The Last Survivors of Meridian 59 (2014)

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-last-survivors-of-meridian-59

by bpierre • 9 years ago

89 17 9 years ago

newyorker.com

Daenks• 9 years ago

Hi!

I've been heavily involved in this project in the past. It's still going strong!

openmeridian.org and meridiannext.com are the most active open source servers.

TrollInBob• 9 years ago

Ohmigosh you're still at it? Please visit the official site or Gilroy's forums for info. This guy is a known scammer and cheat.

The only thing more amazing than the game living this long, and it IS a great game, is that our bad actors in the community have been so dedicated.

bussiere• 9 years ago

I've played this game in the end of the 90'S woooo i'am old ...

rabbyte2• 9 years ago

I was in the beta. playing and hacking that game changed my life. it's always been a tragedy so many people didn't experience it before Asherons Call, Underlight, and EverQuest came along.

tibbon• 9 years ago

Ultima Online's alpha/beta era was pretty amazing and chaotic. I miss it.

Randin• 9 years ago

I also played the beta, server two and five if I remember correctly.

Harimwakairi• 9 years ago

"...Meridian 59, the first computer game that allowed people from around the world to gather and quest together via the Internet."

Have these people never heard of a MUD?

merlincorey• 9 years ago

My thoughts exactly. I think people don't realize that MUDs can have much more extensive interfaces than just "Adventure> " prompts, and that they have for a very very long time!

runevault• 9 years ago

Everyone forgets about MUDs. God I put so many hours into them, even was a coder on one for a little while before college and other things got in the way.

loarake• 9 years ago

I wish MUDs were featured more prominently in online gaming history. They basically defined my childhood, and I learned how to code by writing vendor bots on a MUD. Dealing with edge cases (customers trying to buy invisible items without being able to see invisible!) and people trying to scam my bots taught me some valuable programming lessons that stick with me to this day.

rabbyte2• 9 years ago

that should say "first graphical" because at the time it was pitched as the first 3D online MUD. They had to stress that internet was required because at the time even networked games didn't require internet.

DamionS2• 9 years ago

I can tell you that most of us who coded Meridian 59 knew what MUDs were =)

In retrospect, there were a lot of things that Meridian wanted to claim we were first at, but there were people who beat us on almost everything: graphics in a MUD, 3D controls to a virtual world, etc. The one exception MAY be that we were the first MMO/MUD to have a box product and a subscription fee (most online games before us used daily or hourly charges, but we came out right around when AOL changed the billing model, and everyone else rearranged their billing models to match).

rosser• 9 years ago

As much as this world sounds like a treasure, and deserves an audience, might putting it on Steam not be a bit Endless September?

foreverclown2• 9 years ago

Interesting reference, seeing that the game was 'born' when the original programmers and producers discussed the concept on usenet.

Being on Steam would be a great way to introduce it to new fans and it already has a 'workshop' with new servers and other mods via its open source community. I know many would appreciate it being on there - the more, the merrier. I think after 20 years, the impact such a boon could have is more positive.

['Netiquette' was definitely a part of the game's set of skills, with players policing their own servers and taking social justice into their own hands when members of the community were 'unruly'. In the years since, the social landscape of the game changed along with our internet culture, for better or worse.]

buserror• 9 years ago

There is also ClanLord[1] that is still going, more or less also with a fraction of the players that used to be there.

I used to be a GM on it, more than 15 years ago (!) -- it was one of the rare game on Mac as well, at the time when Mac weren't trendy at all..

[1] https://deltatao.com/clanlord/

foreverclown2• 9 years ago

Thanks for the love. I'm the administrator of the game's 2 remaining official US servers, which are owned by the two original programmers who developed the code (blakod, Andrew and Chris Kirmse. The two brothers took the game over again in 2010, from the company Near Death Studios - which had been charging players from 2003-2010, 9.95 a month. The brothers released the game for free, keeping all the characters from 2003 still alive (unwiped servers), allowing for an unprecedented social aspect wherein players from a decade (or longer, now) ago can step back into the boots of their old avatars.

The game's source code was released in 2011 and is available on github for old fans and new to create new worlds and game experiences. https://github.com/Meridian59/Meridian59

The population is not what it once was (it tends to come and go with the seasons, one player makes a huge impact in its world) - but it's worth checking out, historically.

There are now a couple, fan-run open source servers that have been doing a TON of work on the game, some offering more PvE, some more PvP based. Old fans may enjoy checking out some of the changes on these servers...or they may enjoy seeing something a little closer to home. Either way, the game is still alive, thanks to the fans. Users are still getting involved in their old relationships or making news ones, with some incredible stories due to the game being out for a virtual lifetime.

DamionS2• 9 years ago

Interested parties may enjoy this GDC postmortem of the game. Note: Sound at the beginning is REALLY jacked for about 3 minutes, turn your volume down a little before launching.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016637/Classic-Game-Postmortem...

The Last Survivors of Meridian 59 (2014)

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