Meridian 59 - History

History

Meridian 59, the first commercial, 3D massively multiplayer game, was developed by Archetype Interactive and published in September 1996 by 3DO. Meridian 59 was Archetype Interactive's only product; Archetype Interactive was acquired by 3DO in June 1996. Archetype was run by Steve Sellers, Mike Sellers, and John Hanke, with Andrew Kirmse and Chris Kirmse filling key technical roles. Damion Schubert contributed to the design along with a team totaling 22 employees and contractors. The game's technological base was initially inspired by Scepter of Goth.

The game was in an early beta stage in April 1996 when it was noticed by Kevin Hester and other game developers at 3DO. Trip Hawkins, CEO of 3DO, recognized the forward-looking value of the game and the company, and 3DO bought Archetype in June 1996. More than 25,000 players joined the game's public beta that lasted up until its commercial launch on September 27, 1996, beating its next major rival, Ultima Online, by approximately a year.

Although Meridian arguably holds the title as the first realtime three dimensional online role-playing game, it lacks some features of its modern successors. For instance, the ability to jump was not implemented as a function of character input. Any jumping required in puzzle solving is done by climbing an incline and falling from one platform to another. This is the same limitation that Doom suffered; the game used a similar engine written in part by the original developers.

Due to restrictions placed upon level designers by the graphics engine, many of the maps appear to have similar limitations to Doom. For instance, unnatural sharp edges are common, as are short walls that are placed to prevent the (non-jumping) player from entering incomplete areas of the world. Tree-lines are duplicate image stamps, similar to tiled desktop backgrounds, and environment sounds are short clips from readily available sound sources.

However, the game contained many other features that modern games duplicated later: guilds had a dynamic voting system for changing leadership, customized sigils that appeared on shields, and guild halls that could be won or lost. There were also in-game bulletin board system (called newsglobes), a personal mail system that both players and NPCs could use to send messages, a political meta-game, and frequent expansions that expanded the world and gameplay options.

Prior to its release, the term "massively multiplayer" and the acronym "MMPRPG", "Massively Multi-Player Role-Playing Game", emerged in meetings within 3DO (beating out other monikers such as "large-n game"), as did the now-ubiquitous monthly subscription model. At the time, AOL was still charging per minute, though a change to flat fees was anticipated. The game received multiple awards, including the fantasy-role-playing game of the year for 1996. It also has had various updates throughout its life, each adding new monsters, spells, and areas. In its early years it was commonly conceived of as a graphical MUD, though this term, and M59's preferred "MMPRPG", was eventually displaced by the now-ubiquitous Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, a term coined by Richard Garriott of Ultima Online in 1997.

3DO shut down the game on August 31, 2000 and it was re-released by Near Death Studios, Inc. in 2002. Near Death Studios was co-founded by former Meridian 59 developers Rob "Q" Ellis and Brian "Psychochild" Green. A new rendering engine was added to the game in the Evolution expansion on October 2004, offering an alternative to its Doom-based graphics. This expansion also included features like dynamic lighting, rebindable keys, mouselook, and other visual improvements.

Shortly after 3DO shut the game down on August 31, 2000 a developer of the game leaked the server software and the files for Meridian 59:Renaissance to a player, and since then there has been a thriving community of free-to-play servers.

Meridian 59's game developer, Near Death Studios, announced that they will be closing their doors as of January 6, 2010. Meridian 59 will continue running, just not as a commercial concern of Near Death Studios.