[MUD-Dev] A Brief History of Commercial MUDs

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu 
> [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> Auli
> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 7:08 AM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] A Brief History of Commercial MUDs
> 
> Sierra's The Realm was also first realeased in late 1996.  It
> probably reached peak popularity around January of 1998 with an
> estimated 25,000 subscribers.  The subscription model was a flat
> yearly rate of $49.95.  I think it is generally overlooked because
> it never propagated to more than one server (probably because of the
> subscription model).  It has since been purchased by the UK company
> Codemasters and is still running.  With the demise of Meridian 59
> that probably makes it the longest runnng commercial MMORPG to date
> (assuming a single server doesn't disqaulify it from the term
> massively, it did have peak player useage of around 3000
> simultaneously).  If anyone can find Steve Nichols he may be able to
> correct me somewhat, I am going on my recollections as a player and,
> later, an admin.

Steve is at Codemasters, after sojourning around for a little bit
(such as onto the doomed Middle Earth Online project). Of the others
he worked with--Janus Anderson is at Westwood as lead designer on
Earth and Beyond (an interesting massively multiplayer game that I
don't think has been discussed here yet) and Daniel James, well, I saw
him this morning here at GDC. :)

-Raph
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