meridian-59 posts

The Daily Grind: Can you look backwards with games?

by Eliot Lefebvre Jan 2nd 2010 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Culture, MMO industry, Opinion, The Daily Grind

Take a look at the screenshot above from Meridian 59. It probably doesn't look like much to most of you. But for some of our readers, that screenshot represents a game that was one of the first graphical and three-dimensional MMOs ever, and it might well bring back fond memories. It all depends on whether or not you were gaming at the time and interested in the genre, and even then you might not have enjoyed the game or had a chance to pick it up and play regularly. (Cable internet was not exactly a foregone conclusion in 1996, after all.)

Games are on an ever-increasing ramp of graphical complexity and depth of play, and so games that were revolutionary at one point have become much less so with time. But can you look past that and see why they were important in the first place? Do you play EverQuest and see dated graphics and gameplay models, or do you see a game that inspired interest in the genre enough to make the current market possible? Do you look back when you play a game, or do you find yourself hung up with the latest and greatest features instead?

Tags: eq, everquest, historical, history-of-games, looking-backwards, m59, meridian-59, near-death-studios, older-games, soe, sony-online-entertainment, tdg, the-daily-grind

Near Death Studios closes down

by Eliot Lefebvre Jan 1st 2010 at 6:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Meridian 59, MMO industry, News items

If 2009 hadn't claimed quite enough lives for your tastes quite yet -- in terms of companies, jobs, and games -- you might have a bit of a morbid approach to things. We're just over the border into the new year, but it looks like there was one last item on the chopping block. Near Death Studios, the team behind Meridian 59, is no longer simply "near" death, but over the line into pining for the fjords. Brian 'Psychochild' Green broke the news on his blog yesterday, announcing that while the game wouldn't be going anywhere, it would no longer be a commercial venture run by the now-defunct company.

So what went wrong? As Green puts it, while Near Death Studios was able to raise the money and the operational talent to get the game running and keep it in maintenance mode, the game never really grew -- the one shot it might have had at attracting new players was unfortunately timed right around the launch of World of Warcraft. He's not bitter about the experience, however, and he's glad that he had the chance to keep Meridian 59 running for such a long time and help shape something people really enjoyed. It's a sad announcement for a venerable game, though, and we can only hope that this is the last of the fallout we see from the closing-filled year.

Tags: brian-green, brian-psychochild-green, closing, company-closing, m59, meridian, meridian-59, near-death-studios, news-items, psychochild

The gaming renaissance

by Brendan Drain Oct 20th 2009 at 1:00PM

Filed under: Culture, MMO industry, Opinion, Academic, Virtual worlds

In the early 70's, some clever chap programmed a pile of circuits to create a primitive game we all know as Pong. Fast-forward some forty years down the line and we're now battling Orcs in Azeroth and flying spaceships in the far-reaches of another galaxy. An entire games industry has erupted from those first simple arcade systems, with people designing and programming games for kids and adults alike. In the 90's, the first generation of kids that grew up with those early game systems became the ones making them and a virtual renaissance in game design ensued. Those kids that grew up wishing they could make their own games started to realise their dreams and the games industry as we know it came forth. More recently, the people that grew up with early MMOs have begun to hit the games industry and we're seeing a rebirth of the genre.

In this article, I look at the games industry explosion and how it relates to the generations growing up with games. I ask whether the MMO genre is headed for its own great gaming renaissance and take a speculative look ahead at the future for MMOs and the games industry as a whole.

Tags: academic, culture, eve-online, everquest, gamers, gaming, history, industry, lineage, meridian-59, mmo-industry, neverwinter-nights, nexus, opinion, renaissance, the-realm, ultima-online, virtual-worlds, world-of-warcraft

The gaming renaissance, part 2

by Brendan Drain Oct 20th 2009 at 1:00PM

Meet the Team: Samuel Axon

by Samuel Axon Nov 10th 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Massively meta, Meet the Team

Once a week our writers will give you a glimpse into their lives, to let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. Click here to read more Meet the Team.

What do you do for Massively.com?
I'm a core blogger. That means I'm one of a handful of writers who keep the regular flow of content going, hit news when it comes up, and sometimes do featured articles.

What's your favorite MMO?
My all-time favorite is Meridian 59. I still haven't played a game I liked half as much as that one. It was a completely different kind of game, and there hasn't been anything even remotely like it since. It was horribly flawed in many ways, but I'm sad no one -- except maybe CCP with EVE Online -- has refined what it tried to do.

Gallery: Meet the Team

Tags: featured, lord-of-the-rings-online, lotro, meet-the-team, meridian-59, samuel, samuel-axon, world-of-warcraft

How will factions and PvP work in Star Wars: The Old Republic?

by Samuel Axon Oct 22nd 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, New titles, PvP, Star Wars: The Old Republic

Since BioWare and LucasArts' Star Wars: The Old Republic was announced, we've learned that there will be two factions in the game -- the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire. We've also learned that players will be able to embrace either the Dark or Light Side of the Force. But there's something surprising in all this: there's no direct correlation between the two distinctions. You could, for example, play as a Jedi working within the Empire -- "a good guy in a bad place," as BioWare put it.

We're big fans of the idea -- more moral complexity is welcome (especially in the Star Wars setting, which tends to quite literally be black and white), but it raises some interesting gameplay questions, particularly with regards to PvP -- questions we're eager to raise!

Gallery: Star Wars: The Old Republic Screenshots

Tags: bioware, eve-online, factions, featured, galactic-republic, jedi-order, lore, lucasarts, meridian-59, old-republic, pvp, rumors, sith-empire, sith-lords, speculation, star-wars, star-wars-the-old-republic, swtor, the-old-republic, tor, warhammer-online, world-of-warcraft

Today the MUD and the MMO turn 30

by Samuel Axon Oct 20th 2008 at 7:00PM

Filed under: MMO industry, News items, Opinion, MUDs

Today marks the 30th birthday of the original MUD, created at Essex University by Roy Trubshaw in 1978. We recommend you check out what Richard Bartle -- who worked on later iterations of the project -- has to say about this event, as well as Raph Koster's words on the subject. The question at hand, as presented by Bartle, seems to be: does this matter?

While he is skeptical, we would like to posit that it does matter a great deal -- or at least that it should. Graphics alone shouldn't lead to a strong distinction when the fundamentals are the same, so let's consider the modern MMO to be part of the same tradition as the MUD -- let's say that this is the MMO's 30th birthday too.

Tags: 30th-anniversary, 30th-birthday, anniversary, birthday, essex-university, everquest, history, meridian-59, mud, mud1, raph-koster, richard-bartle, roy-trubshaw, text, the-realm, ultima-online, world-of-warcraft

The Daily Grind: The best MMO music

by Samuel Axon Sep 13th 2008 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Opinion, The Daily Grind

Here's a story for you: a certain blogger is playing The Lord of the Rings Online. He's in the Trollshaws, and he notices the music -- oft-ignored in MMOs -- is actually really good. It's classy and it's beautiful. Then he starts to think about the music in other games -- the gorgeous and mournful guild hall ballad of Meridian 59, the beautiful and muted arpeggios of EverQuest's Kelethin theme, and the dark and foreboding ancient instrumentation of Age of Conan's various Stygian pieces.

Music is not usually the focus of a lot of discussion or attention in MMOs. A lot of people probably just turn it off and listen to terrible terrible pop rock in the background. But for those of you who actually pay attention: do any particular musical compositions in MMOs stand out to you? What's the best track yet featured in an MMO?

Tags: age-of-conan, discussion, eq, everquest, kelethin, lord-of-the-rings-online, lotro, m59, merdian, meridian-59, midi, music, opinion, score, soundtrack, stygia, tdg, the-daily-grind

The Daily Grind: Are the stakes too low in modern PvP?

by Samuel Axon Sep 7th 2008 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Game mechanics, PvP, Opinion, The Daily Grind

Player vs. Player gameplay has undergone a drastic change in recent years. Games like Meridian 59 and Ultima Online didn't pull any punches. Anyone could kill anyone anywhere, and the penalties could be quite severe. When you died In Meridian or UO, you dropped all of your gear. The person who killed you could steal whatever he or she pleased.

Of course, in games like that, gear wasn't quite such a big deal. In Meridian a sword would wear out after a few of hours of use anyway. But combined with stat and skill losses, death in the games of the 90s was comparatively harsh. Now, in World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online, the stakes are lower. You have absolutely nothing to lose by dying in PvP in WoW, and AoC and WAR's designs aren't much more aggressive.

But here's a question from a veteran of the oldschool: with stakes this low, does PvP really matter? Will it really get you sweating? Will you really care that much about winning or losing? Some oldschool folks will argue that PvP is boring and meaningless now that death has been de-clawed. Maybe we should go back to the barbarism of the old days. What do you think?

Tags: 90s, age-of-conan, blizzard, death, discussion, funcom, m59, meridian, meridian-59, murder, mythic, nds, near-death-studios, oldschool, opinion, origin, player-vs-player, pvp, tdg, the-daily-grind, ultima-online, uo, warhammer-online, world-of-warcraft

Take a visual tour of EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey's new dungeons

by Samuel Axon Aug 30th 2008 at 8:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Screenshots, EverQuest II, Expansions, Wallpapers

EverQuest II's The Shadow Odyssey expansion is set to launch this November. In addition to heritage quests and the shard reward system, the expansion will add an EverQuest classic -- the dungeon of Guk. And in the days leading up to the launch, EQ2 players will get to start exploring another dungeon: Veksar.

To build up anticipation, SOE is rolling out articles, screenshots, and concept art related to the two new dungeons. For Guk it put together a series of lore-oriented postcards and images explaining what the place is all about, culminating in some concept art wallpapers. The Veksar article is a little more traditional in its presentation, but the substance is all there. We've put together in a gallery all the images from both of those tours.

SOE also released concept art for guild halls, which will be implemented soon. Guild halls date back to Meridian 59 and text MUDs before it, but for some reason they've been out of vogue in the 21st century.

Gallery: EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey Dungeons

Well met, fellow Norrathian! Make sure to check out all of our coverage of the next EverQuest II expansion, The Shadow Odyssey as well as Seeds of Destruction, the next expansion to EverQuest!

Tags: concept-art, dungeon, eq2, eqii, everquest, everquest-2, everquest-ii, expansion, frogloks, guild-halls, guk, iksar, meridian-59, screenshots, soe, the-shadow-odyssey, veksar, wallpaper

The Digital Continuum: Player abuse, redemption and revolution

by Kyle Horner Jul 5th 2008 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Game mechanics, Opinion, The Digital Continuum

Lets go back about ten years or so to the original EverQuest. Now it isn't my intention to pick on any one game, I just happen to be more familiar with it than Ultima Online or Meridian 59. For the sake of immersion let me assume the role of a 1999 copy of EverQuest that you happen to be playing on your gaming machine back in the last year of the last century.

You just died in EverQuest. How dare you die! Since you had the nerve to be defeated in combat, you'll now be required to run from your binding point -- which could potentially be very far away -- to your dead body, which contains all of your equipment and bags that just happen to hold all of your inventory. If you fail to do this, then you lose all of these items. Oh but you've already lost some experience and possibly de-leveled if you happened to have recently leveled up.

Hey! Why are you logging out? So what if you think you'd rather play Half-Life right now, this is the game you're paying for monthly. Don't you think you'd better get the most out of it? Hah! See? I knew you were only bluffing. All right, now get to running, noob.

Tags: azeroth, blizzard, champions, champions-online, city-of-heroes, cryptic, cryptic-studios, ea-mythic, eq, everquest, featured, half-life, joystiqfeatures, lord-of-the-rings-online, lotro, meridian-59, ncsoft, norrath, omega-system, pirates-of-the-burning-sea, realm-vs-realm, rvr, soe, sony-online-entertainment, the-agency, turbine, ultima-online, valve, war, warhammer-online, world-of-warcraft, wow, wrath-of-the-lich-king

Vigilante Meridian 59 players wage war against pirate servers

by Samuel Axon May 24th 2008 at 8:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Meridian 59, Culture, Interviews, MMO industry, News items

Meridian 59 is a game with a pirate problem. A while back, the server source code leaked onto the internet and seedy players began hosting their own servers without subscription fees. Pirate servers are a problem for many MMOs, but because of M59's comparatively small scale, it has a lot more to lose to the trend.

Amidst these troubles, some M59 players can be quite loyal. Case in point: the blog of game developer Patrick Rogers tells the story of two former M59 players hacking into a pirate server and mass-killing all its residents with powerful admin commands. The vigilantes hoped to make life (and death) on the pirate servers as unpleasant as possible so as to encourage the residents to migrate to the legitimate servers hosted by Near Death Studios. That's not the most amazing bit, though.

Tags: 3do, ban, banned, brian-green, cheating, duping, exploit, imaekgaemz, loyalty, m59, meridian, meridian-59, near-death-studios, patrick-rogers, piracy, pirate, pirates, servers, vigilantes

Massively's Visual History of MMORPGs, Part I

by Samuel Axon Mar 31st 2008 at 2:40PM

Filed under: Galleries, Screenshots, Lineage, Meridian 59, Nexus: The Kingdoms of the Winds, MMO industry, The Realm Online, Ultima Online

The MMORPG genre has come so far in these past few decades, it's almost difficult to believe. The journey from text MUDs to America Online-based dungeon crawlers, and all the way up to Age of Conan and Warhammer Online has been a truly impressive one. We here at Massively would like to invite you to step into the time machine with us and take a visual tour of that journey. We're taking a close look at the most important titles in online role-playing game history!

What was the first MUD? Howabout the first 3D MMO? When did these games transition from niche curiosities to global, cultural phenomenons, and who's responsible? In this series, we'll tackle all those questions and more. Plus, we'll see just how far these fancy graphics have come over the years! Sound like fun? Jump into the gallery!

Gallery: Massively's Visual History of MMORPGs, Part I

Tags: 3do, aol, featured, gallery, history, joystiqfeatures, lineage, meridian-59, mmorpg, mmorpgs, MUD, ncsoft, near-death-studios, neverwinter-nights, nexon, nexus, origin, origin-systems, screenshots, shadow-of-yserbius, sierra, sierra-online, the-realm, ultima-online

Damion Schubert seeks a different kind of grind

by Samuel Axon Nov 29th 2007 at 9:30AM

Filed under: Meridian 59, Game mechanics, Ultima Online, Shadowbane

MMO developers and publishers try to provide game-play that keeps you coming back again and again so you won't stop their money flow by canceling your subscription. The easiest way for them to do this is to make their games an addictive grind. You feel compelled to level up. You can't help yourself.

Just because something's addictive, though, doesn't mean it's fun. But is there another way? Damion Schubert (of Meridian 59 and Ultima Online fame, and one of a certain blogger's personal heroes) posed that question on his Zen of Design blog.

MMOs must be centered around highly repeatable activities, Schubert said. Combat, for example, works well because developers can put in a lot of changeable variables to make the experience different every time. On the other hand, he uses puzzle/mystery games like Myst as examples of games not based on a repeatable activity. Once a puzzle is solved, it's solved, and that's the end of it. So, if not that, then what? What other games have mechanics that can be used as a model for MMO game-play that sticks?

That discussion is going on right now at Zen of Design.

Tags: addiction, blog, damion-schubert, design, discussion, game-theory, grind, mechanics, meridian-59, myst, repeatability, ultima-online, zen-of-design

Podcast looks back at Meridian 59 history

by Samuel Axon Nov 1st 2007 at 2:31PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Meridian 59, Interviews, MMO industry, PvP

Want to work on your old-school cred? Check out Virgin Worlds' "Online Gamer's Anthology" podcast episode #5 and learn a bit about the history of arguably the first graphical MMO ever, Meridian 59.

The podcast starts out with a somewhat awkward skit which pays homage to Meridian 59's gameplay, but if you skip ahead about 30 minutes you'll get straight to the meat of it -- an in-depth, tell-all interview with developer Brian "Psychochild" Green, who has worked on the game since 1998. He talks about what makes the game unique and relevant, its demise at the hands of 3DO, and its resurrection by his own company, Near Death Studios. Here's a highlight from the interview -- Green explaining why re-launching Meridian 59 was important to him:

If you don't have a good sense of history it's really hard to move forward. Looking at more modern games, you have the level and class based system of EverQuest or World of Warcraft. I think a lot of times people look at only the most recent things and think, "Oh, that's the way it's always been, and that's what we have to follow." I think having a wider range of history -- the Meridian 59s, the Ultima Onlines, even those older games back into the proprietary systems -- knowing more about those can kind of give you a wider perspective.

Tags: 3DO, behind-the-scenes, brian-green, guild-halls, m59, merdian, meridian-59, MUD, MUDs, near-death-studios, old-school, online-gamer's-anthology, podcasts, psychochild, pvp, virgin-worlds