Retro MMORPGs

You mean Phantasy Star Online? It's not really an MMO more of a 4-man dungeon crawler with mass lobbies. There have been text based and even modestly graphical RPGs online supporting lots of players since the 70s believe it or not. In the 70s they mostly maybe exclusively existed on college mainframe computers called PLATO. In the 80s, they became more widespread and were known as MUDs, Multi-User Dungeons and similar acronyms There were some true MMOs that are /vr/ related. The first 2.5d one that was on-form for what we would eventually call MMOs was Meridian: 59 I actually beta tested that one. Ultima Online was 2D but generally considered an MMO despite being 2D, along with a game called Tibia. The most fully realized MMO that meets /vr/ standards though is Everquest. Check out Project 1999 if you want to experience it in its authentic 20th century glory.

Tibia went online in January 1997.

/vr/ used to have Tibia threads. I think they created a guild in Secura. Not sure if they're still active.

Well we had MUDs and MUSHes

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I played a lot of Ragnarok Online, and have picked it up every few years since. The fun part about it was almost everything was overpowered, oncluding bosses. You had to talk to people to form a party, and generally being around other players had value since the game focused on grid location.

I miss gaming before everyone knew everything.

>still no /vr/MUD

You guys are slacking

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>>4028149
PSO and RO ate up so much of my time. All I have left of them are fond memories. The magic was locked to the time period for me and cannot be recreated now. I suppose maybe that's how my friends enjoy Overwatch now, it is a special time but may fade over time, so they capture as much of the moment as possible now while they can. I wish I could join them.

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>>4028165
I remember a time when every single guy in my school played Tibia. Honestly I think those were the happiest, most care-free days of my life. I had a lot of friends back then, a lot of social interaction. We also played Unreal Tournament '99

The group slowly eroded away as we grew up until everybody was gone.

>>4028165
>PSO
I can't listen to the soundtrack for that shit, dear god the feels.

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>>4028174
i know this feel all too well. i dont talk to anyone i went to school with and was best friends with back then. would spend late nights gaming together all the time. i remember a time when i was 14 or 15 and we didnt drive yet so we skated across town back to my friends house to pick up Halo 3 in the middle of the night and skated back. i havent been that happy since those days.

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>>4028207
https://youtu.be/_qpFe8YNVB8
The music to it has this strange beauty reminding me of the days. Getting home just even the sounds of the game loading and connecting, to see everyone there waiting and happy to see you. Getting to utilize the Japanese you do know to join in with others from afar. Cards were left from random people indicating they would love playing with you again. Showing off your custom emotes to others. Friendly people gifting you their Mags they raised/grinded for free. Just enjoying the repetitive, but still somehow a journey worth going to every time because of friends. I got fast enough typing with the d-pad, yet still my friends chipped in to get me a keyboard. Finding out others you knew also were playing and having a grand ol' time. The music was fittingly majestic with the experience.


>>4028174
Yeah it was nice, friends bringing in their computers and consoles every couple weeks for LAN fun. Showing off the most interesting new and old games. Connected computer multiplayer. It was my past. I guess these days it is even easier for kids to get a similar fun with modern connectivity. Times do change, but you like I remember the good times when we made it fun with what we had.


>>4028140
and MUCKs. There was also IRC to chat. Role playing from afar. Nerdy pleasures, but you met some interestingly different people from around.

>>4028087
Check out the LPMUD Genesis from 1989. Servers are still up and you can try it out! Actually holds up pretty well.

>>4028207
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_dWalQdIN0

>>4028087
more like retro butts thread

asheron's call

developed in the 90s

released 1999

emulated servers now exist

>>4028087
Meridian 59 is still alive and kicking. That's as old as you can get for 3d retro mmo.

Everquest also has a retro private server. Project 1999

Graal Online (previously Zelda Online / ZOL) has classic servers still, I think

If you're into 2d mmo-space crazy, Subspace is around as well.

Meridian 59 (released 1996) is still around: https://www.meridiannext.com. The population is low but the game was open sourced a few years back so it'll probably always be around.

>>4028131
Guild is Yotsubas, on Secura. Last time I checked they still have a guildhall, so they're still active.

I still remember exploring the map old school style with Kentaro Sakata. Is that amazing guy still around?

https://secure.tibia.com/community/?subtopic=characters&name=Kentaro+Sakata

I used to play when the Yotsubas guild was just starting out. Man we all forged some real stories together but to me that guy turned into a legend

He knew some secret passages I wouldn't even dream of finding on my own. We took a pick and just started exploring, one secret cave after another. In one cave we found an school quest chest. It was so old and forgotten it gave us a bag full of unstacked runes, which directly contradict modern Tibia mechanics.

He taught me how to hunt dragons with all vocations. One time while we were at the Kazordoon spawn I went across the bridge and two dragons showed up. They started firewaving me aggressively and I couldn't dodge both at the same time. I panicked and ran away like a little bitch. Dragons pursued me, sending yet another firewave directly into my ass. My HP turned deep red, I looked at the number and it was below 100. That was it, I thought; I was going to die. All those hours hunting, all that time doing the blessing pilgrimage, all that progress, gone... And then suddenly Kentaro reached into his backpack and finds an old school ultimate healing rune, targets my character without using hotkeys and heals me to full HP just before I got hit by yet another firewave. We were frantically running back from two angry dragons, across a narrow bridge, side by side, lag and everything; yet he still did this somehow. I couldn't fucking believe what had just happened

In the end he managed to kill those dragons effortlessly while I took a moment to process the situation. It was probably just another day helping out a noob for him but he turned into legend that day for me. "I r good droid" he said

>>4028371
stephen is working on a spiritual successor but it kinda seems to be going nowhere

http://community.therealm.io/

>>4028498
How do I get started with this game?

>>4028131
I remember the Tibia and Ultima Online threads. Nice games. Used to play on UO pirate server

Man, I don't know what Verant/SOE/whoever did, but the zone and game asset files in EQ are a mess. Wanted to import them into Unreal Engine but can't make any sense of them.

I played some kind of MUD like thing in '93, does that count?

I don't remember anything anout t except it was through AOL and it had a really limited interface, but was still text based.

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>tfw this was my babbys first mmorpg
>not enough people know about it
>small community trying to revive the game since it was shutdown
>probably will never happen

>>4029417
which version of them

the really old ones had code to render them in povray and various versions have opensource clients that at least let you fly around

>>4029417
Why?

>>4029484
Maps pulled off my original EQ disc from its launch. Are you talking about the zone viewers from way back? I guess I could dig around and see if I can find any source code for them. I think they were pretty inaccurate back in the day, though.

>>4029520
Novelty of seeing the game rendered in UE4.

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>>4029430
Neverwinter Nights?

>>4029543
I can legit help you if you still need it. I wrote and asset loader myself and can share the code (it's in c++). Alternately, I can share a document that explains the .wld format.

>>4028087

2001's anarchy online is still going

>>4028116
UO is more of an MMO than Everquest.

>>4029543
i meant this https://web.archive.org/web/20070212183201/http://pages.sbcglobal.net/mitselplik/VBZoneConverter.html

it probably will work, but i can't be fucked to find my discs or download them

honestly there are like 8 different things to view/export/whatever zones

>>4029543
or if that isn't good enough literally try any of http://wiki.eqemulator.org/p?EQEmu_Tool_Cheat_Sheet#clientcustomization

>>4029549

Nope, less graffix and I think it was browser-based or some such

>>4029430
What's the difference between a MUD and a MMORPG? Seems like it's the same concept

>>4030127

Speaking from a purely literal standpoint, pretty much nothing separates the two. But when you say MUD, pretty much everyone thinks of text-based games, I think.

>>4030127
MUD is the name of a specific game - MUD1. Games that cloned it were called MUDs. Other terms were eventually derived to describe slight variants of the concept in a situation similar to Rogue-likes.

MMORPG is a "massive" multi user dungeon. MUDs aren't designed around a massive concurrent userbase and the game mechanics break down quickly in such a situation.. You can even see this in early MMOs like EQ where quality of life decreased as server population spiked.

>>4029417
>>4029543
If someone could get EQ's zones/models/animations/collision volumes/etc... imported into an engine like UE4, I'm sure there'd be a lot of interested parties in building a full blown open source client. There's been a few attempts in that area in the past decade but they all end up abandoned.

>>4030212
I've written custom clients for some mobile games and graphics were never a problem, the networking code was. Why do you even care about the graphics at all

>>4028165
My PSO/RO friends all moved to Final Fantasy XIV.
I honestly can't get into it and I don't have the time for MMOs anymore, but I miss playing with them a lot.