There is a pair of books by Richard Bartle, co-developer of the game MUD, one of the text-based online virtual worlds that acted as a precursor to present day MMOs, titled MMOs From The Inside Out and MMOs From The Outside In. The books are about the entire history of virtual worlds, from text-based MUDs in the 1970s-1990s and then MMOs from the 1990s-mid 2010s (the books were published in 2016). The books are broken up into 11 chapters, spread across 1300+ pages, with each chapter consisting of very small sections with interesting facts about MMOs, virtual worlds, and game design. These books have been on my radar for a while, and I'm finally getting around to reading them, so I'm going to be posting some interesting MMO lore and facts in this thread every day as long as it stays up.
 |
 Shopping Cart Returner Shirt $21.68 |
|
Day 1
The first book starts in roughly the late 1970s as Trubshaw and Bartle are in the process of writing the code for MUD, which was a precursor to other MUDs, one of which would ultimately inspire early MMOs. Many of the current tropes in MMOs were directly influenced by MUDs. Some interesting facts:
> Many MUDs took inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons, and the influence flowed through to MMOs (hence why there are so many fantasy MMOs).
> To create MUD, Trubshaw abused an instruction on the mainframe system he was using that allowed him to essentially share RAM among multiple users, making it possible to write a shared virtual world.
> "dinos" (short for dinosaurs) was an online slang term in the 90s referring to people who played text-based games in the early 1990s (graphical video games were fairly common at this point, although graphical MMOs were rare).
> XP is a common abbreviation for experience points in online games, but in tabletop games it was often abbreviated as EP.
> MUD was about written in about 22,000 lines of code (minuscule amount compared to graphical MMOs).
>> Many MUDs took inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons, and the influence flowed through to MMOs
The genre never had a fricking chance lmao
Great thread idea, but if that's the kind of stuff we can expect, not worth reading. Would rather have actually interesting tidbits extracted. Did we really need to know that exp used to be ep? Come on.
something tells me that op is like 15 years old lol, but i also do want to see more.
OP here:
>Great thread idea, but if that's the kind of stuff we can expect, not worth reading. Would rather have actually interesting tidbits extracted. Did we really need to know that exp used to be ep? Come on.
It's a long book and a slow read, a lot of the early stuff in the book revolves around MUD, since the author co-wrote it. Also, there is not a lot of accurate history around MUDs, and a lot of culture around MUDs has been poorly documented, so the author is sort of correcting the record and preserving the historical bits that have not made it into the mainstream. He frequently throws in a lot of filler tidbits like that. Probably 2/3rd of the book can be skipped, but I still like reading the tidbits, even if they don't add much to MMO history.
>The genre never had a fricking chance lmao
It made sense in the context of text-only virtual worlds like MUD. A lot of D&D concepts don't translate as well to graphical MMOs.
Day 2, we are getting into MMOs now.
Some Ultima Online facts:
> Ultima Online came out in 1997, 2 years before EQ but didn't have as much influence on the genre as EQ (unforgiving mechanics in UO did not make it into other popular MMOs like WoW).
> There were other graphical MMOs before Ultima Online, such as Meridian 59, but they did not take off. The author of the book suggests it was largely due to timing. The internet was growing exponentially, UO timed it just right.
> Ultima Online's engine and graphics were largely taken from Ultima VIII.
Some UO and EQ player numbers:
> Ultima Online reached peak playerbase in 2003 at 270,000 players.
> EverQuest reached a peak playerbase of 430,000 players.
And more MMO timeline facts:
> 1. In 1978 MUD was written. Other MUDs were written around a similar time, but that one was the one that ultimately took off.
> 2. MUD lead to AberMud in 1987, which was ported to C in 1988. The C port was significant, as many US university mainframes used Unix as the OS (which is also written in C), allowing AberMUD to spread very quickly.
> 3. In 1990, DikuMUD was created to improve upon AberMUD. DikuMUD's code was available and thus could be modified. Availability of source resulted in DikuMUD spreading very quickly, with hundreds of MUDs being created that used the DikuMUD code. Most of the MMO troupes today were from DikuMUD, such as: classes, races, the "holy trinity" (tank, healer, DPS), raids, auction houses, aggro systems, instancing.
> 4. In 1999, EverQuest was released. The developers of EverQuest essentially created a 3D version of DikuMUD, adding many of the gameplay mechanics from DikuMUD to EverQuest. The EQ devs used to play a DikuMUD, and the connections between DikuMUD and EQ were so strong that players would accuse the devs of using the DikuMUD code (pic related).
really not doing a lot to counter this reply
> Ultima Online reached peak playerbase in 2003 at 270,000 players.
> EverQuest reached a peak playerbase of 430,000 players.
simultaneous online count or monthly subscription?
>simultaneous online count or monthly subscription?
The author doesn't fully specify but he is talking in the context of the number of players needed for the game to break even versus cost, so I assume he means paying subscriber count. Also, the author hasn't gotten to WoW yet, but I know WoW's peak sub count was an order of magnitude above EQ peak, truly explosive growth in the genre.
>really not doing a lot to counter this reply
what kind of facts are you interested anon? If there is an MMO youre interested in, I can comb through the text again and try to find some facts.
>what kind of facts are you interested in?
anything that isnt just a basic fact-- things that either require a unique perspective or which arent widely known or easily accessible. if that's all this book has then it doesnt seem like it's worth... anything
>anything that isnt just a basic fact-- things that either require a unique perspective or which arent widely known or easily accessible
You'll have to be more specific. Are you looking for something like player testimonial? In-game lore? The book is mostly a historical perspective of the entire industry, from early text games to modern day MMOs, with some stuff on virtual world and game design thrown in, a bit of author opinion, and some other tidbits. Also, you have to remember that a lot of actual history can be quite dry; the mainstream MMO lore that we see is largely a carefully crafted narrative that is designed for entertainment purposes as opposed to accuracy.
If you're looking for player testimonial, I've seen a few decent videos over the years for specific MMOs by prior players.
well like
>Ultima Online reached peak playerbase in 2003 at 270,000 players.
>EverQuest reached a peak playerbase of 430,000 players.
why would someone care about this? i'm not saying it CAN'T be interesting but just stating "there were this many players a this time" doesnt actually SAY anything. surely this book doesnt literally just say "this happened. then this happened. then this happened," and there's more to it than that. just because it's technically history doesn't mean the individual sentences have to be dry as a bone
>but just stating "there were this many players a this time" doesnt actually SAY anything
The numbers actually create a compelling case for understanding the direction of the MMO industry. Prior to WoW, the numbers for the MMO industry as a whole were quite modest, UO peak at 0.27 million, EQ peak at 0.43 million. Modest numbers gave MMO devs a bit more leeway when selling new MMO game concepts to investors and management. However, once WoW hit the scene, and saw over 10x the number of subscribers as EQ's peak, the industry had a new target to reach.
>just because it's technically history doesn't mean the individual sentences have to be dry as a bone
There is more too it of course, I'm limited to 2000 characters per post and am cutting out a lot of stuff. The author is also trying to make a point about the actual historical lineage of MMOs. For example, he briefly talks about Tibia, which was quite popular in Brazil, Sweden, Poland, and Mexico, but didn't manage to have a large impact on future MMOs, and so the lineage of Tibia ends at Tibia. I'm also a bit biased, I like looking at numbers and data, numbers often say more than a narrative ever could.
pic somewhat related, this was a joke chain mail letter that circulated in WoW.
i'll bump, but op please include something more than just statistics or general timelines, you can find that on wikipedia for fricks sake,
has a very genuine point
Go plug your book elsewhere gay
This board is for playing games with friends
>This board is for playing games with friends
no one here has friends
your discord coven doesn't count