know, Jonnith Vader, the Dark Lord of
Speaker 1: the Sith, and you had Yoda, and then as far
Speaker 1: as you knew that was that was it was Obi
Speaker 1: Wan in the first film, but then he dies spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: and so, um, you didn't have that any Jedi running around.
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea was that Darth Vader had gone
Speaker 1: and and pretty much killed all the rest of them. So,
Speaker 1: because you know, they wanted the game to be true
Speaker 1: to the lore of Star Wars as much as possible,
Speaker 1: they did not want it to be easy to go
Speaker 1: out and create a Jedi, because if it were, then
Speaker 1: everyone would go out and create a Jedi, and then
Speaker 1: you'd suddenly you have a Star Wars universe where a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand Jedi are running around. I wouldn't feel like
Speaker 1: Star Wars. So what they did was they created a
Speaker 1: system that was difficult to discover how to unlock the Jedi.
Speaker 1: It was almost, ah, it seemed almost random, like there
Speaker 1: was this list of criteria you had to complete and
Speaker 1: the list was never made public. But uh so the
Speaker 1: game launched in two thousand three, the first the first
Speaker 1: person to unlock the Jedi slot character did it within
Speaker 1: I think four months after the game launched. Uh. They
Speaker 1: later on change the requirements for becoming a Jedi and
Speaker 1: made it a quest that you could take, so that
Speaker 1: you would have a very specific pathway you could take
Speaker 1: in order to become a Jedi, because people were saying
Speaker 1: Star Wars. The coolest people in Star Wars are the Jedi.
Speaker 1: They have They're the ones who have all the really
Speaker 1: cool powers. They have the light sabers. These guys are awesome,
Speaker 1: and you're making it impossible for me to find out
Speaker 1: how to play one. So it's a very frustrating experience
Speaker 1: for people. Well, these problems continued, among other issues, including
Speaker 1: things like reefers and cheaters that sort of stuff, and
Speaker 1: the game was ultimately shut down in twenty eleven, partially
Speaker 1: because there was another Star Wars game on the horizon,
Speaker 1: but we'll get to that in a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was a little surprised that you didn't mention Dark
Speaker 1: Age of Camelot in two thousand one. Well that's because
Speaker 1: because the Star Wars Galaxies was originally But yeah, in
Speaker 1: two thousand one, dark Age of Camelot came out, and
Speaker 1: that was that was an interesting game too because that
Speaker 1: focused a lot on player versus player gameplay and it
Speaker 1: was specifically set within the the world of King Arthur
Speaker 1: theory and legend. Yeah another fantasy, but um but yeah,
Speaker 1: very specific fantasy though, that's true. The the interesting thing
Speaker 1: about this is that you had games where player versus
Speaker 1: player combat was possible because a lot of people wanted
Speaker 1: to have the ability to test their characters against other
Speaker 1: people's characters and play against them. There were other games
Speaker 1: that really stressed uh uh player cooperation, and some did
Speaker 1: not even allow player versus player interaction. You had to
Speaker 1: you could not attack another player. Uh. Some games tried
Speaker 1: to split the difference where within certain regions there was
Speaker 1: no way you could attack another player. If you ventured
Speaker 1: outside of those regions, outside those safe zones, then you
Speaker 1: could attack or be attacked by other players. And uh.
Speaker 1: Then there was another way of doing this where games
Speaker 1: would create specific servers where if you would log on
Speaker 1: to certain servers, they'd be player friendly in the sense
Speaker 1: that you are not going to be attacked by any
Speaker 1: other player because that's the kind of server it is,
Speaker 1: and other servers or player versus player servers where it's
Speaker 1: anything goes and lots of different experimentation during this time
Speaker 1: to find out what what's the right way of going
Speaker 1: about it, and to this day companies are still experimenting
Speaker 1: with that. It also had the people in the game,
Speaker 1: the characters in the game UH as part of a
Speaker 1: basically specific tribes UM basically the the Uh, the English,
Speaker 1: the Norse, and the Celtic groups when and each of
Speaker 1: them had specific attributes at which they excelled UM. For example,
Speaker 1: the the Celts were particularly good at magic UM and UM.
Speaker 1: The Norse were better at melee combat UM. And that's
Speaker 1: something again. These systems, if you'll notice, these systems are
Speaker 1: the kinds of things that are pretty common across all
Speaker 1: of the the current mm O RPGs, but it's sort
Speaker 1: of like they're being rolled out game by game and
Speaker 1: people are UM. They're sort of picking up to the
Speaker 1: point where it's they take a, B, C, D and E,
Speaker 1: where before they were just sort of a well, this
Speaker 1: is an okay game, but look at this one thing.
Speaker 1: It's so cool. UM. Two thousand one was also an
Speaker 1: Anarchy Online launched as a science fiction based game, So
Speaker 1: breaking the Mold I mean, Star Wars Galaxies had not
Speaker 1: come out yet. It had been announced, but it hadn't
Speaker 1: come out. And you could also argue that Star Wars
Speaker 1: is in fact a fantasy science fiction. I would not
Speaker 1: argue against that. I think it's both. I think that
Speaker 1: when most of the explanations for the technology within Star
Speaker 1: Wars really boiled down to magic, it pretty much just fantasy.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but the thing, ye well, a lightsabers a
Speaker 1: magic sword, it really is. But u blasters and lands
Speaker 1: feeders or technology, which is when yeah, yeah, okay, all right,
Speaker 1: it's got the trappings of science fiction. It's a fantasy exactly.
Speaker 1: Anarchy Online was science fiction based. It had some pretty
Speaker 1: major technical issues when it launched, and had particular problems
Speaker 1: handling large loads of players. So if a lot of
Speaker 1: people tried to play on one server, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of issues with lag and and and server stability.
Speaker 1: So it had some issues when it launched. There's still
Speaker 1: a lot of people who really loved that game, but
Speaker 1: there were a lot of problems with it. It did
Speaker 1: have several expansions, though, 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 expansion that
Speaker 1: I think sixteen different expansions came out Forever Quest, So
Speaker 1: that's you know, and these were ways to increase the
Speaker 1: appeal of the game to the long time players who
Speaker 1: had pretty much achieved everything they could do within the
Speaker 1: base game. Now why why would they keep playing? And
Speaker 1: remember these games are based on not just a purchase price,
Speaker 1: but a monthly subscription, and so you want to try
Speaker 1: and keep those players around as long as possible. Well,
Speaker 1: one way to do that is to release expansions that
Speaker 1: continue to engage players even after they have completed, you know,
Speaker 1: the massive percentage of the base game. Well. Uh, in
Speaker 1: two thousand two, we saw the launch of Final Fantasy
Speaker 1: eleven online. Uh yeah, so it launched in in Japan
Speaker 1: on the PlayStation two and at that time, so it
Speaker 1: was available on multiple platforms. In fact, that was a
Speaker 1: big deal. It was a massively multiplayer online game that
Speaker 1: was supporting platforms across various kinds of machines. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't you know, you didn't have to just play the
Speaker 1: game on one particular computer. In fact, the same servers
Speaker 1: were supporting the game for multiple platforms. And you might say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, so what's the big deal about consoles. Well,
Speaker 1: keep in mind that consoles for the most part, don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have keyboards, and so if you want to talk,
Speaker 1: this is part of the online multiplayer experience. You want
Speaker 1: to communicate with your your teammates to achieve whatever goals
Speaker 1: to slay the dragon or to break into the fortress
Speaker 1: or whatever that you're trying to accomplish them, or to
Speaker 1: irritate people, uh, taunt people. You need to be able
Speaker 1: to communicate with one another. And so now they're starting
Speaker 1: to figure out ways convenient ways to do that to
Speaker 1: make that happen in two thousand three. Uh and by
Speaker 1: the way, there are a lot of games that can
Speaker 1: come out over in Asia that fall into this category
Speaker 1: that I'm not really going to talk about. I'm telling
Speaker 1: mostly about the ones that were playing in the Western hemisphere,
Speaker 1: um because that's where the majority of our listeners are from.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand three, Ube Soft launches a game
Speaker 1: called Shadow Bain and Shadow Bain. The interesting thing to
Speaker 1: me about Shadow Bain was that the idea behind it
Speaker 1: was that the game's events would not be pregenerated quests
Speaker 1: because for a lot of these m M O RPGs,
Speaker 1: you create a character. There are certain quests within the
Speaker 1: world that exists and have existed for everyone that you
Speaker 1: can go and complete. So your buddy can go and
Speaker 1: they get a quest from this person, Hey, this in
Speaker 1: is full of rats. I need you to clean it out.
Speaker 1: And your buddy goes in and cleans out all the rats,
Speaker 1: and then you go to that same person that persusays, hey,
Speaker 1: this in is full of rats. I needed to clean
Speaker 1: them out. Then you can go and clean out all
Speaker 1: the rats. Um Shadow Bain was different. It depended upon
Speaker 1: the players to generate the content and the events within
Speaker 1: 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. Hey it's Jonathan
Speaker 1: again from you know the present, just letting you guys
Speaker 1: know that we have a little bit more to say
Speaker 1: about m m O RPGs, But before we get into that,
Speaker 1: I'm just this rate is just not going well for me.
Speaker 1: All Right, We're gonna take a quick break and thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor. And the early two thousands is also when
Speaker 1: we start talking about people trading real money for stuff
Speaker 1: in games and spawning its own economy. Of course, that
Speaker 1: that became a problem for a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 1: gold farming as they call it. Yeah, so you had
Speaker 1: it's kind of crazy coming across many platforms in many games. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you had the willing to pay real money to get
Speaker 1: in game resources to make their players stronger within the game,
Speaker 1: which is kind of interesting because you think you could
Speaker 1: be using that real money to get you real resources
Speaker 1: to make you happier in real life. But people were
Speaker 1: deriving so much pleasure from the games themselves that they
Speaker 1: wanted to uh to to deck out their characters with
Speaker 1: the best stuff that they could possibly get. And in
Speaker 1: some cases it wasn't like some cases it was so
Speaker 1: that they could show off. Some cases, it was so
Speaker 1: that they could take advantage of other players more effectively.
Speaker 1: Some people just wanted you know, they really like playing
Speaker 1: the game, and they just wanted to have the coolest
Speaker 1: stuff that they could get for their character, and they
Speaker 1: relatedn't have the time or the inclination to go get
Speaker 1: it themselves. Because sometimes you're talking about items that would
Speaker 1: drop only if you killed a certain monster and not always.
Speaker 1: You know, it wouldn't always drop. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you might have to face off against this particularly powerful
Speaker 1: creature and use a lot of your resources like health
Speaker 1: potions or whatever, in order to take the creature down.
Speaker 1: And then the creature drops items, and it may even
Speaker 1: be that you know, it's only a certain percentage of
Speaker 1: the time will it drop the item you're specifically looking for.
Speaker 1: To make it more complicated, you would have games where
Speaker 1: other players could pick up an item when it dropped,
Speaker 1: and so it may only drop that one item, But
Speaker 1: then there's fifty people all trying to grab it at
Speaker 1: the same time and there's only one instance of that item. Well,
Speaker 1: then you know that would cause problems too, because you
Speaker 1: have people who would camp out waiting for a monster
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 on to two thousand four, which is
Speaker 1: a big year and m m O RPGs again, I'm
Speaker 1: surprised you didn't mention eve Online, 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 eval Online is still very popular.
Speaker 1: Um it's uh. It's made by a European company UM
Speaker 1: named CCP games and very predominantly male too from what
Speaker 1: I understand. Um, but yeah, it's a it's a big
Speaker 1: um still very very popular with space exploration and basically
Speaker 1: space combat. Um, whereas in the Star Wars games you
Speaker 1: might actually be a character and you know, on your feet,
Speaker 1: and most of what I've seen of viv Online is
Speaker 1: uh space based, so you know, you have your ship
Speaker 1: and you're doing stuff. Um, and there's there's interstellar commerce
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. Um. Obviously I've never played,
Speaker 1: but it's I do know some people who do, and
Speaker 1: they really love it so and it's it's kind a
Speaker 1: big following, which is why I thought, you know, you
Speaker 1: should mention it. It's you know, always again one of
Speaker 1: us nice to see a game that does not necessarily
Speaker 1: just fall into the sword and sorcery realm. So next
Speaker 1: we have in two thousand four three games that three
Speaker 1: among the many games that came out, three big ones
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: EverQuest two was an opportunity for Well to sell more
Speaker 1: copies of games for one thing, but also to update
Speaker 1: the the graphics and game engine beyond what an expansion
Speaker 1: pat could do, and so Request To launches, City of
Speaker 1: Heroes launches, and now you've got the superhero supervillain kind
Speaker 1: of games launching, which was a neat um, a neat
Speaker 1: expansion on M m O RPGs. And then the big
Speaker 1: game that is on the tip of everyone's tongue when
Speaker 1: 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: I mean it was, it was a true phenomenon. There
Speaker 1: are over ten million people playing the game. I remember
Speaker 1: when Ultimate Online launched, it was a big deal when
Speaker 1: they hit a hundred thousand subscribers. Now we're talking about
Speaker 1: ten million people playing this game, and it even it
Speaker 1: even I know that the largest number I've seen attributed
Speaker 1: to it was a couple from a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago now, but recording this in where they had hit
Speaker 1: twelve million at one point, maybe even thirteen. So it
Speaker 1: is declined in the past year or two, but not
Speaker 1: it's still going. Yeah, there there are plenty of people
Speaker 1: who still play and uh and the expansion packs have
Speaker 1: really continued the development of that world so much so
Speaker 1: that they destroyed it at one point, cataclysm completely uh
Speaker 1: turned the world upside down, and uh it upsets some
Speaker 1: players because things changed so dramatically. But the whole point
Speaker 1: of it was that the player base for for Wow
Speaker 1: was made up a lot a lot of the player base.
Speaker 1: We're old time players who have been playing forever, and
Speaker 1: you know, you have to keep making things interesting and
Speaker 1: adding a new realm every now and then, and upping
Speaker 1: the level cap by five only goes so far, and
Speaker 1: so there have been some calculated risks of really shaking
Speaker 1: the game up in order to keep long time players
Speaker 1: around and interested, because now they've got you know, even
Speaker 1: places that seemed familiar are now new to them. Uh.
Speaker 1: For new players, that 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 they
Speaker 1: left at the barrel, should have taken on the left.
Speaker 1: And Albuquerque. Uh So yeah, that those games, all three
Speaker 1: of those games were made a big impact. And you know,
Speaker 1: it was at this point that you really started to
Speaker 1: see some real competition between games because there are only
Speaker 1: so many gamers out there who want to play online
Speaker 1: role playing games, and yeah, and subscriptions can start to
Speaker 1: rack up. I mean, these are not necessarily cheap and
Speaker 1: maybe somewhere in the realm of you know, twenty to
Speaker 1: thirty dollars a month, twenty three dollars a month to play,
Speaker 1: and you know, you start playing multiple games, you only
Speaker 1: have so much time to dedicate each game. So the
Speaker 1: competition was pretty fierce. World of Warcraft ran with this
Speaker 1: and did really well. Two thousand eight. There was a
Speaker 1: game that launched that you know in other games again,
Speaker 1: launched between two thousand and four and two. Guild Wars
Speaker 1: is a good one, that's actually a really good example.
Speaker 1: Or D and D Online dn D Online, which changed
Speaker 1: from and it's not the only one. In fact, the
Speaker 1: one I'm about to mention also did this. D n
Speaker 1: D Online and Age of Conan, which launched in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight. Both of those were games that you would
Speaker 1: pay for originally and you did a monthly subscription. Both
Speaker 1: of those games also came out with free to play models,
Speaker 1: where you could play the game for free, but you
Speaker 1: would not have access to all the content and depending
Speaker 1: upon the way the game model was like an age
Speaker 1: of Conan. You could switch from a free account to
Speaker 1: a paid account and then you would get access to
Speaker 1: all the premium content. D n D Online had a
Speaker 1: system where you could pay money for in game credits
Speaker 1: and use those in game credits to unlock areas of
Speaker 1: the game. Uh So, yeah, it was it was experimenting
Speaker 1: with different ways to get players engaged with the game
Speaker 1: and enough so that they'd be willing to pay to
Speaker 1: play the whole thing. And I don't know how successful
Speaker 1: that was, honestly. I mean it's It's not the only
Speaker 1: time we've seen that too. We've also seen online role
Speaker 1: playing games where if you pay real money you get
Speaker 1: access to in game resources. Um. And this is also
Speaker 1: carried over into casual games. We've seen that. When we
Speaker 1: had our episode about casual games, we talked about games
Speaker 1: where you can pay cash to get an advantage in
Speaker 1: the game freemium freemium. And it's also a fairly controversial
Speaker 1: approach because you've got gamers who are saying this takes
Speaker 1: skill out of it. If I just have deep enough pockets,
Speaker 1: I can get an advantage over everyone else in the game,
Speaker 1: and it has no bearing on whether I play the
Speaker 1: game well or not, and you know there's something to that.
Speaker 1: But guess what, that's what real life is about too.
Speaker 1: I hate to tell you. For real life, if you
Speaker 1: have a lot of money, you can make up for
Speaker 1: a basic lack of skills. As it turns out, you
Speaker 1: can hire people who have skills for you. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then I wanted to end my discussion anyway on a
Speaker 1: game that launched in um sort of like tail in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven into into it's a little game called Star
Speaker 1: Wars the Old Republic. We have finally reached the one
Speaker 1: m m O rpg I actually play. I have not
Speaker 1: played any other m m O rpg. I've seen them developed,
Speaker 1: I've you know, I've played on someone else's account just
Speaker 1: to get a feel for it, but I've never actually
Speaker 1: got an account myself. I mean, I did play a
Speaker 1: little bit of dn D online for about a couple
Speaker 1: of months. But what you you wrote an article for
Speaker 1: the site, Yes, and as that, I created an account
Speaker 1: so I could play it so I could get a
Speaker 1: better understanding of how it worked. So Star Wars the
Speaker 1: Older of like the reason. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: reasons why I wanted to play it. One is that
Speaker 1: my hatred for Star Wars has not gotten that out
Speaker 1: of hand yet. The prequels really did a number on me.
Speaker 1: People don't don't get me started, please don't. But but
Speaker 1: I still despite all that, I still loved the Star
Speaker 1: Wars universe, and I really love the Knights of the
Speaker 1: Old Republic games, which are set up almost four thousand
Speaker 1: years before the original trilogy. Uh Star Wars the Old
Speaker 1: Republic is set about thirty years before the original trilogy,
Speaker 1: So there are no characters from the original trilogy or
Speaker 1: any of the the Star Wars movies that are in
Speaker 1: the games. The games You're You're in, You're You're encountering
Speaker 1: you know, ancestors several generations removed from anyone in the
Speaker 1: the film series. The nice thing about that is that
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about impacting the world so
Speaker 1: much that the movies could not have happened right, because
Speaker 1: that was one of the problems, is that you want
Speaker 1: this rich world that Lucas created that people find so
Speaker 1: interesting and compelling, but they didn't want to create it
Speaker 1: in such a way that if you did one set
Speaker 1: of actions, you you invalidate what happens in the movies.
Speaker 1: Because then you've just invalidated the reason why everyone loves
Speaker 1: it in in the first place. So that's a tricky balance. Well,
Speaker 1: by setting it years before the events of the films,
Speaker 1: you kind of take that causation away. And uh, the
Speaker 1: Nights of the Old Republic games were a lot of
Speaker 1: fun for me, So I wanted to play this and
Speaker 1: I ended up getting an count and I do play. Uh.
Speaker 1: The character, my main character in case you're all wondering,
Speaker 1: is an imperial agent. You can play either as the
Speaker 1: imperial side or the rebels side. It's not the same
Speaker 1: as the movies and on depending on which side you're
Speaker 1: you're on, you can play light side or dark side,
Speaker 1: So you could be a light side Imperial agent if
Speaker 1: you wanted to be. I'm not. I played dark side. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Every time I can't I can't I play, I choose
Speaker 1: the dark side option. Um. And so anyway, it's a
Speaker 1: really fun game set in the Star Wars universe, and
Speaker 1: I've been having a blast with it, and it makes
Speaker 1: me think that if I had had a broadband connection earlier,
Speaker 1: I probably would have gotten into M M O RPGs earlier.
Speaker 1: Now the way I play it, I play it more
Speaker 1: as a single player kind of experience, and I only
Speaker 1: occasionally team up with people because I just haven't made
Speaker 1: that many friends on on Star Wars the Old Republic yet.
Speaker 1: But who knows, maybe after this podcast goes live, folks
Speaker 1: will track me down and be like, hey, man, I'll
Speaker 1: help you out. You're having trouble taking that Mandalorian down.
Speaker 1: And I will say, yes, yes, I am. That guy
Speaker 1: is tough and he's really irritating me. So yeah, they're
Speaker 1: They're scads of other games that we haven't mentioned, some
Speaker 1: very high profile games, dozens like Halo games, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and there are other games that are There are other
Speaker 1: games that are massively multiplayer. Fact, I'd argue that the the
Speaker 1: Halo games fit in this where there's not role playing involved,
Speaker 1: but it is a massively multiplayer online game, so you
Speaker 1: can have a lot of people playing at once even
Speaker 1: though they're not necessarily role playing. Yeah, it's it's funny
Speaker 1: because I think in a way, some of them and
Speaker 1: some of it's fuzzy to be honest, Um, there are
Speaker 1: different degrees of the role playing involved. When you're playing you,
Speaker 1: is that really playing a role? Yeah? So so, and
Speaker 1: again there are people who get into the role playing
Speaker 1: and there are people who despise the role playing. And
Speaker 1: sometimes you'll have companies create servers just for role players
Speaker 1: so that the role players can be all you know.
Speaker 1: The hardcore gamers might say that's all hippie dippy, So
Speaker 1: the role players gonna be all hippie dipping on their
Speaker 1: own servers, and everyone who's just you know, who just
Speaker 1: wants to play the game can be on their servers.
Speaker 1: I like a balance between the two, So I'm somewhere
Speaker 1: in the middle. I don't I don't really identify myself
Speaker 1: with either group. So anyway, that's kind of a bird's
Speaker 1: eye view the history of m m O RPGs. We
Speaker 1: really have dungeons and dragons to thank for it, all right, guys,
Speaker 1: that wraps up the classic episode. The m m O
Speaker 1: RPG story would have been fun to cover things like
Speaker 1: Elder Scrolls Online, which has had its share of ups
Speaker 1: and downs, or even the onslaught of massive multiplayer online
Speaker 1: role playing games slash shooters, stuff like Destiny and how
Speaker 1: that has fared. That's also heading s ups and downs
Speaker 1: since the debut. But maybe I'll do a follow up
Speaker 1: episode at some point to kind of give an update
Speaker 1: as to what has happened with M m O RPGs
Speaker 1: and related games since two thousand and twelve. It's certainly
Speaker 1: set the ground for a lot of online play, and
Speaker 1: we're seeing more and more versions of online games these days,
Speaker 1: everything from pub G to other role playing games. If
Speaker 1: you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: why not right me, because if you just hold it
Speaker 1: in your heart, I'm not gonna know. The email address
Speaker 1: for the show is tech Stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle of both of those is tech Stuff hs W.
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