In 1996, the MMO industry was certainly in its infancy, in truth, it didn’t exist yet. There were a lot of games in development and beta testing at the time, but 1 game came out and made history. Not many people know about Meridian 59, but those who do know it appreciate it as one of their best gaming experiences of all time. It was the start of a long line of games that would eventually become MMOs like World of Warcraft.
M59 was created by a small group of people under the company name Archetype Interactive. It was developed quite low-tech and over the Internet. 3DO picked up the game and decided to be part of the movement. When the game began to be promoted, it created the first use of the terms “Massively Multiplayer”. It was the first 3D persistent world.
By the current definition, the game was not necessarily “massive”. Today’s MMOs typically have thousands of players online at once per server. M59 at its peak only had a few hundred people per server. Still, this was the first of its kind and was quite an experience for anyone who played.
Unfortunately, because it was the first, it came with many challenges and setbacks. The game was announced but was met with some negativity. People weren’t used to having to pay a monthly fee for their computer games. It certainly wasn’t the first game you played with others over the internet, so why should you pay? Some may not have been able to comprehend the amount of hardware and manpower required to keep these worlds running.
Being the first, it will also be the first time you have to deal with downtime. Maintenance is something that has to happen, but when the game goes up and down every day for a week, it tends to look bad when you have nothing to compare it to.
It also got to a point where they didn’t really have enough subscribers to make a profit on their hardware and maintenance costs, so their solution was to increase the price, in fact they doubled it. This was the beginning of the end for the poor m59. It didn’t last long but it was quite a game. There are still some playable servers, the game has been streamed and bought multiple times by small businesses. Last heard, “Near Death Studios” had it, but may have stopped hosting it.