I usually don’t publish non EQ2 specific posts on this blog, but I thought this might be the best place to discuss this topic. I do have another outlet for writing which is my personal blog, but I rarely blog about MMO’s there and I felt like this was the best place to post this “not completely EQ2 topic”.

So I was listening to Virginworlds ep #49 this last week and Brent brought up the idea of classifying MMO’s within generations. While my first thought was “Oh lord this is a comment train wreck waiting to happen” the segment ended up coming off fairly well, and although I don’t agree with all of what Brent said I do agree with some of it. Do yourself a favor and be sure to listen to this episode (if not all of them) and see his thoughts on it. He has also posted further on it, which I will link to in a moment after I post a link to the Ancient Gaming Noob’s latest post on the matter. As I have continued to read a couple of different posts on it, I have continued to critique in my mind what I would define a “generation” to be and which games I would put in certain generations. I have found myself moving father away from the word generation and moved more into a “timespan of design’ instead. Please remember that although I am a coder, I do not work on games nor game design, so this is coming from an outside looking in perspective on the game industry and mainly as one who has been playing graphical MMO’s for almost 15 years.

15 years?!? I am sure that is what the first thought is to anyone that has gotten this far in the post. Yes, 15 years. I will be honest that number surprised the shit out of me too when I just realized it. So I am sure to the people that have been around since the general definition of “1st Generation MMO” are probably thinking, Meridian 59 hit in 1995/1996, when did Cyan build a flux capacitor to gain these extra 4 years? Well I think that most people look at Meridian 59 as the starting point for MMOs, but I don’t believe it is.

Back in 1992 in my early teen years, I was a young dork whose greatest Xmas wish was for a 14.4baud modem that could marshal 1.2 meg files of stuff over ZModem Protocal (thats up and down at the same time you young whippersnappers) [Ok I Just realized I called people whippersnappers and I am only 28, I will refrain from that from here on out] I also connected to tons of BBSs on a nightly basis (and for future trivia, my handle was ‘Cyanbane’ even back then, Weiss and Hickman are rockstars). For those who were not around in the pre-internet days, BBS were basically computers who had multiple phone lines attached to them that would accept communications with other computer users and form a “party-lineish” server with a type of menu system for one or multiple people. Basically there were the ones ran with 1 or 2 lines attached to them and others (who were the file/shareware/3.14rat hubs) could connect up to 12 or 24 lines. Most people who were “online” gamers back then are probably reading this and groaning to themselves saying “please don’t bring up doorgames” well I am, but that is not what I am brining up in regard to graphical MMOs. I do not consider those graphical MMO’s (now mater how many cool ANSI art groups you belonged to). Yeah some had some nifty ACiD ASCII screens but those are not graphical MMO’s in my mind. The reason I am describing these large scale BBS is because at about this time 1991 the world really started to pick up on a couple of nationwide BBSs. Namely Prodigy, Compuserve, and a slowly growing AOL. Prodigy launched in Atlanta in 1988 (regionally) and I was lucky enough to have parents that enjoyed my interest in computers so they picked up a membership on it pretty quick. Soon in late 1991/early 1992 Prodigy went nationwide and it, along with these other large scale BBS (and DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince) exploded and larger companies were taking note and developing their own “online” services. Along with Prodigy, multiple Warez/Porn/Anarchy BBSs, Doorgame BBSs (L.O.R.D. ftw) I also connected to a dial in service called Sierra Online.

In 1991 this was a pretty revolutionary service. I had X amount of hours to login and play Red Baron (multiplayer Flight sim) per month and they charged up the ass when I went over. It was here that I learned of a game that would change forever the way I view online games; ‘Shadow Of Yserbius‘. I did not play many muds/moos and all that good stuff, but I did mess with door games on a lot of BBSs. Here was a fantasy multiplayer game where people could interact with each other at the same time! Multiple people! And Holy shit, it has graphics!

I would argue with anyone to this day that Shadow of Yserbius WAS the first graphical MMO that was available to a wider audience than just the guys learning Fortran at large universities. It was the first online game that garnered a following and a player base (although if that playerbase went over 25 or so hours a month, they would lose their savings account paying for the extra hours).

That was the beginning of the 1st generation of MMOs. Meridian 59 soon followed (and I threw my self into that game also, lost for hours). Both of these games were the first generation. Then for me, came Everquest. I thought, whoever these 989 cats are, they got this thing right. I can play over a modem at a decent speed, the game looks sweet. This is heaven. And although I would say that of course EQ 1s time is not by any means waining (look at expansion pack #13 details) it did catch the eye of other people willing to invest money within about 2 to 3 years.

Here is where it gets fuzzy, and I have decided that I am going to mark Everquest 1 as the end of the “timespan of design/generation 1″. I say this because I think that the success of Everquest 1 is what spawned the push for other games that were soon to follow; Asheron’s Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Shadowbane, etc. I would not call these games second generation, because i think that they were built after the success of EQ1, and used some of its ideas in their design, although they did have better graphics and a few new systems, I would call them generation 1.5 (yeah, I get to make a half).

World of Warcraft I think should be included on Gen 1.5 just because I honestly feel it was built in the eye of EQ1, with a large budget and Blizzard took the time to modify a franchise it owned into the likeness of an soe/eq1 killer. WC1 hit in 1995, WC2 hit in 96/97 both game were great but I think that Blizzard wanted to move its franchise into an mmo maybe around 2001 or 2002 when they first started designing out the game. I am guessing at the previous dates, just because I honesty don’t know when they started, I figure it was probably a 2 to 3 year development effort and if it came out in 2004 probably right at that time. To be fair not a whole lot changed with WoW in regards to EQ1, even on the graphics level. That was the key to Wow’s success was that it didn’t take 2 Crays to run it (see early EQ2).

I also would probably put EQ2 and Vanguard both in generation/timespan of design 1.5 also. Both games have better graphic engines and the game play is similar to the basic MMO set up, but I think that both of these games much like Wow was also spawned from the success of EQ1.

So where is Generation 2? Well I don’t think we have seen it in full bloom just yet. I think we are starting to see it. One game that comes to my mind for generation 2 already on the market would be Test Drive Unlimited. This is a massive online games in a fairly persistent world but not of the classic MMORPG genre. They are other types of games (aside from RPGs) taking the massive mutiplayer level to a new population of game players (I might also be tempted to add City of Heroes/Villains into the Gen 2 classification also). These are games that were designed in a different genre that now involve massive persistent worlds. Brent (Virginworlds mentioned earlier) also spoke of Saga on his latest podcast which is a massive multiplayer persistent Real Time Strategy game. I think that with the advent of console overarching networks (xbox live, ps3 network, etc) we will start to see “Gen2″’s games like this come about a lot more on PC and Consoles. I just don’t think we are there yet.

Kindergarden-level-mathematical readers will probably comment on this post saying “why didn’t you just call your generation 1.5 games ‘gen 2′ and the new console mmos games of the future you describe ‘gen3′? Well I didn’t for a reason. I don’t think that the movement from eq1 to wow or eq2 constitutes a generation. There really wasn’t much that changed besides some sub systems and the graphics to these games. I don’t think they constitute a “generational” title.

So thats my 2c on the “generation” (you sick of the quotes yet?) taxonomy of MMOs. From a player who has been playing for ~15 years.

-Cyan

Other Reads on the Subject:

Virginworld’s Podcast #49 (What started it all)

Ancient Gaming Noob - Third Generation? There was a Second?

Ancient Gaming Noob - MMO Generation Divisions

Virginworld’s Blog - They are all 1st Generation MMOs!

World IV - MMO Geneaology

Sierra Kilo - MMORPG Genes