The Last Survivors of Meridian 59 | Hacker News Reader

The Last Survivors of Meridian 59

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50 pointsomnibrain19 comments

I'd heard of M59 back in my EQ days, but never even saw a screenshot of it before, so the article was interesting.

EQ was much more a PVE game (with PvP certainly present), and as others have said, inspired by MUDS. Having never been much interested in MUDS, we shipped "Prince of Destruction" a multiplayer (LAN) 2D RPG in 1994 which had many of the features of later games (including persistence between sessions). I say this because these ideas were all "in the air", and it's silly to suggest the EQ guys based their stuff on M59. D&D (RPG concept), RuneQuest (skill systems), Rogue, Akalabeth, Wizardry, etc. had established the basic concepts by 1982, and the idea of making giant servers with hundreds of players or whatever was merely a question of execution.

One of the underappreciated aspects of EQ was the rather sophisticated (for the time) monster AI from which a lot of gameplay emerged.

Like many, I never played Meridian 59 but knew it as a major inspiration for arguably the first popular MMO: Everquest.

Here's the earliest video I know of EQ, and it has a very M59 feel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFKrlynZNtU&list=FLrvKUlysHt...

I would argue Ultima Online set the bar for MMOs long before Everquest. The UO servers had 3000+ players online vs the 300ish of Meridian 59.

I wasn't sure how to phrase it. The first two real MMOs (in the massive sense) where UO and EQ, with UO coming first. That said I think modern MMOs would claim more in common with EQ than UO.

EQ being the first in full 3D as I recall.

They do. Pre-patch UO was much more of a free for all. Then the 2nd Age created a mirrored server that prohibited all but mutual combat. It took a lot of the excitement out of it for me. The risk/reward of going to dungeons and territorial feuds were what drew me to the game.

Minor correction: Renaissance, not the 2nd Age, split the world into two mirrored facets.

I agree, though I do think EverQuest was more popular in the public image, I remember when it was mentioned in the movie "The New Guy" and I was like, whoa!

UO was the first really popular MMO but it was 2D(or 2.5D at best).

EQ was the first 3D MMO.

UO was fantastic for its mix of PvE and PvP. For a time, you could be a player who preferred PvE but you could still protect yourself against PvP. I remember mining in rags, when underneath I was a fully maxed armed plate wearing mage ready to pounce on any unsuspecting griefers.

EQ took a different route, it emphasized PvE. PvP servers were considered broken.

There were endless discussions in gaming forums lamenting this lack of "forced but fun" PvP in EQ which was present in UO.

However, EQ proved to be more influential, the big successes that followed like WoW emphasized PvE and the care-bear factor.

Those games that tried to bring some sort of forced PvP onto users failed.(I am not sure where EVE falls in this regard)

Disclaimer: I played both UO(1998-2000) and EQ(2000-2006) and my bots still play EQ.

Everquest's designers have credited MUDs as the primary inspiration, I believe. I wish I had a reference, but they one of the creators of a big MUD (Diku I think) was considering litigation at the time :)

I think MUDs are sort of the genesis of most multiplayer online games, but there is some seed in BBS Doors as well (Legend of the Red Dragon etc...) that had some multi-player persistence.

Besides that, obviously pen and paper RPGs as well as fantasy adventure games (Kings Quest etc...) played a role in influencing all of these games.

Everything back then was heavily based on MU*s (ie also MUSH, MUSE, MUX, etc), for instance Designer Dragon (aka Raph Koster) came from LegendMud.

For those who were around back then, there is zero question that many design decisions of EQ were chosen as a direct reaction to the state of things in UO and evolving customer tastes. Put simply, the average gamer simply was not (and still is not) ready for the sort of sandbox that UO initially provided, but a Diku on steroids was definitely in the cards.

Aradune definitely referenced MUDs a lot when speaking about the EQ design. I don't have any cites handy either.

EQ was not inspired by meridian, nor was it the first popular mmog. UO was the first popular mmog by any measure. And EQ was inspired by muds (just like meridian was). They were mainly inspired by opposing camps in the mud world, they don't really have that much in common. EQ is basically dikumud with graphics. Meridian and UO came from the virtual world camp.

I never played M59, but heard about it endlessly as "the good old days" when I played EverQuest.

Every few years I Google for happenings on the EQ server I frequented in 1999. There have been all sorts of mergers and consolidations, but it appears a number of people are still playing regularly 15.5 years later and still arguing about the exact same things.

It's like dropping onto Skull Island[1].

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Island

I beta tested and played M59 when I was 14-15. Was astounding at the time, and I still remember it as great. Beta tested EverQuest after that as well. Much like people talk about UO being transformative, M59 was just something else, indescribable to be that age and experience something so immersive. It was so rough that your imagination filled in so much, it was far more real than a modern MMO.

Hey, me too. I burned the entire summer of 1996 between M59 and getting my driver's permit. We had a dial-up internet connection on the same line as our phone, so after numerous lag-related deaths caused by my mother or sister picking up the phone, I started playing almost exclusively at night. It was always so eerie (and, in hindsight, it seems kinda sad), sitting alone in the basement trying not to be killed by giant ants or spiders. I was crap at the game, but I really found myself immersed.

I have fond memories of this game too. :) I'll always remember how at some point it was possible to edit the game binary and create a character with maxed out stats that could kill the strongest monster in the game (the ghost) in one hit. :)

I have fond memories reading stories about Meridian 59. "Virtual" marriages and the likes in german game magazines. I think the publisher of PC Games, Computec Media, had the rights to publish (and run) the game in germany. In hindsight the articles probably were just barely disguised advertising. ;)

I was about 13-14 at the time and obviously had no pocket money to spare, so I never played the game.

Link to source code for the game:

https://github.com/Meridian59/Meridian59

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